Sam Bankman-Fried And Vitalik Buterin Propose Solution To Twitter Bot Problem

The highly talked about takeover proposal of Twitter by Elon Musk was essentially centered around the issue of Twitter bots. Now, Sam Bankman-Fried And Vitalik Buterin, two of the biggest names in the crypto world, seem to have a fix. Earlier this year, Musk sought details of the proportion of fake Twitter accounts controlled by bots. In fact, the Tesla CEO has at one point temporarily stalled the deal proposal over Twitter bot issue.

In August 2022, a whistleblower disclosed that Twitter misled regulators over spam accounts. Later, Musk accused the social media company of hiding crucial details. Subsequently, he stalled the takeover proposal citing concerns over spam accounts and lack of transparency around it.

Sam Bankman-Fried Has A Solution To Control Spam Accounts

In what could potentially become a crypto use case, Sam Bankman-Fried suggested on-chain social media messages to control the issue. To discourage usage of bots and fake accounts, he suggested charging small amount of gas per message. However, he noted that this is only one of the ways to control and counter the problem. Earlier, SBF termedsocial media networks as ‘isolated’ and ‘not interoperable’. In July 2022, he tweeted about the prospects of messaging on a blockchain.

“One way to get rid of a bot problem: on-chain social media messages; even a tiny amount of gas per message would discourage it.”

Vitalik Buterin: No Cost Messaging With Consensus

Reacting to SBF’s proposal for on-chain social media messaging, Vitalik Buterin added another dimension to the idea. He suggested that the message sender be allowed to reduce costs if the receiver is satisfied with the message. This would effectively negate the spam accounts without really burdening real users. Buterin called it conditional burning, which is to allow for zero cost messaging if the receiver is happy with it.

“Conditional burn is better in my opinion. Recipient should have the right to force you to burn $X (or donate it to charity), but if the recipient is happy with your message it should cost nothing.”