# My SocialFi Experiment (3 Years Too Early)

> I didn’t invent SocialFi. But I prototyped it before the term existed.

**Published by:** [Eric's Blog](https://paragraph.com/@epr/)
**Published on:** 2025-03-28
**Categories:** socialfi, web3design, tokeneconomics
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@epr/my-socialfi-experiment

## Content

In 2020, I launched a token called $TATR. It was a social currency designed to reward people not for staking capital but for sharing digital art. We called the mechanism Social Liquidity Mining (SLM). The idea was simple: reward people who spread value, not hoard it. At the time, it felt experimental. In hindsight, it looks inevitable.What I Built$TATR was a token distributed through SLM. It was an early attempt to design tokenized incentives for cultural engagement.You could only earn $TATR by gifting “The People’s Potato” NFT to someone who had never owned one.Both sender and receiver were rewarded, but only if it was a first-time interaction.The protocol included a reward split, anti-gaming mechanics, and a Social Distribution Score (SDS) model to measure organic behavior.In total, 695,000 tokens were distributed. A provisional patent was filed, then later abandoned in favor of an open-source, protocol-first ethos. The contract was later renounced. 90% of supply burned.What I Got Right Social tokens are better earned than bought $TATR wasn’t just airdropped. They were unlocked through interaction. Distribution > Scarcity I designed the protocol to incentivize sharing, not hoarding. NFTs as community bridges Each Potato was a conversation starter, not just a collectible. Decentralized Patreon was coming Anticipated token-based membership before it hit mainstream Web3.What I Got Wrong I underestimated gas friction Airdropping rewards became too expensive to scale on Ethereum at the time. L2s like Base and Optimism eventually solved this, but the timing was off. I got claiming wrong I assumed no one would want to bother. But the opposite happened. Claiming became the new like button. A small hit of validation and control. I thought protocol-first was enough I believed Social Liquidity Mining could thrive at first without a platform. Technically it did. But in hindsight, platforms create social gravity. Protocols still need places to gather.Why It Still MattersI walked away from $TATR in 2022. Not because the idea was wrong, but because the space wasn’t ready. In 2021, I filed a provisional patent for Social Liquidity Mining. It was a protocol designed to reward peer-to-peer participation through NFT distribution, token incentives, and anti-gaming mechanics. Today, that thinking is everywhere. Every week, I see platforms rolling out features first explored through Social Liquidity Mining. Peer-to-peer distribution. Earned rewards. Social scoring. Cultural tokens with no roadmap but the people holding them. Platforms like Farcaster, friend.tech, and Stack are exploring patterns I tested in 2020. The protocol may be dormant, but the ideas are alive. They’ve shaped how I think about engagement, coordination, and what meaningful participation looks like in Web3. This was not just an experiment. It was a signal. Explore the $TATR archive Let’s talk on X or LinkedIn

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