Nope, this is not a comic book title, it’s a story about a new decentralized social network and its mysterious founder. Well, maybe not that mysterious. Let’s get to it.
Superhero unmasked!
We wrote back in April about a company called BitClout which lets you buy and trade coins of your favorite Twitter celebrities based upon their reputation and is like a decentralized version of Twitter. You can check that article out here.
The founder of BitClout was only known by his pseudonym ‘Diamondhands’ although it was an open secret as to who he actually was.
Well, now with the launch of his new blockchain called DeSo (short for Decentralized Social), Diamondhands officially revealed his identity as Nader Al-Naji, a 29-year old Princeton grad and former Googler. Al-Naji also founded the stablecoin startup Basis which raised $133M but ended up returning most of the money because regulations stymied the biz, per an article in The Block.
$200M financing
Those same investors are now back with a vengeance and have Now almost all of those backed Al-Naji again but with $200M this time. The list of backers is a veritable who’s who of the venture community: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Sequoia, Social Capital, TQ Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, and Arrington Capital. Other investors include Blockchange Ventures, Distributed Global, Blockchain.com Ventures, Hack Ventures, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
Why did the investors come back after the failed experiment with Basis?
- "I think for most of them, it wasn't just about making money, but about creating a better platform for public discourse than what we have today," said Al-Naji.
Centralized social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, control the public conversation and make money off of content that they don't even create, per Al-Naji. He says the DeSo blockchain will make social media accessible and monetizable by anyone.
The DeSo blockchain
DeSo is a blockchain geared towards social apps and supports features like creating profiles, posts and as well as a social token for tipping and NFTs. The native cryptocurrency of the blockchain is DESO which is required to use the platform.
The DESO token was previously named CLOUT and was used on BitClout and has been renamed to DESO with the launch of the DeSo blockchain.
- "We created BitClout as an early prototype to allow us to test and iterate on the DeSo blockchain before launching it publicly," Al-Naji said.
$200M came from DESO coin. The investors deposited bitcoin into a treasury wallet to receive DESO with over 44,000 users purchasing DESO between November and July 11. At that time, the sale was closed and the supply of DESO became fixed forever at 10.8 million units, per Al-Naji.
DESO has launched on crypto exchanges Blockchain.com and AscendEX.
There are already over 100 apps that have been built or are being built on the DeSo blockchain and include BitClout, NFT marketplace Polygram.cc and exchange marketplace BitCloutPulse.
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