Voice Social Media App Goes Live, Dan Larimer Shares Glimpse of New World Order

Occupy the Internet
08.07.2020

Block.one, the company behind EOS project, has finally launched the Voice social network on July 4, the platform’s CEO Salah Zalatimo announced.

As mentioned previously, until August 15 it will be a read-only experience as Voice only allows the already registered early-access users to publish content. Starting on August 15 Voice will allow the already registered users to send invites to their friends.

What Is Voice?

Voice was first announced more than a year ago, in early June 2019 and entered the beta stage in February. Block.one has invested heavily in this project, allocating $150 million to development alone and buying the voice.com domain name for record-breaking $30 million.

The Voice’s main features so far include mandatory verification and content monetization. There will be no bots, anons, or burner accounts. All users will have to verify their identity. And creating content will be rewarded not unlike how it is rewarded on Steemit. Each like will bring content creators some digital cash. Users will also gain tokens just for showing up.

Hurdles

Curiously enough, Voice was initially meant to run on EOS blockchain but in December 2019 it was decided that it will be hosted on a custom-made EOSIO platform instead. The difference between the two may be subtle for a layman, but basically, EOS is a specific blockchain platform while EOSIO is a software that powers it. This move garnered some criticism toward EOS as the community realized that EOS, as admitted by its creators, was not ready to host an ambitious project like Voice due to some objective inadequacies.

Commenting on this issue, Salah Zalatimo, CEO of Voice, said that:”iterating and optimizing a product like Voice is not feasible on a public blockchain due to the inability to rapidly innovate.”

Initially, the launch of Voice was planned for this fall but Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo noted that he had to move the deadline because of the dire need for a new social network that would wrestle back control over people’s social lives from the yoke of big tech corporations.

Is Dan Larimer Finally Satisfied?

Dan Larimer, the tech maven behind EOS, has previously co-founded Steemit, a social network somewhat similar to Voice. Rumors pertaining to Larimer’s dissatisfaction with his firstborn and the desire to “replace” it have circulated among Steemians for years. Reportedly, the new iteration of blockchain social networks is supposed to fix the issues of its predecessor, like unfair distribution among other things.

Today Dan Larmier took to Voice and published his first post on the platform. As usual, his post touched upon the intricacies of democratic process and governance. He criticized the current representative government system in the U.S. and offered his own voting system which sounded more like a social experiment:

“1. Randomly assign people to small groups (~10 people)

2. Each group must select a representative from their members with 8/10 approval.

3. Randomly assign selected representatives to small groups (~10 representatives)

4. Repeat”

Finally, Larimer suggested extrapolating this system to blockchain projects, potentially spoiling a new governance system.

This article is a part of our Occupy the Internet series, where we review the current trends in the nascent decentralized web and cover the burning issues of privacy and censorship.

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