Elevate your enterprise information technologies and tactic at Transform 2021.
Minds, the crypto social network with a focus on encryption and privacy, has raised $10 million from the tech freedom organization Futo.
Owned by Yahoo Games founder and WhatsApp seed investor Eron Wolf, Futo is devoted to tech and policies that give the handle of computer systems back to the folks. While other social networks mine your information for ad purposes, Minds targets user privacy, and it is based on open supply technologies.
New York-based Minds is a crypto social network with an immediate messaging chat app that lets folks communicate with every other in actual time. It has grown to more than 14 million considering the fact that it received a funding round in October 2018.
“We have been fully focused on building an open-source encrypted, decentralized alternative to mainstream social networks. It’s always been shocking to me that none of them are open source,” Minds CEO and founder Bill Ottman mentioned. “And it seems like there’s a pattern emerging with the lack of transparency and surveillance and abuse of users freedoms. So from the beginning, I always considered it inevitability that an open-source, decentralized social network was going to emerge, similar to how open source dominated operating systems with Linux.”
He added, “Based on everything we’re seeing in crypto, even if you look at Mozilla, open source will eat software in the same way that software is eating everything. And so I thought we might as well do it. I mean, if something is going to happen, I’m going to try to make it happen.”
The new round of financing capitalizes on prior funding from Medici Ventures, the wholly owned blockchain subsidiary of Overstock.com that lately partnered with Pelion Ventures. The funds will be used to assistance the company’s mission of developing the world’s biggest crypto social network and placing handle back into users’ hands.
Many customers are attracted to its game-like features that motivate participation and reward customers with the Ethereum-minted Minds token. The gamification of the social network has led it to turn into especially well-known in the gaming, crypto, and anime communities.
In April, the network made a series of enhancements to the Mind token — highlighted by decentralized finance (DeFi) integrations — to support bridge the gap among standard social media and decentralized Web3 infrastructure and provide customers with more ownership more than their digital identity and information.
Image Credit: Minds
Earlier this month, Minds also introduced Minds Chat, a decentralized, finish-to-finish encrypted worldwide communications app with safe video conferencing and file-sharing.
Minds CEO Ottman mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat that Minds provides customers handle by way of its absolutely free and open supply computer software, decentralization, privacy, and synchronized financial incentives.
Taking a stand
Image Credit: Minds
Right now, digital rights, freedom of expression, and privacy are in peril due to the secrecy, censorship, and surveillance of huge tech, Ottman mentioned.
Wolf was a longtime computer software programmer who began Yahoo Games in 1997 and spent 18 years in Silicon Valley working at tech corporations. He identified that the incentives for entrepreneurs are “completely out of whack” when it comes to carrying out items that are great for society. At Futo, he favors investing in “the little guy competing against the big guy,” and that is one of the motives he invested in Minds.
On top rated of that, he mentioned, “I really trust Bill and what Bill is about. He is about being transparent to the user, not abusing the user. One of the things that’s important to me is that he not collude, like he’s competing with Facebook and Twitter.”
Wolf mentioned his earlier ventures made him wealthy and capable to give back to society by way of technologies with a social objective. He believes Minds can support folks escape the tech oligopoly. And he does not want Minds to sell to one of the tech giants for the reason that that would almost certainly outcome in the customers getting “thrown under the bus.”
“Every single time that happens, the users wind up with worse products after that, and they get abused more,” Wolf mentioned. “So at the end of the day, I’m trying to identify” entrepreneurs with more integrity.
He mentioned he is unhappy with the “destruction” wrought by technologies monopolists and sellout entrepreneurs. The world wants more corporations like Minds devoted to independence, transparency, user sovereignty, and freedom of speech, he mentioned.
“We can’t let the tech oligopoly control us through the devices in our pockets,” Wolf mentioned. “That’s kind of where we’re headed, or implanted in our brains or whatever, you know, wherever it’s going. The individual needs to have sovereignty over their tech.”
MindChat
Image Credit: Minds
The MindsChat feature launched in May. MindsChat federates with the Matrix protocol, an open typical for safe, decentralized, actual-time communication networks with finish-to-finish (E2E) encryption embedded.
Due to the Matrix’s interoperability specifications, customers can speak to other individuals each inside its worldwide ecosystem and outdoors, through bridges, to networks like Slack, Signal, Twitter, and more. MindsChat is at present offered to any one with Canary updates turned on.
Origins
Image Credit: Minds
Minds began in 2015, and it grew up in parallel with cryptocurrency. Because it focused on encrypting user messages, it became well-known with folks who valued their privacy, such as these in the cryptocurrency crowd. You could say that it was a magnet for drug customers, criminals, terrorists, and cyber hackers. But Ottman mentioned the network is not constructed for criminals. It’s constructed to guarantee that folks have freedom and do not have to be concerned about mandated back doors that could compromise everyone’s security and safety.
“We would definitely be on the end of the spectrum that puts end-to-end encryption and privacy first by default,” Ottman mentioned. “But I definitely do not think that that means that we have any desire to help any kind of illicit activity. I don’t think that because you put privacy first means that you’re supporting that, because actually, if you compromise, if you allow backdoor encryption, or if you just don’t have encryption , then you’re actually creating a higher likelihood of another type of crime occurring. You make everyone less safe when you when you do that. ”
In 2017, the firm migrated to a gamified reward technique, exactly where customers have been rewarded for the more they utilized the social network.
The firm is nevertheless a centralized firm, but it is heading in the path of getting more decentralized, Ottman mentioned. It is not, on the other hand, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Image Credit: Minds
The firm has a lot of customers in Thailand and Vietnam. Artists, photographers, filmmakers, and journalists use Minds in addition to gamers and crypto fans. One of the items that is assisting with the recognition of Minds is that cryptocurrency is going mainstream, he mentioned.
“Independent media is arguably our largest demographic, because we have a free speech policy and we protect their privacy, which matters a lot to journalists,” Ottman mentioned.
“It has similar functionality to Telegram, Discord, and Messenger. And it’s fully open source, decentralized, end to end encrypted,” he mentioned.
The firm employs about 15 folks, not counting open supply neighborhood developers.
Monetization
Image Credit: Minds
Instead of creating income by way of mining user information and serving folks advertisements, Minds gives recurring memberships with its Minds Plus premium accounts, which has bonus features. And it shares the Minds Plus income with content creators who create the most well-known content on the social network.
“We have like thousands of members of Minds Plus now, and it’s actually going amazing this year,” Ottman mentioned. “I think that people really do want to support networks that respect their freedom. And I think people are willing to pay for subscription products. We do have advertising, but it is not the core of the revenue and it is not surveillance advertising.”
