TL;DR
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Apple sent the Damus maintainers a note saying (we’re paraphrasing): “Hey you know what? I know your app has been available with the ‘zap’ feature for months, but it’s against our terms. Oh, and you You have 14 days to submit a new version or we will remove it from the App Store.”
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As the Damus team tweeted: “Damus doesn’t sell digital goods and doesn’t offer features for selling digital goods. It just has a tip button to enable p2p transactions, like venmo or cashapp.”
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The Damus case will undoubtedly set a precedent for whether Web3 apps can use the Lightning Network (or other layer-2s) to send p2p transactions.
Full story
In February of this year, a decentralized alternative to Twitter was mentioned Damus – went live on the Apple App Store.
Woooo – an approved Web3 social app on the Apple App Store is a big deal!
Yesterday, Apple sent a note to Damus maintainers saying (we’re paraphrasing): “Hey, you know what? I know your app has been available with the ‘zap’ feature for months, but it’s against our terms. Oh, and you have 14 days to submit a new version or we will remove it from the App Store.”
Ooooft.
What is Apple’s problem?
Apple has a problem with a feature called “zaps,” which are basically tips.
The Damus app rewards the people who create content on the platform – the users – by allowing other users to ‘zap’ messages. Tips are sent in crypto, peer-to-peer, via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
But as we all know, Apple loves to get a discount every time money (or crypto) changes hands in exchange for “digital content.”
What does this mean for Damus and Web3’s social media?
In the short term, it looks like Damus will have to remove the zaps feature from their Apple app to keep it available to users.
But this fight has only just begun.
As the Damus team tweeted: “Damus doesn’t sell digital goods and doesn’t offer features for selling digital goods. It just has a tip button to enable p2p transactions, like venmo or cashapp.”
Seems like a fair argument to me.
One of the great value propositions of Web3 social media is the ability for users to be rewarded for the content they share she produce (the content that ultimately makes the platform valuable).
The Damus case will undoubtedly set a precedent for whether Web3 apps can use the Lightning Network (or other layer-2s) to send p2p transactions.
Let’s see how this turns out.