Popular Chinese internet forum launching its own crypto token

In order to regain its steadily declining user base, Tianya Club, one of the oldest social networking platform has resorted to cryptocurrency by launching its own token called Tianyan Token (TYT).

The internet forum which first went live in 1999, announced the launch of its blockchain-based cryptocurrency token on Wednesday. The token is supposed to go live on August 8, 2018. The main purpose of this token will be to reward original content contribution and participate in community activities along with being a mean of payment and exchange.

According to a report by Coindesk, the company had introduced its one of a kind Tianya Diamond which can be used as a utility token for collectables and gifting, with the assurance that the company will add "more use cases in the future" in December.

Tianya Diamond, that has a hard-cap of 900 million, can be purchased using Chinese yuan on WeChat. If a user wants to earn the crypto token by contributing to the original content, the sum of reward depends on the votes received by other crypto token holders.

Talking more about the token distribution, the company said that 20 percent of the 90 billion tokens to be created will be reserved for its operational teams while the rest will be distributed to the community members.

As of now, the platform on which Tianya’s blockchain will be built on is unclear. Also, the parameters determining the value of the crypto token is yet to be known. Tianya Diamond – the firm’s non-blockchain token – also appears to be getting a boost. Only the users holding a certain amount of Tianya Diamonds can receive TYT tokens by participating in certain community activities such as moderating threads, as per the announcement.

Tianya Club's site ranking has dropped from China's 11th most visited website in 2015 to the 24th currently, mostly because of the competition from other social networks, as per a data traffic site Alexa.