Chingari integrates its native token as a step to advancing Web3 social networking
India’s emerging social networking platform Chingari has recently announced ambitions of revolutionizing the experience of its 100 million-user creator economy by integrating its native digital asset, $GARI, and accompanying crypto wallet through the Solana blockchain.
When translated into Urdu and Hindi, the word ‘Spark’ means ‘chingari’, a branding that appears visibly consistent with its flame icon. The platform’s user interface parallels popular entertainment services like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels, deriving their principal focus on short-timed and infinitely accessible video content.
Launched in 2018, Chingari has grown exponentially in the last few years, having amassed over 35 million monthly active users and becoming the most popular mobile application across India on the Google Play store.
Similar to TikTok, creators on the Chingari platform are revered for their entertainment on an array of topics like belly dancing, lip-synching, fashion hacks, comedic sketches and several others.
Starting April 2021, Chingari had obtained capital from various raises, including a $13 million corporate round held on April 1; a $19 million Series A round led by Galaxy Digital and Republic Crypto on October 8; a $40 million initial coin offering organized on November 4; eventually concluded by a $13.37 million Series A continuation on January 17, 2022.
An executive from Chingari shared that GARI, a Solana Program Library (SPL) asset, would be utilized for connecting and transacting with their counterparties, placing governance votes, and catalyzing platform engagement to increase its user base growth.
The spokesperson has also outlined that the platform’s goal is to empower both creators and viewers on the official App with technological tools assisting them in interacting directly with each other and allowing its users to participate “in the long-term direction of the social economy impacting the GARI Token.”
In addition, the team also revealed its future plans of launching an NFT marketplace wherein creators would be able to mint their videos and “sell it as NFT and earn GARI.”
Following countrywide concerns over the regulatory intentions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) towards digital assets, a proposed infrastructure bill in the Indian Parliament accessed by local news outlet NDTV has indicated that the government are preparing for imposing a regulatory framework for digital assets but not an outright ban.
Additionally, the Indian government has also adopted a firm stance of denouncing the acceptance of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum as instruments of legal tender, but has rather given the nod in pursuing the viability of a government-backed central-bank digital currency (CBDC), or the digital rupee.
The exec from Chingari also shared with the media the mechanisms in which the $GARI asset would serve as a governance token to foster genuine decentralization on the platform, stating that the platform is built on Web3, and Web3 DAO “runs on decisions of the community.”
Accordingly, $Gari holders would be able to stake and earn yield as well as register their votes on proposals of deciding the future direction of the platform.
The GARI token price has been fluctuating a range-bound zone between $0.252 and $0.685 in the past two weeks. After last week’s attainment of trading status on several prominent exchanges like FTX, Kucoin and Huobi, the asset was seeking the establishment of a level of stability around the $0.51 mark while writing this news piece.
The Chingari team has also revealed that it would be airdropping 100 GARI tokens to every Chingari app user who has completed certain tasks pertaining to the airdrop campaign on the condition that the users have completed KYC.
The exec disclosed that this is “one of the biggest airdrop campaigns” that has been organized with approximately 5 Mn tokens that are reserved for the community.
