Just recently a new on-chain social media application has entered the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem called Matter – another decentralized blogging community that’s fueled by the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain. Matter is the third social media platform that follows behind Blockpress and Memo, allowing users to store arbitrary data on the BCH chain.
Matter: Bitcoin Cash Powered Long Form Blog Posts
Another blogging site called Matter has been introduced to the BCH community, and the platform’s actions are all powered by the Bitcoin Cash network. Matter claims to have no access to the user’s key and explains keys are stored only in your browser.
Now Matter does have its differences compared to the Blockpress application and Memo, as Matter users can publish arbitrarily long-form posts. Essentially due to the fact the miner’s fee using bitcoin cash is so minimal Matter users can store any document in the BCH chain in an immutable fashion.
Signing up for the website is fairly intuitive for anyone already familiar with cryptocurrency wallets and social media in general. When registering for Matter the app gives you a private key and a twelve-word mnemonic phrase which is needed to log into the platform. From here the application resembles the Blockpress app and you are able to add your name and add a profile picture. One thing worth noting is when performing such actions Matter asks you to confirm that you are aware that “all of the information will be permanently stored on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain.”
More Characters Per Satoshi
Now as we stated above the biggest difference between the other social media apps and Matter is the fact you can add long-form posts to the chain. With Blockpress you are only allowed 217 characters, and writing longer posts can get cumbersome much like Twitter’s character limit.
On June 9, 2018, we were able to add Timothy May’s entire 1988 piece ‘The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto’ and all my actions were recorded on the BCH chain. Now May’s phenomenal writing isn’t too long but it is still 500 words and the entire entry cost less than ten cents. You can also title the post, add bold lettering and other format functionalities.
In essence, Matter allows a decentralized way to bypass centralized clouds and corporations who sell and censor data. The new app had caused a discussion about whether or not adding large amounts of arbitrary data into the blockchain was a good idea. A few bitcoin cash proponents didn’t like the idea of all this data being applied to the chain, however many other BCH fans have favored these new on-chain publishing concepts.