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 will likely be intently intertwined with Nostr going ahead.
“So far as Nostr goes, Zion is an software and Nostr is a protocol, so we don’t view it as aggressive, however complimentary,” Rezvani defined. “Zion will possible 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 id (DID) and decentralized net nodes (DWNs) are complementary to what Nostr is doing and I’m very excited to see how including Nostr will improve the influence of the consumer expertise for creators on Zion. That’s a part of our purpose and what guides us, a greater expertise for creators.”
One side of the decentralized content material rolodex that Nostr is lacking is information storage, Rezvani believes, however he says that Zion addresses this effectively: “The concept you’ll put up a video and Nostr relays the world over will simply retailer that content material at no cost is nonsense. You want a dependable information storage mechanism and I imagine the mixture of DID, DWNS and Nostr might be an unimaginable mixture.”
Along with this, is the thought of empowering content material creators in order that they will monetize themselves instantly. Zion was truly 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 software since August of 2021 once 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 essentially the most impactful items of content material. If somebody is creating one thing significant that’s resonating with their viewers, it must be acknowledged and rewarded.”
There have been cautions raised with regard to Nostr’s key administration and privateness. Whereas the protocol is comparatively small now, these points may current massive challenges in a while. With regard to how Zion will deal with these points, Rezvani stated, “We use DIDs anchored to Bitcoin as your id 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 selection social media platform received’t come straightforward, nevertheless. Bitcoiners particularly perceive the facility of community results, and Twitter is by far and away the most-used platform on this 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 via the lens of decentralization. That begins empowering the creator economic system to take possession of their content material, their information and their communities and construct one thing that’s actually their very own,” Rezvani stated.
And he received’t be alone. Meta is reportedly starting work by itself decentralized Twitter different, 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.
