What is DeSo?

DeSo is a new type of blockchain designed to power Web 3.0 decentralized social networks. Since its inception in 2019, DeSo aims to solve the problems created by present social media centralization.

Today, a handful of private companies effectively control public discourse, earning monopoly profits; meanwhile, the creators who actually produce the content are often underpaid and under-engaged. In contrast, DeSo’s social blockchain treats social media content as a public utility, making it permissionless and available to anyone. DeSo combines the paradigm of open P2P financial system offered by cryptocurrencies with an efficient and scalable database infrastructure, tailored to bring about the next-generation of Web 3.0 social networks.

Today, there are over a hundred apps built on the DeSo blockchain, including Diamond, NFTz, Polygram, DeSo Messenger, Cloutfeed, Supernovas, and more on DeSo List.

To learn more, make sure to check out the vision behind DeSo.

Who Are the Founders of DeSo?

DeSo was founded by Nader Al-Naji in January 2019. After graduating Princeton University, Al-Naji worked as a software engineer at the D. E. Shaw Group and later at Google on the Google Search and Google Ads teams. Before DeSo, he raised over $133M to start an algorithmic stablecoin Basis in 2017.

The DeSo blockchain is supported by the non-profit DeSo Foundation, whose broad mission is to support the decentralization of social media. Al-Naji is currently the chairman of the board of the DeSo Foundation, with a $200 million treasury behind it to support its mission.

In October 2021, the DeSo Foundation announced a $50 million developer fund, known as the Octane Fund.

What Makes DeSo Unique?

The DeSo blockchain supports not only traditional social features like creating profiles and posts, but also novel blockchain-native features like social tokens (creator coins), tipping, and NFTs. These features unlock vast new categories of money-enabled products, from social NFT experiences to influencer stock markets. These features enable creators to more effectively monetize their content and connect with their followers on DeSo-powered apps.

Because DeSo treats social data as a public utility, creators aren't locked-in to a handful of centralized apps. All content on DeSo is stored on a decentralized ledger and is immediately available to a large and growing network of independent third-party apps, akin to DeFi applications on the Ethereum blockchain.

DeSo's biggest advantage lies in the fact that it is not a general-purpose blockchain. Instead, it supports a narrow set of social-oriented features that it implements on bare metal, using custom indexes that every node builds during consensus when it syncs from its peers. This allows the DeSo blockchain to reach highly-scalable storage capabilities that are unparalleled by any general-purpose blockchain. For instance, the cost of 1 GB of on-chain storage on DeSo is as low as 1 DeSo, whereas even the best existing smart contract infrastructures require millions ($1,000,000+) of dollars to achieve the same. DeSo has also announced switching to a Proof of Stake consensus by the end of year 2021, which is expected to reach a throughput of hundreds of thousands transactions per second, owing to the strictly defined transaction schema.