What is Mayans?
Mayans is a brand new app powered by Maya Protocol. It's a platform that merges social and decentralized finance along with a number of other things. The app went live just a couple days ago, and I've had the opportunity to play with it and... I have some thoughts. Before jumping into the details, I'd like to give a shout out to the MayaScan team for continuously pushing out tools for Maya Protocol. These guys work crazy fast.
If you know nothing about Maya Protocol, click the link above to learn about it and get started. It's like the people's Thorchain. It's also extremely early so there's potentially opportunities to farm some airdrops like GLD. The first airdrop already happened, but there's another one happening on the 21st of January. More information can be found on the MayaScan website.
Now, on to the fun stuff.
Talk
The flagship feature of Mayans at the moment is the Talk feature. It looks and feels like Discord, but you sign in with your Maya wallet. Per their own description - the best of Twitter, Discord, and OnlyFans converged into a platform powered by Maya.
We often talk about alternatives to Discord, whether on chain or not. This is that, but with more freedom. After using it as it is now, I can absolutely see this being used as a communication hub, news source, or even a way to connect with content creators.
It's very basic right now, but you can clearly see the power it has. With channels just like discord, and even private channels that require you to hold NFTs to access them. Requiring wallet sign in automatically means that the platform knows which NFTs and tokens you are holding. Users can private message, or even create paid private messaging. Hello OnlyFans.
The possibilities are endless, and looking at the roadmap for Talk alone is pretty impressive. For You channels sounds interesting, assuming it is something like the For You page on InLeo or X. There's also pay to enter channels coming down the pipeline. All of this powered by GLD, which is a token on Maya Protocol. Creating channels costs GLD, which will drive value to the asset as the platform is used more.
Currently, you can send messages up to 200 characters for free. If your message goes up to 500 characters, you will pay 1 GLD. If your message goes to 750 characters, you pay 5 GLD. I actually really like this model. It gives users more flexibility than just paying a monthly subscription. Hopefully there will be options for longer messages as well, but for now the limit sits at 750 characters.
Soon, users will be able to customize their profiles if they choose and it looks like there will be some sort of points/rewards system. We'll have to see how it all plays out.... But you can catch me on Talk. I'm gunna be using it and hopefully earning some points before that's live. Might even create a feet pic channel, who knows.
Staking
The second feature that went live at launch was staking of MRC-20 tokens. This allows users to stake their MRC-20 tokens to earn more of those tokens. For example, you can stake GLD now for 50% APR! Luckily, I had a good chunk from the first airdrop to stake. Gunna need a lot of GLD for the Mayans platform, so better to start farming now while it's juicy. I have a feeling the token is gunna get a lot of value as more features come out.
There's a few different tokens that you can stake right off the bat, as their creators have already enabled this. I went ahead an enabled BEANS staking at 69% APR for the culture, so if you need some BEANS to stake, drop your Maya wallet in the comments so I can send some. BEANS is a meme token I created for no reason at all on Maya.
What else?
For now, that's what Mayans consists of. As I said, it launched literally a couple days ago as an MVP. This is just the first step toward a very robust platform. There will be NFT integrations, and play to earn gaming. Of course there will be a built in DEX, with support for both NFTs and tokens. That's really all we know at this point, but I'm super excited about it.
Never been more bullish on Maya Protocol.