The past few days have been riddled with pretty disheartening price movements, as global cryptocurrency markets have declined by 20% since last week. However, these movements are not indicative of the growing progress in the space. If your attention hasn’t been totally consumed by the markets, you likely have heard of one of the newest experimental developments, Satoshis.place.
Inspired by Reddit’s April Fool’s Day /r/place and the infamous Million Dollar Homepage, satoshis.place represents a global canvas of 1 million pixels accessible to all. On Satoshi’s Place, users are able to interact with the display, changing any number of pixels to whichever color they prefer. Each pixel costs 1 satoshi to paint, and pixels can be painted over indefinitely. Payments are processed on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, and there is no limit on the frequency of additions to the painting.
Like other projects from which it derived inspiration, Satoshi’s Place has fostered a certain charm and motley community that have taken a fascination to the experiment. Characterized by lighthearted fun and playful banter, Satoshi’s Place is reminiscent of the welcoming subcommunities that defined cryptocurrency in its formative years, a warm environment that, amid this extended bear trend, could not have come about at a better time.
Early Trends
Like many internet communities, Satoshi’s Place was quickly consumed by an insatiable desire to draw penises. For whatever reason, a dedicated contingent of players have committed their time and satoshis to vandalizing the many different works with phallic objects. Fortunately, there has been a growing counterculture to that trend, and a number of users have taken it upon themselves to paint over the dicks. Opponents to the penis craze are happy to know that the amount of genitalia across Satoshi’s Place continues to dip.
The more prominent battle that has emerged is between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash supporters. Despite the adamant opposition to off-chain scaling solutions (such as Lightning Network) in the Bitcoin Cash community, there has been significant painting of pro-Bitcoin Cash advertisements and images on Satoshi’s Place. Core and Cash supporters are constantly painting over and vandalizing the advertisements of one another.
After just several days, users seem to be creating automated programs to protect and broadcast their artwork. “coinninja.com” has been proudly pasted in several places, and other advertisements seem to regenerate after they are tampered with. The entire board costs just 1 million satoshi, or US$65, to cover, so it’ll be interesting to see if certain entities attempt to monopolize the canvas to promote their products or services.
Broader Implications
Satoshi’s Place is massively important as the first Lightning Network application to see broad usage. The thousands of unique impressions on the canvas thus far represent a sort of stress test that confirms that heavy usage of the network does not cripple performance in the same manner that CryptoKitties and other ETH games have affected the Ethereum network.
As Satoshi’s Place continues to grow in popularity, so will the number of individuals who are exposed to and begin to understand the workings of Lightning Network. There are massive implications behind the off-chain scaling solution for the Bitcoin network, and immersive activities like this are a phenomenal way to streamline adoption and expand the capabilities of LN.
Image(s): Shutterstock.com
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