Zion’s newest funding spherical brings the decentralized social platform firm’s valuation to $53 million.
Miami-based startup Zion has launched a brand new model of its app offering entry to the Web5 decentralized social community, alongside the elevating of $6 million in a funding spherical led by XBTO Humla Ventures.
The Zion protocol is designed to permit creators to personal their communities whereas customers have management over their on-line id, and relies on Jack Dorsey’s Block’s Web5 requirements and the Bitcoin Lightning Community. In response to the discharge, Zion’s v2 app has a ready checklist of over 60,000 customers and a valuation of $53 million. The newest spherical of funding was backed by a variety of buyers, together with footballer Aaron Rodgers and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
The brand new app supplies a “common normal for social knowledge change” based mostly on “decentralized identities, communities and social content material” and “interoperable peer-to-peer relationships.” Its options embody a decentralized identifier system, decentralized internet nodes and a Bitcoin Lightning pockets. Zion claims to have already served over 3,000 creators, whereas processing greater than 120,000 transactions between creators and followers utilizing Lightning.
Founder and CEO Justin Rezvani mentioned that the corporate’s enterprise mannequin was “based mostly on supplying you with a product that you should use to construct your viewers, that you may personal and monetize”. The purpose, he added, is for Zion to be “the final platform you ever should construct an viewers on”. The protocol, Rezvani mentioned, was a response to the “large-scale censorship of speech and a ceaseless array of knowledge breaches, globally” that has resulted from centralized social media platforms.
Greg Carson, managing associate at XBTO Humla Ventures, mentioned the group at Zion mixed “a deep understanding of creator communities and scalable peer-based content material know-how” with a Lightning funds community, making the corporate “a singular and thrilling funding for the ecosystem”.