The launch of Chingari’s cryptocurrency token GARI was among the most exciting announcements for Indian blockchain fans. Heavily promoted by Bollywood actor Salman Khan, the token promised to revolutionize the social media space by enabling a “creator economy” where users of the popular app would be rewarded for creating and sharing content.
Given Chingari’s popularity in India – where it’s the most downloaded social media app on Google Play – GARI not surprisingly generated massive enthusiasm among Indian crypto fans, many of whom were eagerly anticipating the opportunity to earn rewards simply by doing something they love. Excitement reached fever pitch as Chingari worked towards integrating GARI rewards into its app, with the token’s price reaching an all-time high of $0.958 in February when many others had already started to decline.
Unfortunately, like every other token, GARI wasn’t immune to the emerging crypto winter that wreaked havoc on the rest of the market, and its price has been on a downward trend ever since hitting that peak.
Earlier this month, GARI experienced how incredibly volatile the crypto markets can be when the token’s value fell by 85% in just a few hours. At the time, rumours emerged that the company’s platform had somehow been hacked. However, Chingari categorically denied these reports, showing how the price crash was likely linked to a single whale investor dumping a large number of tokens on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Certainly, Chingari is not alone in experiencing a wild price drop in recent weeks, with negative market sentiment causing dozens of tokens to endure similar events over the last month.
Nonetheless, Chingari’s management team is well aware of the exceptional volatility of the crypto market. As a result, it has continued to press forward with its plans to bring new utility to the social media space with its blockchain technology.
Chingari has developed something of a reputation for disruption. The app emerged from nowhere to become one of India’s most popular social media services, benefiting from a decision by that country’s government to ban TikTok. As a similar short video-sharing app, Chingari found a large audience of users who’d lost access to their favourite social media platform and quickly found themselves a new home.
With millions of users under its belt, Chingari further spiced things up when it announced it would share 30% of its revenues with the creators, doing so at a time when influencers on other platforms had few ways of making money for their efforts beyond sponsorship deals.
The GARI network is designed to accelerate this nascent “create-to-earn” economy by giving users a way to earn rewards for creating, sharing and consuming content on the app. However, GARI is more than just a reward mechanism, serving as a currency for Chingari users who want to sell NFTs and vote on governance issues.
The GARI Mining program was finally launched last month, and Chingari quickly reached a new milestone of 800,000 unique active GARI wallets in the days that followed.
Meanwhile, Chingari users have been raking in the rewards, with the top GARI Mining participants earning thousands of tokens simply by doing what they always do – interacting with the Chingari app.
Chingari’s creator economy has gotten off to a good start and is gaining traction among the app’s user base even as crypto markets are spooked. Moreover, there’s every reason to think the concept of “create-to-earn” will accelerate. To date, Chingari has amassed more than 40 million daily active users – not just in India but also in countries like the USA, UAE, Indonesia and Turkey.
There’s a widespread belief that the ongoing crypto winter will weed out many projects that lack a strong enough use case. Though such events cause panic among investors, it seems unlikely GARI is headed that way. After all, Chingari is expanding its reach and remains fully committed to revolutionizing the creator economy. GARI might have gotten off to a bumpy start, but there’s no doubt it’s a token with strong fundamentals, genuine utility and a massive potential audience within its reach.
This post was last modified on Jul 17, 2022, 09:23 BST 09:23