Top decentralized social media apps

 

Based on three substantial premises, i.e., ownership of personal data, control over user-generated content, and censorship resistance, decentralized social apps allow us to share our ideas and connect with others in brand-new ways.

Social blockchains that are paving the way

Two leading blockchains on which social media dapps run are Hive and Steem. They were specifically developed to empower communities with built-in incentive mechanisms for content publishing, curation, and voting. Most of these apps reward those community contributors who receive the most upvotes. That’s why they’re generally associated with terms like “upvote economy” and “tokenized attention.”

Steem was the first network that rewarded content creators and curators for their contributions. Hive emerged as a fork of Steem, so the two networks basically run on the same foundation and have many things in common. 

Both blockchains use a delegated proof of stake consensus model, where delegates are called “witnesses” who earn 10% of the newly created tokens for adding blocks to the chain. This consensus method enables free and fast transactions in less than three seconds. Consequently, they’re scalable, a prerequisite for effective social media applications.