Zion’s latest funding round brings the decentralized social platform company’s valuation to $53 million.
Miami-based startup Zion has launched a new version of its app that provides access to the decentralized social network Web5, along with raising $6 million in a funding round led by XBTO Humla Ventures.
Zion Protocol is designed to allow creators to have a community while users have control over their online identity, and is based on the Web5 standard Jack Dorsey Block and the Bitcoin Lightning Network. According to the release, Sion’s v2 app has a waiting list of over 60,000 users and is worth $53 million. The latest round of funding was backed by several investors, including football player Aaron Rodgers and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
The new application provides a “universal standard for social data exchange” based on “decentralized identity, community and social content” and “interoperable peer-to-peer relationships.” These features include a decentralized identity system, decentralized web nodes and a Bitcoin Lightning wallet. Zion claims to have served more than 3,000 creators, while processing more than 120,000 transactions between creators and fans using Lightning.
Founder and CEO Justin Rezvani says the company’s business model is “based on providing products that can be used to build an audience, that can be owned and monetized”. The goal, he added, is for Zion to be “the last platform you have to go to”. The protocol, Rezvani said, is a response to “large-scale speech censorship and various ongoing, global data breaches” resulting from centralized social media platforms.
Greg Carson, managing partner at XBTO Humla Ventures, said that the team at Sion combines “a deep understanding of the creator community and scalable peer-based content technology” with the Lightning payment network, making the company “a unique and exciting investment for the ecosystem”.