I’ve been a member of Civitai for a year and over the past 6 months I’ve seen a huge amount of changes. Some of these changes have been great for the platform, some of them I think could be implemented better.
The Buzz system is important for the platform because Buzz tokens are required for generating images, I’ve been around long enough to remember when image generation was free, that was great but came with problems such as overloading the server which made image generation unstable. Charging Buzz for generating certainly improved the experience overall because there were less people/bots overloading the generation servers.
The most recent major change is the implementation of the blue Buzz as the main reward token for participation in the platform such as engaging with posts and claiming in the generator. Previously there has only been one buzz token. Blue Buzz tokens have been out for a while, claiming in the generator has claimed Blue Buzz for a while now. Now they have changed it so that Blue Buzz is the main reward token, which rewards you for your own interactions of which has it’s advantages/disadvantages.
What Are the Differences Between Blue and Yellow Buzz
I’m sure that there are new creators on the platform that may not know the difference between the Blue and Yellow Buzz tokens, so I’m going to start here.
Blue Buzz: This is the main token that Civitai. You acquire Blue Buzz by interacting with the platform such as claiming in the generator, liking posts, following creators and posting images. This buzz can only be used in the image generator, which means you cannot use it to tip other creators
You can also earn Blue Buzz by viewing ads and you receive 100 Blue Buzz when you create a new account.
Yellow Buzz: This is the main token. Yellow Buzz can be spent in more ways than blue. You can spend Yellow Buzz in the image generator, but it also can be used to tip other creators, train LoRAs, ect. You get Yellow Buzz by buying memberships and buy purchasing the token directly. There are also a few ways that you can earn Yellow Buzz for free, such as someone reacting to your posted images, reporting images that violate the TOS ect.
Yellow Buzz will soon have a way to cash out for real money (still under development), Blue Buzz won’t be able to be cashed out. This will allow creators to make real money from tips or to choose to use those Buzz Tokens to train LoRAs or to generate images.
Yellow Buzz used to be the only type of buzz and you could earn the same ways that you earn Blue Buzz now. This is the major change.
The Reasons Behind these Changes
The main reason the devs at Civitai are implementing these changes is the excessive bots on the sites that are being used to farm buzz. The theory is that bots are creating multiple accounts so that entities use the reward system to farm buzz. I would think that a lot of these buzz tokens are being dumped into a main account so they can be used by one person (that’s my own personal theory). So creating an additional free token that has restricted abilities prevents farming buzz and transferring buzz into a main account.
This also prevents a user from manually using multiple accounts to claim rewards to dump it into a main account (much like the other farming method mentioned, but on a smaller scale).
I fully support the effort to keep automated bots off the system to reduce farming and the general load on the servers, however I think there are some flaws in this approach. One flaw is that the bots are probably still on the system spamming the free reward system, unless the operators shut them down. This still puts a drag on the Civitai servers, there are better anti-bot measures available that are far more effective against bots.
This change doesn’t effect members from having multiple account and manually claiming the free tokens for image generation, they just can’t transfer rewards to different accounts. However I don’t think that Civitai is targeting that type of user, since it’s not against the TOS and manual users only can effectively operate a few accounts for this purpose. Civitai is is targeting bot driven farming.
Also creating a separate token for rewards makes their creator monetization plans more sustainable. Giving out free yellow buzz as general rewards inflates the monetization token which would drain the cash reserves of Civitai, since they would be giving out the tokens for free with no cash coming in. The Blue Buzz token is an effective solution for this problem.
My Final Thoughts
I can see both positives and negatives to these changes and I can understand why Civitai is implementing these changes.
The positives being that it could potentially reduce bot traffic on the site and it helps create a sustainable monetization system. This can be a benefit to all users of Civitai.
One of the negatives is the fact that I don’t think it will actually keep bots off the system, it makes the bots much less useful and doesn’t make them profitable, but it doesn’t prevent them from operating on the site.
The other negative that I can see is that you cannot use your rewards to tip other creators. I know I did this with my earned reward buzz when I had an excessive surplus. I don’t view this as a huge deal as I can just buy buzz to tip with, but some people may not want to do that. However I do see why they prevent tipping blue buzz that you get for free.
The AI Studio