From identity to data, Zion’s CEO explains how they envision the app expanding in the future.
The recent introduction of the decentralized social networking protocol Nostr revolutionized the world of distributed technology. Even Block CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed his fondness for the protocol, encouraging the use of it, funding development, and using it himself quite often. Meanwhile, Zion, a decentralized social media app, has seen Nostr grow. I asked Justin Rezvani, CEO and founder of Zion, if the two are in competition. But he clarified that Zion and himself see its benefits, and confirmed that he believes Zion will be closely intertwined with Nostr in the future.
“As far as Nostr is concerned, Zion is an application and Nostr is a protocol, so we don’t see it as competitive, but complementary,” Rezvani explained. “Zion will probably use Nostr in the future. What we’re building is focused on innovations in messaging, identification, and payments. Zion is the first application for this technology. What we have built on decentralized identity (DID) and decentralized web nodes (DWN) are complementary to what Nostr is doing and I am very excited to see how adding Nostr will increase the impact of the user experience for creators on Zion. That is part of our goal and what guides us, a better experience for creators.
Rezvani believes that one aspect of the decentralized content rolodex that Nostr lacks is data storage, but says that Zion tackles it well: nonsense. You need a reliable data storage mechanism and I think the combination of DID, DWNS and Nostr could be an amazing combination.”
Added to this is the idea of empowering content creators so that they can directly monetize themselves. Zion was actually one of the first to take advantage of this opportunity, besting Nostr, who has recently witnessed an explosion in the micropayment activity.
“Zion has zapped our app since August 2021 when we launched and had 120k zaps in the first six months of being live,” Rezvani explained. “In a world where the cost of content goes to zero, you need something to flag the most impactful pieces of content. If someone is creating something meaningful that is resonating with their audience, they should be recognized and rewarded.”
Has been precautions lifted regarding the key management and privacy of Nostr. While the protocol is relatively small now, these issues could present big challenges later. Regarding how Zion will address these issues, Rezvani said: “We use Bitcoin-anchored DIDs as your identity on Zion; When creating an account, we give you a 12-word seed phrase, we don’t expose a private key,” citing a video posted below in the previously linked Twitter thread.
However, taking the crown as the world’s preferred social media platform will not be easy. Bitcoin users especially understand the power of network effects, and Twitter is by far the most used platform in the world. But that’s not deterring Zion.
“Legacy networks have real problems that need to be solved now, and that is what we are running every day through the lens of decentralization. That starts to empower the creative economy to take ownership of their content, their data and their communities and build something that is truly their own,” Rezvani said.
And you won’t be alone. goal is reportedly starting work on his own decentralized alternative to Twitter, apparently realizing the benefits such a platform provides. With the entry of Meta, fierce competition begins to brew, healthy for the decentralized market of social networks.
