From identity to data, CEO Sion explains how they envision the app developing forward.
The recent introduction of the decentralized social media protocol Nostr is taking the world of distributed technology by storm. Even Block CEO Jack Dorsey has been happy with the protocol, encouraging its use, funding development and using it often. In the meantime, Sion, a decentralized social media app, has been watching as Nostr grows. I asked Justin Rezvani, CEO and founder of Sion, what the two are in the competition. But he explained that Sion and himself saw the benefits, and he was sure that Sion would be closely related to the advancing Nostr.
“As for Nostr, Zion is an application and Nostr is a protocol, so we don’t consider it competitive, but free,” Rezvani said. “Zion is likely to use Nostr in the future. What we are building centers on innovation in messaging, ID and payments. Zion is the first application for this technology. What has been built in decentralized identity (DID) and decentralized web nodes (DWNs) as complementary to what Nostr does and I’m excited to see how adding Nostr will further impact the user experience for creators at Zion. It’s part of our goal and what drives us, a better experience for creators.
One aspect of the decentralized content rolodex that Nostr is missing is data storage, Rezvani believes, but he says Sion handles this well: “The idea that you’re going to send videos and Nostr relays around the world is just going to store that content for free. It’s nonsense. .You need a reliable data storage mechanism and I believe the combination of DID, DWNS and Nostr can be an amazing combination.
Additionally, the idea is to empower content creators to monetize directly. Sion was actually one of the first to seize this opportunity, beating Nostr, which recently witnessed an explosion in micropayment activity.
“Zion has had ‘zaps’ on our app since August 2021 when it launched and had 120k ‘zaps’ in its first six months of life,” Rezvani said. “In a world where the cost of content will be zero, you need something to mark the most effective content. If someone creates something useful that resonates with the audience, then it should be recognized and rewarded.
Available cautions raised on key management and privacy Nostr. While the current protocol is relatively small, these problems can become a big challenge later. In terms of how Sion will solve the problem, Rezvani said, “We use DIDs anchored to Bitcoin as an identity in Sion; When you create an account, we give you a 12-word seed phrase, we do not unlock the private key,” he said video posted further down in the previously linked Twitter thread.
However, taking the crown as the world’s social media platform of choice won’t be easy. Bitcoiners are especially aware of the power of network effects, and Twitter is the most widely used platform in the world. But this did not stop Zion.
“Legacy networks have real problems that need to be solved today, and this is what we do every day through the lens of decentralization. That starts to empower the creator economy to take ownership of content, data and communities and build something that is truly their own,” said Rezvani.
And he won’t be alone. Meta has reportedly started working on its own decentralized Twitter alternative, apparently realizing the benefits that the platform brings. With the entry of Meta, a fierce, healthy competition for the decentralized social media market, began to be created.