Zion: The Lightning Social Network

Mar 25

with Justin Rezvani

Censorship has been a growing problem in online communities, given their large-scale nature as big tech companies. For host Brad Mills, censorship is what leads to radicalization. By decentralizing social media and the internet, this issue can be solved. Brad’s pitch is that Bitcoin’s Lightning Network will permit the development of side chains, layer 2’s, and other technology to facilitate the development of new, decentralized, censorship-proof social media. Sovereign identities depend on the security that a blockchain like Bitcoin can provide.

On this episode of Magic Internet Money, Brad Mills meets with entrepreneur Justin Rezvani to discuss his social media project, Zion. Inspired by a censorship-heavy environment on large scale social media platforms whose hands are forced by governments, Rezvani introduces a social network that is built on Bitcoin. Mills shares his experiences with the Bitcoin community and concerns with the censorship present on large platforms outside of social media, such as YouTube. Justin discusses his interview with YouTuber, JP Sears and other influential voices in the fight against censorship.

Censorship and Radicalization

Jack Dorsey is frequently cited by Brad Mills as a personality that’s experienced the nature of censorship as a business owner and as somebody who’s had to deal with federal authorities. Dorsey stepped down as the CEO of Twitter late last year. This move comes after former US president, Donald Trump was suspended from the platform due to the events which occurred on January 6th. Dorsey has said that he thinks that it was the right call, but it sets a dangerous precedent. Dorsey has since moved on to develop the payment network, Block, a bitcoin payment system.

With this outlook in mind, Brad Mills elaborates on the nature of censorship and how users are concerned about the future of social media technology. The platform nature of large scale social media companies is a “single point of failure” which permits censor-happy governments or companies with an agenda the opportunity to silence individuals. For Brad, this is a significant contributor to radicalization. Organizations like Q Anon and other “conspiracy” minded communities ask the same question that the historic statesman, Cicero, asks “Who benefits?” when they are censored, leading to alienation and resentment for the platform and those friendly to it.

Justin fondly recalls his time on a podcast with YouTuber JP Sears. JP is a comedy themed content creator on YouTube, who often satirises current affairs. For JP, he speaks through his comedy and as a satirical artist and he is naturally very concerned with censorship. Justin insists that he’s far more than just a comedian; “He’s got an amazing audience, he talks about all the things we talk about. He’s an amazing person”. By partnering with JP, Justin hopes to take his social media platform to a wider audience.

Zion and Decentralization of Social Media

Where there is a will, there is a way. Introducing Zion, a social media “platform” that is built on the Bitcoin network with the assistance of the Lightning Network technology. Zion is a robust, sovereign tool for interacting with others online, without worry of censorship. In this sense it is not quite a “platform”, since one can be kicked off of a platform. Zion provides users with independence. For both Brad and Justin, this is a decentralised solution that permits users to identify online using a Bitcoin wallet. Brad describes it in the introduction as “Bitcoin meets patreon”.

Zion is not the first of its kind. It is competing with other platforms similar to it being developed or that already exist. One such platform is Sphinx, who Justin hired to assist with development for the initial months of Zion’s development. Attempts at developing this kind of technology go back as early as 2013, and theories about the technology as early as 2002, when former programmer, Curtis Yarvin, proposed Urbit. While Urbit isn’t a blockchain technology, it’s a very early attempt in the development of an independent digital identity system.

Web3 and the Future

Web3 is a topic of much debate. For Brad, Web3 is mostly for “opportunists” currently, but decentralized thinkers like Justin Rezvani and Jack Dorsey are paving the way for a better internet. Web3 is currently closely associated with venture capitalist firms exploring just what the technology is capable of. What does seem likely, based on historic trends, is that there will be competition between Web3 platforms. Some will succeed based on their use case and some will fail, in the intense competition of market Darwinism that we’ve seen in the technology field before (remember the dotcom bubble?). Just as Facebook overthrew MySpace, there is something even bigger on the horizon waiting to overthrow Facebook. Knowing the intense competition in this field, something will overthrow that.

Bitcoiners don’t like to refer to the decentralized applications they are building as ‘Web3’ due to the stigmatism with cryptocurrency premines and token gambling games happening in the broad Crypto space. Bitcoiners like to refer to it a dWeb (decentralized Web), Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), or decentralized identity.

Finally, Brad and Justin describe their intentions within the Bitcoin community, and how they intend to invest in future use cases of the Lightning Network and other infrastructure projects. Brad insists that early investment in these technologies, even if they don’t start perfectly, will “pay me back dividends for my heirs 100 years in the future”.

For Justin, he asks “Is Bitcoin better with Zion or not?” For him, the answer is yes, since his need for nodes on the Lightning Network is expanding the network. As the social network expands, so too shall the Lightning Network. Atop of this, Justin is just one entrepreneur investing in the network. There are many more already here and many more to come.