After Crypto Twitter's acquisition, what will it look like? Here are insights from executives in the blockchain industry.

Key points: 

• Binance invested $500 million in the acquisition, and CZ cited the platform’s support for free speech and monetization potential as key reasons why he and the exchange decided to get involved.
• Other stakeholders, such as Hayden Adams, co-founder of decentralized exchange Uniswap, and Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, appear to be more concerned about the platform’s centralized structure. 
• Vitalik Buterin worries that a flat subscription fee could undermine the platform’s anti-spam capabilities for Twitter Blue.
• Hayden Adams, Bankman-Fried and Buterin advocated for more decentralized yet controlled features to be brought onto the platform. 

Nearly seven months after Tesla CEO Elon Musk made his first bid to buy social media giant Twitter, the $44 billion deal has finally closed despite a bitter tug-of-war between the two companies. Similar to the initial conditions. As a platform for news and announcements, marketing and communication between developers and users of the blockchain space, crypto enthusiasts have begun to speculate on Twitter's future as it rests in the hands of billionaire tech entrepreneurs.

At the annual Web Summit in Lisbon this week, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said that the first feature he would like to see Twitter implement is accepting crypto payments. Binance invested $500 million in the acquisition, and CZ cited the platform’s support for free speech and monetization potential as key reasons why he and the exchange decided to get involved.

“The first step is to just accept crypto. For the $8 verification to be paid in fiat, one has to integrate 200-plus payment processors because Twitter has users all around the world. But if you use crypto, you just add it, and then you’re done.”

CZ also said, "Expecting to use someone else's tools for free is not... a free market. Think of all the freemium social/chat products." Responses to discussions on expressing opinions.

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Other stakeholders, such as Hayden Adams, co-founder of decentralized exchange Uniswap, and Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, appear to be more concerned about the platform’s centralized structure. "Twitter spam is heavy because it's centralized for organizations, and it's an unnecessary warning. They can just open up the API, let developers build on top of that, and others will solve the problem for them," Adams said . Bankman-Fried also weighed in, adding:

“If only there were some decentralized API-like layer that multiple companies could interface with permissionlessly that could transmit information between people in real-time globally.”

On Nov. 3, Bankman-Fried announced that FTX had considered (but ultimately declined) to join the Twitter deal because "it doesn't appear that our strengths are what Elon's vision for Twitter requires." In a previous post, the FTX boss "Twitter needed an overhaul of leadership, so Elon did," said the FTX team, adding that the FTX team sometimes prefers to remain an advisor to the company or vision rather than participate in it themselves.

Joining the discussion was ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who worries that a flat subscription fee could undermine the platform’s anti-spam capabilities for Twitter Blue. "Paying $8 a month and naming yourself anything that would compromise the anti-fraud effect of blue checks. But when there is more actual verification, the results are very different," he wrote. Buterin then explained that prior to the acquisition, Twitter Blue's verification system was far more exclusive than the $20-a-month subscription service, "ideally, verification would be billed at cost and billed separately from other premium services."

But like both Hayden Adams and Bankman-Fried, Buterin advocated for more decentralized yet controlled features to be brought onto the platform. “Ideal solution: social network-based localized trust instead of global scores,” he wrote, adding that mechanisms such as zero-knowledge identity checks and tabulating account quality scores could potentially help reduce anonymous scams in such a setup. Changes to Twitter Blue are currently in progress after Musk closed the acquisition and assumed sole directorial control of the company.