Zion’s latest funding round brings the decentralized social platform company’s valuation to $53 million.
Miami-based startup Zion has released a new version of its app that provides access to the Web5 decentralized social network, along with raising $6 million in a funding round led by XBTO Humla Ventures.
The Zion protocol is designed to allow creators to own their communities while users have control over their online identity, and is based on the Jack Dorsey’s Block and Bitcoin Lightning Network Web5 standards. According to the release, Zion’s v2 app has a waiting list of over 60,000 users and a valuation of $53 million. The latest round of funding was backed by a number of investors, including footballer Aaron Rodgers and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
The new app provides a “universal standard for sharing social data” based on “decentralized identities, communities, and social content” and “peer-to-peer interoperable relationships.” Its features include a decentralized identification system, decentralized web nodes, and a Bitcoin Lightning wallet. Zion claims to have served over 3,000 creators while processing over 120,000 creator-fan transactions using Lightning.
Founder and CEO Justin Rezvani said the company’s business model “is based on giving you a product that you can use to build your audience, that you can own and monetize.” The goal, he added, is for Zion to be “the last platform you have to build an audience on.” The protocol, Rezvani said, was a response to the “wide-scale censorship of speech and a relentless series of data breaches, globally” that has resulted from centralized social media platforms.
Greg Carson, managing partner at XBTO Humla Ventures, said the Zion team combined “a deep understanding of creator communities and scalable peer-based content technology” with a Lightning payments network, making the company a “a unique and exciting investment for the ecosystem.” .
