What is Tribute to Talk?

Tribute to Talk is a feature that blockchain-enabled messaging platform Status created in order to prevent malicious activity and spam from cluttering its network. Status users can set a Tribute-to-Talk requirement, which is the minimum amount of Status Network Token (SNT) a non-whitelisted user needs to stake in order to send them a message. If the message recipient responds to the sender's message, the sender's staked SNT is sent to the recipient. If the sender's message is ignored or rejected, the sender's staked SNT is returned to them, and they will be unable to attempt to contact the recipient for a period of time.