Block.one Announces Voice, a Social Media Platform on EOS Blockchain

News and Analysis
02.06.2019

EOS parent company Block.one has announced a blockchain-based social media platform dubbed Voice. According to the developers, designed with users of the platform in mind, Voice is “a more transparent social media platform for the world, where the value of good content gets circulated right back into sustaining the community, not corporate bottom lines.”

Voice is being built on the EOS public blockchain, which runs on the EOSIO protocol, and this reportedly means that all interactions on the platform will be public, while transparency will be a core part of the experience.

“The truth is, current social media platforms are designed to use their users,” said Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.one, who opened the company’s June 1 event at the DC Armory in Washington, D.C. with the announcement of Voice.

“Just look at the business model. Our content. Our data. Our attention. These are all incredibly valuable things. But right now, it’s the platform, not the user, that reaps the reward. By design, they run by auctioning our information to advertisers, pocketing the profit, and flooding our feeds with hidden agendas dictated by the highest bidder. Voice changes that.”

Signups for Voice beta access are now open at Voice.com.

Earlier attempts

As per a CoinDesk report, social-media-oriented crypto projects up to this point have largely resembled Tumblr or Medium, with the occasional Twitter imitation. While the argument for incentivizing contributions is compelling, the model has had a hard time catching on.

For example, in 2016, Tsu, a social network that promised to share its earnings with its users, shut down. It claimed to have 5.2 million users when the service ended. A frequent complaint about Tsu was that its promise of remuneration generated spammy behavior.

Steemit, meanwhile, is the Medium-like social network built on top of the Steem blockchain. According to Dapp.com, it was the only major dapp blockchain where social media was the dominant use case, with 93 percent of users touching its social dapps (of which, Steemit dominates). A recent estimate from May put the active users in that month at 75,644.

Other crypto social networks have come along since, such as Coil (which uses XRP) and Cent (which uses ETH).

Dapp.com estimated that Steem had over 386,000 active users for the year, while it gave EOS slightly over 171,000 active users in 2018, with 67 percent using its betting products.

It’s worth noting that EOS only had six months in which to build up a user base. After a yearlong ICO that generated more than $4 billion for Block.one, EOS officially launched on June 15, 2018.

Upgrades and Integrations

Block.one also announced substantial upgrades coming to the EOSIO protocol, Version 2. With its first iteration released a year ago, EOSIO 2 will introduce EOS-VM, an update to the software that allows the processing of smart contracts 12 times faster than EOSIO 1.0. EOS-VM is a WebAssembly Engine designed specifically for blockchain smart contracts.

With its Version 2 release, EOSIO is also now the first blockchain protocol to adopt WebAuthn authentication standards to bring greater security and usability to applications built on the EOSIO platform.

Aiming at such critical aspects as security, privacy and ease-of-use, Block.one is implementing support for hardware security keys, such as the YubiKey from Yubico, built into EOSIO Version 2.

Additionally, Block.one has jointly announced a collaboration with Coinbase to educate its user base on the EOSIO software through their Coinbase Earn program. This “earn as you learn” online course will educate users on the benefits and functionality of EOSIO.

Earlier this week, EOS partnered with Tether to put Tether’s USD-pegged stablecoin USDT on the EOS blockchain. The delegated proof-of-stake design for Tether EOS reportedly makes it a good fit for peer-to-peer microtransactions.

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