From identification to knowledge, Zion’s CEO explains how they envision the app increasing going ahead.
The latest introduction of the decentralized social media protocol Nostr took the distributed expertise world by storm. Even Block CEO Jack Dorsey has espoused his fondness for the protocol, encouraging its utilization, funding improvement and utilizing it himself exceedingly usually. Within the meantime, Zion, a decentralized social media app, has watched as Nostr grew. I requested Justin Rezvani, CEO and founding father of Zion, about whether or not the 2 are in competitors. However he clarified that Zion and himself sees its advantages, and confirmed that he believes Zion shall be carefully intertwined with Nostr going ahead.
“So far as Nostr goes, Zion is an utility and Nostr is a protocol, so we don’t view it as aggressive, however complimentary,” Rezvani defined. “Zion will doubtless use Nostr sooner or later. What we’re constructing facilities round improvements in messaging, ID and funds. Zion is the primary app for this expertise. What we’ve constructed on decentralized identification (DID) and decentralized internet nodes (DWNs) are complementary to what Nostr is doing and I’m very excited to see how including Nostr will improve the affect of the consumer expertise for creators on Zion. That’s a part of our objective and what guides us, a greater expertise for creators.”
One side of the decentralized content material rolodex that Nostr is lacking is knowledge storage, Rezvani believes, however he says that Zion addresses this effectively: “The concept you’ll submit a video and Nostr relays the world over will simply retailer that content material free of charge is nonsense. You want a dependable knowledge storage mechanism and I imagine the mixture of DID, DWNS and Nostr could possibly be an unbelievable mixture.”
Along with this, is the concept of empowering content material creators in order that they’ll monetize themselves straight. Zion was really one of many first to grab this chance, beating Nostr, which has not too long ago witnessed an explosion in micropayment exercise.
“Zion has had ‘zaps’ in our utility since August of 2021 after we launched and had 120k ‘zaps’ within the first six months of being stay,” Rezvani defined. “In a world the place the price of content material goes to zero, you want one thing to sign probably the most impactful items of content material. If somebody is creating one thing significant that’s resonating with their viewers, it needs to be acknowledged and rewarded.”
There have been cautions raised with reference to Nostr’s key administration and privateness. Whereas the protocol is comparatively small now, these points might current massive challenges afterward. With regard to how Zion will tackle these points, Rezvani mentioned, “We use DIDs anchored to Bitcoin as your identification on Zion; When creating an account we provide you with a 12 phrase seed phrase, we don’t expose a non-public key,” citing a video posted additional down on the beforehand linked Twitter thread.
Taking the crown because the world’s alternative social media platform received’t come simple, nevertheless. Bitcoiners particularly perceive the facility of community results, and Twitter is by far and away the most-used platform on the planet. However that’s not deterring Zion.
“Legacy networks have actual issues that should be solved now, and that’s what we’re executing on on a regular basis by the lens of decentralization. That begins empowering the creator financial system to take possession of their content material, their knowledge and their communities and construct one thing that’s actually their very own,” Rezvani mentioned.
And he received’t be alone. Meta is reportedly starting work by itself decentralized Twitter various, seemingly realizing the advantages that such a platform brings. With Meta’s entrance, fierce competitors, wholesome for the decentralized social media market, is starting to brew.
