We have a token!

We've finally released our BuddyUP token and we're ready to get you all set up to start earning a stake in BuddyUP, week after week! We're going to be rewarding the tokens every Wednesday so we can minimize the number of fees we pay for each transaction. To earn tokens, you need to be on our BitShares whitelist. This is so that we can reduce the amount of outsiders who can buy into BuddyUP without being involved in our community.

We want to protect our value and the only way we can do this is by managing a list of members who can hold our token.

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_{source - photo by jason blackeye}

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Every week, on Wednesday, we'll reward the members who have earned their tokens from the previous week and then we will update the whitelist with any new participants, so they can start earning.
This may be an inconvenience for some of you, but it is imperative for us to protect the value of our community and this is how we are going to achieve that.

BitShares account?

Our token is on the BitShares blockchain, so you will need to head over and create yourself a username to start earning BUDDYUP. I have copied the tutorial below from a previous post on the BuddyUP account, you can use this to get your BTS account set up and ready to go.

• Head over to https://wallet.bitshares.org/?r=calum-am (Full disclosure: this is my referral link for BitShares. Here is the alternative: http://www.bitshares.org)

• Navigate to the Create Account page. You may need to click the drop-down menu in the top right corner and click 'Create Account'.

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• Decide on your username and write down the hard copy of your generated password.

_{I recommend writing this down and storing it in a safe place. If you have a USB/SD, create a text file and store the password in there. This way you can attach the storage device every time you need to enter your password and you can eject the device after you've copied the password. This is a safer alternative to storing a text file on your desktop.}

• Follow the instructions to finish the process and then verify your account through your email. Verification will be required so you can start receiving the BUDDYUP token.

• Put your BitShares username at the end of your POST POOL entries and start earning BUDDYUP. Messages without your username will be ignored for token rewards.

You can find your BUDDYUP tokens in the dashboard and you can navigate to the market to buy tokens, by clicking on the trade option towards the end of the row. In this screen, you'll be able to invest in BUDDYUP directly without having to earn tokens through the community.

All of these transfer will need to be approved by myself or others on the whitelist. This is to prevent disingenuous people from buying a substantial stake in BuddyUP without being actively involved in our community.

How do I get on the whitelist?

Now that you've set up your BitShares account and completed the first step, you are ready to apply for our whitelist.

We have a channel inside BuddyUP called #buddyup-whitelist. Once you have gained access to the server, this channel will open up and you can drop in your BitShares username for us to add to the list. Every Wednesday, we will notify everybody in the channel that we'll be adding the names within 1 hour. This will be a weekly reminder to help any last minute members get straight onto the list and ready to earn their BuddyUP tokens.

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_{snippet from our bitshares whitelist}

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Be sure that you make it over to the channel and share your username so you can get onboard as quickly as possible. The faster you are on the whitelist, the faster you can earn yourself some tokens!

Account made, you're on the whitelist, it's Thursday... how do I earn tokens?

Earning BuddyUP tokens is all about engagement and interaction with others and you can do this in a multiple of ways on our server. I will list the different amounts of tokens that you can earn from partaking in the features on BuddyUP below:

• post-spot : 0.2 BUDDYUP per share - (3 shares daily)

• post-link : 0.3 - 0.5 BUDDYUP per share (1 share daily)

• post-drop : 0.5 - 1 BUDDYUP per share (1 share daily)

• the-hook : 0.5 BUDDYUP (Your posts are selected for the-hook)

• dropintheocean attendee : 0.5 BUDDYUP (Every writer will receive this reward)

The only guidelines are the specifics set in the pinned messages. As well as following the basic rules for each feature, you will also need to leave a message at the end of your messages in post-spot, post-link and post-drop stating:

BTS username: 'enter username here'

We know we have you on the whitelist, this is just so that our management can easily scan through and see who understands the guidelines. This reduces headaches, back and forthing through direct messages and additional work. When we have checked your message we will leave the reaction to notify you of your incoming tokens.

Shout outs to the people who make this all possible

We hit a hurdle yesterday when setting up the whitelist and we had to pull together some funds for the lifetime membership of the BuddyUP issuer account on BitShares. This was around 65SBD at the time of purchase but after rolling out the requests for donation to our community, the 70SBD ask soon turned into a 100SBD donations from a mixture of all our members.

We allocated 10,000 BUDDYUP tokens to facilitate the donations and all the members who have invested, now have their stake in BuddyUP. The table below highlights the standings:

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The tokens are all held now by the donators and they will also be able to start earning tokens for next Wednesday. I want to express my gratitude for you all and how fast you rallied together to make this possible so quickly. We raised the 70SBD within 3 hours and the other 30 came shortly afterward in quick concession. It gave me great joy to see where we all are as a community and it instilled a lot of promise for moving forward.

I'm glad that you all understand the importance of maintaining our tokens value within the community.

Are you ready?

We're very excited to start getting these tokens rewarded to our engaging members and I'm sure you are eager to get going. Make sure you drop by to the community account in the next few days so you can read about our next steps for the token. This will include the publishing of our whitepaper, a post documenting how we will be selling our token and further information about the plans for our SMT.

If you haven't already, stop by to this post to familiarise yourself with the end goal of BuddyUP so you understand why we are creating and rewarding our tokens. It's fairly interesting...

Are you part of the BuddyUP community yet? If not you can find our discord link here in our SafeLink and you can start realising why we keep saying...

We all grow together

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This has been @calumam, thanks for reading.

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All headers are from unsplash.com

_{top image: source - photo by kevin}