How did Bywire get the exclusive Yves La Rose story and how do we turn information into news?

Michael O'Sullivan, Bywire CEO. Credit: Bywire News, Canva

Last week I decided I would write a weekly blog about what it is like building a start-up. This is week two of said blog, so forgive my ignorance.

Everything I had planned to write about this week has been delayed, an often repetitive scenario in both the news and start-up life. Therefore, I will be forced to go with something a little different today.

On Thursday, Bywire published our exclusive article on the statement released by the ENF principle, Yves La Rose. I was the lead reporter and second writer on this piece. That means, I got the story, Tom, our writer, wrote the piece, and then I edited it. This is quite typical, sometimes I will rejig the narrative, and usually I will rewrite a few sections to include my interpretation of events, tech/language corrections, or just anything else I feel needs to be added. Often, I will end up removing around 50% of what I add, through refinement and iteration rewriting. This is usually with another editor, or once it has been sent for proofing.

A story like this will typically take a few days from start to finish, however, this story took a little longer. We initially liaised with the ENF communications director Zack, hoping to secure another exclusive Bywire video interview.

During discussions last week with Yves, he kindly agreed to the interview. Hurray! However, it transpired that due to the legal restrictions placed upon him, the interview would not be worth it. This is because once the public announcement was made regarding the ENF’s legal choices, Yves was effectively prohibited from talking publicly about any of the details.

Once I understood this was the case, I suggested we conduct a written interview instead, and offered to provide twenty questions. Yves agreed and we got to work.

A few hours later we sent our official requests for comment to both Yves and Zack, who informed us they would try and answer as many of the questions as possible, and we should have a response by last Friday (the 11th). Unfortunately, on Friday, Zack let us know that, presumably once the lawyers reviewed the questions, an official statement was all they could provide. We accepted, and a few days ago we received the statement.

We also carried out the world’s smallest open-source investigation and managed to figure out that the lawyers representing the ENF are Miller Thomson. This is not a fact to be overlooked. This specific law firm is representing 115k former customers in a class action lawsuit. This means they are experienced in the exact type of litigation that COULD be filed by the ENF against B1, and/or others.

Tom produced the first draft of the article, (24 hours later) and I worked on it on Wednesday evening, preparing it for Thursday’s release. After a sanity check in the morning, I removed another 20% of the total article which was rubbish. Then finally, two hours before going live, one of the editors went over it again with me, and we added the final touches, and cleaned up any typos (of course we still missed one!). I then designed the photo for the article and scheduled it for posting to the Bywire network via our custom CMS for 9pm utc Thursday.

Once the article was pushed live, it was saved to our central server, the content was hashed, and we used that hash as the IPFS block name. We then pushed the hash to the EOS mainnet, which correlated to the IPFS block. Simultaneously, our advanced A.I trust indicator downloaded the content from the IPFS, read it, understood it, made a determination, represented it as a numerical score (from 0-100) and then sent this to our green tick of verification, along with the location on the blockchain of the hash and the content itself. This all happened in less than 1 second.

https://bloks.io/transaction/5756a2ce48e8180522ca2fec153d0875f35a981827f95d702f28d8bcc66e318a

Our A.I., decentralised hosting using EOS and the IPFS (soon a third blockchain), could revolutionise the way in which content is stored, verified, and trusted on the internet.

Each time we publish an article, we charge the publisher 1 Wire. We then reward the publisher AND READER with 0.01 Wire for just reading the article. This might change in the future, but we are still using it now. This all happens automatically via our EOS smart contract.

This is our blockchain writer, bywirewriter:

https://bloks.io/account/bywirewriter

Did I mention we are a news network? Ergo, we have third party publishers (who will eventually make up the vast majority of content on the platform) who are all enjoying the same tools as Bywire, including decentralised hosting, A.I. trust indicators and a network that is censorship resistant. (We think 100% once we deploy the next major update, watch this space.)

Did I mention we have some Beehives?!

And if you just want to read EVERYTHING EOS, then head over to the category of our famous namesake: https://bywire.news/articles/category/everything-eos

NovaCrypto? Sure, we got you: https://bywire.news/u/novacryptoltd

If you are not a free member of Bywire, STOP reading this now, go create an account, read some news and get some Wire rewards (if they are still available). Wire may be crucial on our platform in the future.

I do find it a bit funny. Everyone is waiting/talking about this next “killer app” for EOS. Who will create it? What will it be? Will Dan’s “killer app” cut the mustard and onboard non blockchain users by the thousands? Well, look over here! Bywire has just gone and done it already. Now, help us make this big, because my Mum uses Bywire every day and she has no idea about blockchains and crypto. How many other projects on EOS or even on the blockchain can pass the mum/grandad test? Not many…

Did you also know that we have apps? Bywire is available on native iOS and Android mobile apps, both are still in beta, but you can download and test them if you like. They are, you know, connected to the EOS main net, IPFS, A.I. etc. Within weeks, they will be connected to Apple and Google Pay when we officially launch! So, stop using Medium, and start bloody (English accent required here) using Bywire!

Until next week!