Everything You Should Know About DeSo and its Impact on Social Media

Chibuzor H. Mordi
5 min readApr 19, 2022

A decentralized social network is the talk of the town following the poll of Elon Musk asking if Twitter should be open source. The Decentralized Social Network (DeSo) blockchain project allows users to host decentralized social media platforms and applications.

The DeSo blockchain has its native asset, $DESO, which is fundamental to the security and operations across the DeSo ecosystem. Also, the project offers innovative ways by which content creators generate income from their content and actively engage with their audience. There isn’t a big brother watching over what you see on social media and users of the decentralized social blockchain have full autonomy over their data. This article talks more about the DeSo blockchain.

What is DeSo?

Decentralized Social Network was launched in 2021 by the DeSo Foundation as the next-generation blockchain project. In 2009, Bitcoin was created on the heels of the economic meltdown of 2008 to facilitate an electronic peer-to-peer cash system. Then, in 2015, Vitalik Buterin launched Ethereum, which allowed people to build permanent decentralized applications with which various users can interact.

Since then, many more smart contract-enabled blockchains have begun to come on the scene like Cardano, Tether, Binance Coin, etc. Some prioritize speed of transaction and cost-efficiency, while others aim for scalability, security, and stability. But DeSo stands unique among them.

The DeSo blockchain is the first to operate as a decentralized social blockchain. To facilitate a smooth user experience with the native social media platforms, DeSo introduced a blockchain architecture that rivals no other. Like most other currencies, DeSo uses a token-based system on the Ethereum blockchain.

This blockchain allows users to exchange DESO tokens and use them as payment for micro-services within the network. It also serves as a social media gateway by helping people to post content, tag other users, comment, and like others’ posts. Decentralized Social, DeSo will enable fairer content distribution models and create new ways for hundreds of millions of social media users to interact.

It will also serve as the foundation for a decentralized social media ecosystem, much like Bitcoin’s decentralization has revolutionized traditional finance.

How Does the Decentralized Social Network Work?

These social networks operate on independently run servers and promote transparency and autonomy for users. There have been decentralized social platforms on the scene. Some of them are SteemIt, Mastodon, Steepshot, and Musing. There has not been a blockchain to scale decentralized social networks. The DeSo blockchain is the first blockchain that has been custom-built for this purpose.

The amount of data generated by social applications poses a very big problem to the existing blockchain protocols. By building the first-ever decentralized social platform, DeSo had the potential to scale to billions of users. This is revolutionary as there is now a blockchain to power Web 3.0 decentralized social networks.

Advantages of DeSo for Content Creators

Unlike the traditional centralized social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest, content creators never receive fair compensation for their work. The platform uses this content to generate laser targeted ads for advertisers and earn a lot of money. This is about to change with DeSo. The Decentralized Social network has come up with a lot of ways for content creators to earn income from the content they generate.

This includes using “diamonds’’, a new form of social tipping that the platform Bitclout now incorporates. Users can tip creators using diamonds resulting in a donation from $0.01 to $500. This initiative means that some DeSo creators can earn thousands of dollars in tips from diamonds in a single day with a modest following.

There are other ways content creators on the DeSo blockchain can earn an income. This includes using “creator coins” and non-fungible social tokens (NFTs).

Creator Coins.

Creator coins are a new type of asset class that is tied to the reputation of an individual rather than to a company or commodity. This is the inherent value of a person’s online brand loaded on the Bitclout blockchain. Creator coins are the first tool in the social media space where people have a chance to trade clout as an asset. This means that you can bet on the popularity of your favorite influencers by buying their coin.

You own a ‘share’ of that person’s worth when this is done. This works just like the Stock Market, where your influencers are the companies that are publicly listed on the market, and the coins are like shares of that company. Like how the Stock Market works, the value of a person’s creator coin is directly proportional to that person’s reputation and standing in society.

If Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder of Hubspot, does something revolutionary for the brand, this means that his coin will increase in value, and inherently, the coin price will go up. In contrast, if he is caught doing something negative, his coin value will go down and inherently his coin price should do the same. This means that people who believe in someone’s potential can buy their coin and succeed with them financially when that person realizes their potential.

It also allows traders to make money buying and selling the ups and downs of a person’s coin. Creator coins fall under the “social tokens” asset class. This means that the value of the token is a representation of the reputation or social clout of an individual, brand, or business. As such, this could present a great opportunity to invest in someone early on you believe has great potential. Henceforth, creator coins indicate a community’s value of a brand, not just an individual.

Conclusion.

The decentralized social blockchain project offers a relatively new alternative to the traditional, centralized, and monopolized social media companies. DeSo appears to be a more profitable and fair option for creators to earn more from their content with a custom token. This is a whole new landscape for creator income and fan engagement.

For a blockchain project that is less than a year old, DeSo is pioneering decentralization in social media platforms in an unexpectedly impressive way for people.

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Chibuzor H. Mordi

Chibuzor is a business consultant with expertise in operations management, and interest in IT and blockchain. Driving success through strategic insights.