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In the ever-changing crypto market, we often see eye-catching new projects emerge. Even when the market sentiment is gloomy and investors generally feel pessimistic, Solana co-founder Toly has quietly joined a SocialFi platform called Time.fun. The platform's time token - "toly's minutes" - quickly attracted a market value of $20 million within just two hours, but then rapidly dropped to $5.3 million, with the token price fluctuating wildly.
This reminds people of the short-lived star project Clout, which soared in value through celebrity personal tokens but ultimately collapsed due to technical flaws and market bubbles. Now, Time.fun and other "time tokenization" projects seem to be facing similar challenges - will a model once seen as the new era of social tokens also meet its demise in speculation and bubbles?
Time.fun's "Time Alchemy"
Time.fun, through its innovative "time tokenization" mechanism, transforms traditional social interactions into tradable digital assets, changing the way people interact with celebrities and creators. The platform's basic function is to allow creators to convert their time into purchasable tokens, and users can "book" the creator's time by buying these tokens to engage in one-on-one interactions, group chats, or even schedule meetings. This mechanism not only creates new income streams for creators, but also provides users with opportunities for deeper exchanges with their favorite celebrities and professionals.
In practice, users first need to register an account on the Time.fun platform and connect their social media accounts, such as Twitter and Discord. Then, users can recharge USDC (or other supported cryptocurrencies) into their account wallets through the platform's payment system. After that, users can browse the "time tokens" published by different creators, each representing a segment of interaction time with the creator. Users can choose to purchase tokens based on their needs, with various time lengths and interaction types available, such as a 1-minute chat token for $1 or a longer meeting token for hundreds of dollars.
One of Time.fun's core innovations is the
bonding curve pricing mechanism, also known as the "internal market." This mechanism dynamically adjusts the token price based on the trading volume and market demand. Simply put, as the trading volume of a creator's time tokens increases on the platform, their token price will automatically rise, forming a self-reinforcing speculative flywheel. This design not only generates income for creators, but also stimulates users' short-term motivation to purchase time tokens, driving increased attention and demand for the creators.
The platform also offers a "time redemption" function, where users can exchange their purchased tokens for actual social interactions, such as private messages, voice calls, or video conferences. Each redemption will reduce the corresponding tokens, and the creator will receive the corresponding reward. Meanwhile, Time.fun has introduced a "time holder fund," which accumulates from the platform's transaction fees and redemption fees, providing rewards for time token holders. Both users and creators can earn additional benefits from this fund, encouraging them to participate more in the platform's ecosystem.
In addition, Time.fun has launched a creator-exclusive group chat feature, using a Telegram bot to automatically manage group members. Creators can authorize the bot to handle member invitations and removals, further enhancing the platform's interactivity and strengthening the connection between creators and their fans.
Compared to the Key mechanism of the Friend.tech platform, Time.fun's design adopts a more complex dual-revenue engine: on the one hand, 95% of the revenue comes from time redemption, where creators receive the majority of the rewards by interacting with their fans, incentivizing them to improve the interaction quality; on the other hand, through a 2.1% transaction share and the time holder fund, Time.fun has built an interest alliance centered on time token holders. In this way, the platform not only strengthens the interactive connection between creators and fans, but also stimulates the speculative enthusiasm of participants through a market-based pricing mechanism.
Avoiding Repetition? For Now, NO
Time.fun's success has attracted the participation of many well-known figures, and the personal tokens on the platform almost constitute a "power map" of the crypto world. Solana co-founder Toly, Helius CEO Mert, and Time.fun founder Kawz have all issued personal tokens on the platform, with the token value directly linked to their individual market heat and influence. For example, Toly's "toly's minutes" token has resonated with the heat of the Solana ecosystem, with its market value once reaching nearly $20 million. Mert has also converted his influence in the Solana ecosystem into a blockchain-based credit asset through "mert's minutes," further enhancing the platform's appeal.
However, looking at the market performance, Time.fun's model still shares some similarities with Clout in certain aspects. Although Time.fun has made efforts to avoid some technical and product defects, it still relies to a certain extent on the celebrity effect, which may lead to its token prices being subject to significant short-term market sentiment fluctuations. For example, on January 24, the token "PASTERNAK" of the Clout platform founder had a peak market value of $80 million when the Solana chain was highly active, with a daily trading volume of $880 million. But today, Solana's daily trading volume has dropped to $340 million. In this market context, Toly's "toly's minutes" token reaching a peak market value of around $30 million seems to be a reasonable range. Nevertheless, Time.fun's token prices may still face significant volatility, especially in the face of unstable liquidity both within and outside the platform.
Unlike Clout, Time.fun's product preparation is more comprehensive. When Clout launched, due to technical issues, the token issuance function did not proceed as expected, ultimately leading to a "soft rug" - the token value of founder Ben Pasternak plummeted by 99.7%, and the official Twitter account was also cleared of all content.
In contrast, Time.fun has conducted thorough planning before launching its product and has received the support of the Solana official, making its initial ecosystem construction more stable. It is worth noting that Time.fun has been operating an official Twitter account since last April and has participated in Alliance's incubation program, indicating that this carefully crafted project is unlikely to experience an immediate crash like Clout.
Clout's failure exposed the problem of tokens being unable to redeem actual social interactions, ultimately turning it into a short-term speculative tool. In comparison, Time.fun's introduction of the "time redemption" mechanism ensures that the tokens are closely linked to actual social behavior and time exchange, providing a clear value support for the platform, and preventing the tokens from being just empty "memes." However, this mechanism, while enhancing the actual value of the tokens, still faces challenges: whether the platform's tokens can maintain their actual value in the long run and avoid being overly speculated, given the push of the celebrity effect, remains an unresolved issue. Although Time.fun has a more definitive anchor in its design, how to balance the celebrity effect and the long-term stability of the tokens is still a key problem that the platform needs to continuously solve.
The Path to Breakthrough: From "Financial Casino" to "Time Bank"
The real breakthrough may not lie in continuing to cycle within the existing financial speculation framework, but in reconstructing the underlying logic, allowing time tokens to become digital assets with deep social value, not just tools for interacting with celebrities. Imagine a scenario where users' time tokens are no longer just tools for interacting with celebrities, but become input parameters for a blockchain-based credit scoring system. For example, a developer who redeems time tokens to receive guidance from a well-known Ethereum core developer, their GitHub contributions, code quality, time token holdings, and other indicators will form a cross-validation, ultimately generating a "developer credit passport" that can be used across platforms. This approach not only endows time tokens with more dimensions of value, but also drives the on-chain mapping of a wider range of user behaviors and social activities.
This idea is not a pipe dream. In Time.fun's future vision, time tokens will not only be limited to celebrity interaction, but will become the core unit of all on-chain activities and contributions. If successful, Time.fun may fundamentally change our understanding of "time" as a resource, transforming it from traditional linear computation to a decentralized, programmable financial and social credit asset. In this case, time tokens will not only be a tool for a specific field, but the infrastructure for achieving cross-domain value exchange and social recognition, helping to build a brand new social capital system.
However, this breakthrough path is not easy. To transform the concept of a "time bank" from theory to reality, Time.fun not only needs to overcome the market's speculative bubble, but also solve the problem of how to establish a standard of measurement and exchange mechanism for time in a wide range of social activities. This requires the platform to have stronger infrastructure support, and also needs the active promotion and verification of community participants. If all this can be achieved, Time.fun has the potential to become the pioneer of the next generation of decentralized social and financial platforms.
