Block.one invests $150M in its social media app Voice to fund independent operations

Block.one has invested $150 million into Voice, the social media app it launched last summer to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The intended goal is to solve for many of the problems that plague existing social media platforms such as inauthentic bots and the promotion of fake news stories. Voice will be requiring users to be verified through KYC procedures and will be boosting content based on usage and allocation of the Voice tokens. Initially, Voice was going to be built on the EOS public blockchain, however, they changed course opting to put it on its own purpose-built chain.

Why it matters

• From large-scale manipulation like the Facebook news stories during the last elections to the smaller scale issues such as the ones we faced at Messari as our twitter accounts were shadowbanned, the need for decentralized alternatives to large social media platforms is abundantly clear. While projects such as Steem have looked to tackle this issue, there has not been any serious competitor. With this fresh infusion of capital, Voice looks to scale its operations to hopefully provide the first alternative to gain widespread adoption.
• As the main company behind EOS, Block.one is tasked with developing and promoting the EOS network. However, since Voice will not actually be built on EOS it remains unclear how the investment will provide value to the blockchain itself. But given this fresh infusion of capital along with the $150 million already spent (which included $30 million for the domain name itself), Block.one evidently believes there is a way to integrate with EOS down the line or through some other means add value to the overall ecosystem.