Mithril (MITH) Review – A Decentralized Social Media Platform on Ethereum

Mithril believes strongly that anyone who creates valuable content to a network should be able to benefit monetarily from their work. It seeks to deliver this concept through the use of blockchain technology, enabling decentralized data storage in an efficient, trustless and immutable manner. It is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain and one of its key features is social mining, whose goal is to encourage users to share and create valuate content on the platform.

The Idea and the Team Behind Mithril

The idea behind Mithril is that anyone creating valuable content should be able to monetize their content. Whether it’s video blogs, audio/podcasting, live-stream or more, those creating value on the internet do not have this opportunity using the traditional economic model. You can think of Mithril as Instagram on the blockchain.

In order to leverage blockchain technology for this purpose, it has launched its token MITH on Lit, an innovative social media platform. For the long term, Mithril seeks to integrate MITH into all major social networks. In addition, it plans to have MITH accepted as payment on partners apps and services as a form of social currency to pay for services on these platforms.

The Mithril team is Taiwanese, with deep experience in cryptocurrency, the blockchain and consumer-based product development aimed at millions of users. It is composed of Jeffrey Huang, the founder, who previously headed the development of 17 Media, which became the #1 live-streaming app in developed Asia. Wilson Huang is the team’s Cryptocurrency Researcher, a software engineer with experience in cryptocurrency, blockchain and distributed consensus algorithms. Previously, he co-founded Hackoin, a consulting service for cryptocurrency, mining, and blockchain industries. The product manager, Roy Lin, has led products for various companies which resulted in millions of users. Their senior developer, Li-Chun Yang, was an early cryptocurrency miner who helped build over 1,000 ethereum mining rigs.

The name Cortex was chosen for the company because it is the biological name for the outermost layer of an organ, which is closely studied in AI, which is closely related to the field of neuroscience.

Mithril Partnerships

Mithril has a number of strategic partnerships, including one with Arsenic, a community of models, artists and creators with a reach of over 150 million worldwide. The community has one of the highest celebrity following of any media company as a result of its dedication to freedom of expression and open-mindedness. As a result of their partnership, Arsenic plans to publish content on the Lit platform.

The team has advisers from Pantera Capital, Sora Ventures, QTUM Foundation, AMIS, and Blockstate.

Mithril’s first retailer to accept MITH on launch was Inst.Recycle, an Asian retailer.

MITH Token Price History

Mithril launched in March 2018 as a utility token. At the end of April, it rose to $1.42 after it announced its listing on Bitfinex and Ethfinex in addition to HitBTC and LBank. It fell slightly and rose again back to $1.30 in May after Lit launched in the app store. In July, Mithril was listed on FCoin.

The Mithril Technology

Mithril’s platform has a number of key components:

The Lit Social Network

First, since MITH has fully integrated with the Lit social media platform, it will play a key role in growing Mithril’s network and value by:

• Driving network adoption
• Developing a system of rewards and benefits for partners and users
• Enabling mobile wallet adoption so users can spend MITH at retailers

The main feature provided by Lit is its Stories platform which integrates into the Mithril ecosystem. Users share their stories in return for MITH tokens, which directly impact their influence on the network. Stories are any content a user shares with friends, family or the general public, like a photo, slideshows, videos, posts etc.

This feature is quite similar to Instagram and Snapchat’s story model, of which approximately one-third are directly associated with business accounts, furthering the idea that Mithril can leverage this tool for businesses for their digital marketing campaigns.

In addition, Lit’s video feature will connect with users’ cameras in order to post in the
Stories or Chat Room features.

Social Mining

Social mining is a key concept in the Mithril ecosystem. It is based on the idea that users who produce valuable, user-generated content earn MITH, the ERC-2-based token, via social mining. Mining rewards are directly related to a user’s influence and success on the network (i.e. the more value they are able to create, the more influence they gain). All transactions related to social mining will be secured and verified via Ethereum smart contracts.

Mithril Vault

Users that receive MITH for contributing valuable content to the network can store it, or stake it, in the Mithril Vault.  The more you stake, they higher your staking level will be, which will influence your rate of social mining. Your staking amount will stay for 30 days, after which they expire and are released to your available balance. Users can also use the Mithril Vault to exchange MITH for bitcoin and ether. The Mithril Vault includes a tool that estimates the value a user contributes to the network. Mithril Vault was recently released to the public.

Mithril Merchant Network

To encourage mass adoption of MITH, Mithril is enrolling brick-and-mortar retailers in its merchant network. The first retailer to accept MITH at launch was Inst.recycle, Taiwan’s largest largest celebrity vintage and used clothing retailer.

The MITH Token

As a utility token, MITH can be used for the purchase of services related to dating apps, premium content channels, and live-stream applications. At the time of its launch, retailers in Taiwan and Hong Kong already started accepting MITH as a payment system.

Mithril’s token distribution was as follows:

MITH tokens can be earned through social mining across social network such as Lit, which integrated with Mithril at its launch.

In the next few years, 350 million MITH will be distributed to users through social mining, halved annually over the course of a number of years at a rate predetermined by the company. After this mining period, there will no longer be MITHs available for mining.

The idea behind this is to encourage the early adoption of MITH while at the same time rewarding users for contributing valuable content.

How to Purchase MITH

The main exchange for purchasing MITH is on OKEx, which currently has the largest exchange of the currency. MITH can be traded on OKEx for BTC, USDT and ETH.  At the moment the current daily volume of MITH traded on OKEx is over $50 million.

MITH is also available on the following exchanges:

• BitForex (Trade MITH with USDT on BitForex)
• LBank (Trade MITH with ETH on LBank)
• io (Trade MITH with USDT on Gate.io)
• HitBTC (Trade MITH with BTC on HitBTC)
• Bitfinex (Trade MITH with USDT on Bitfinex)

How to Store MITH

MITH can be stored in any wallet that supports ERC-20 tokens such as Coinomi, MetaMask and MyEtherWallet.

For maximum security, however, you should store your MITH on hardware wallets such as Ledger Nano S.

Mithril plans to develop its own wallet later in 2018.

Roadmap and Future Plans

Mithril has made tremendous progress in a short amount of time. In 2017, Mithril was founded and the company started developing Lit. Lit was released in Q2 of 2018.

In July the company announced the launch of its Global Mithril Forge Fund, whose purpose is to accelerate the growth of Mithril and its ecosystem. It is targeting the social, entertainment and payment sectors.

By the end of the year, it plans to release its own MITH wallet in Q4 of 2018. Mithril will release its own blockchain and the Mithril Vault in Q2 of 2019.