Decred’s Bison Relay helps users monetize all types of content

Decred seeks to ease the monetization of content by combining social media with micropayments.

Key takeaways:

• Decred launched Bison Relay, a secure, private, censorship-resistant social media and messaging platform, last month.
• Jonathan Zeppettini, Strategy Lead at Decred, believes that combining social media with micropayments could allow for the monetization of all sorts of content.

Decred’s Bison Relay is a game-changer

On December 15th, 2022, the Decred team announced the launch of Bison Relay, a secure, private, censorship-resistant social media and messaging platform that gives users custody over their data.

The Bison Relay social media platform was launched to give users sovereignty with absolute freedom of expression and custody of personal information. The platform offers "zero knowledge communications" with end-to-end encryption that ensures only the intended recipients see the content of messages. It’s also censorship resistant. Server operators can’t see what users share or which chats they participate in, protecting them from censorship.

In a recent interview, Jonathan Zeppettini, Strategy Lead at Decred, was asked about the role of cryptocurrencies in the social media space moving forward. Zeppettini believes that social media and cryptocurrencies could help users monetize all types of content. He said;

"So far, the new Twitter management seems more committed to free speech and having an open marketplace of ideas, pairing that with censorship-resistant payments could indeed be very interesting. We've seen not only an attack on free speech by many social media companies in the past but also attempts to totally deplatform individuals from many of the payment rails that power the online economy. PayPal recently went so far as to institute fines of $2,500, which they may levy upon any account holder whom they deem to be spreading "misinformation."

The Decred Strategy Lead added that;

“Combining social media with micropayments, such as those enabled through the use of Lightning Network, could allow for the monetization of all sorts of content, and the development of totally new business models and use cases for crypto, e.g., paying a few cents to read an article or to get around a captcha. Directly supporting content creators would be a game changer, however, for now, Twitter itself is still a walled garden, it just happens to have what many believe to be a more benevolent dictator pruning the shrubs."

With Decred’s Bison Relay, users can monetize their content, as opposed to being monetized by centralized entities, using the built-in Lightning Network, with things like private newsletter subscriptions or tips for video content.

Unlike the centralized social media platforms where users are the products, Bison Relay operates by ensuring that users are the customers. Everything on the platform is powered by micro-transactions using a Lightning Network crypto wallet, granting users custody and control of their personal information and data

Bison Relay is the latest in a series of developments from the Decred ecosystem. Decred focuses on creating tools to enhance financial sovereignty and privacy, including a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange (DCRDEX), voting system (Politeia) and opt-in privacy system, with post-quantum-secure mixing.