• Block.One, the company behind the cryptocurrency EOS, has announced February 14, 2020 as the launch date for the beta version of Voice.
• The decentralized social network based on the EOSIO protocol is intended to challenge Facebook’s position as market leader in the long term.

About six months ago, Block.One, the company behind the cryptocurrency EOS, announced a new social media platform called ‘Voice’. The platform is intended to challenge the world market leader Facebook and provide a decentralized alternative to the social network. As Block.One announced in a press release, the beta version of Voice will go live on 14 February 2020.

The project will be developed by Block.One and is based on the EOSIO Open Source protocol, which is also the basis for EOS. As Block.one writes in the new release, Voice aims to redefine social media by encouraging the creation, sharing, discovery and promotion of content by real users:

Built using the inherent benefits of the open source EOSIO protocol – security, accountability, and immutability – Voice is the antithesis of everything social media is, enabling trusted interactions while bringing transparency into the entire promotion and advertising system within the platform.

With Voice, the EOS developers are clearly declaring war on Facebook. They are clearly addressing the problems and disadvantages of this global corporation, which is often the subject of criticism. Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.one, told the event in June, when Voice was first announced that social media platforms are currently designed to exploit their users:

Just look at the business model. Our content. Our data. Our attention. These are all incredibly valuable things. But right now, it’s the platform, not the user, that reaps the reward. By design, they run by auctioning our information to advertisers, pocketing the profit, and flooding our feeds with hidden agendas dictated by the highest bidder. Voice changes that.

As Block.One explains in the latest press release, Voice is designed to reward the creation and sharing of content by “real users rather than bots or fake accounts”.

This is intended to make Voice available to both consumers and content authors. Every user on Voice has the power to influence.

Will the EOS price benefit from Voice?

The EOS -based social network will run on the EOS Public Blockchain. On the one hand, the use of the technology is intended to guarantee transparency that Facebook does not have. Since the blockchain is public, all participants in the network should be able to access all the information. On the other hand, the protocol is intended to create a high degree of scalability. The basis for this is to be EOS 2.0, a massive upgrade announced by Block.One at the beginning of October.

The announcement of Voice has made a big splash in the EOS and the entire crypto community. Voice is undisputedly the most anticipated project on EOS. Whether it can meet the high expectations remains to be seen. In particular, it is questionable how EOS can poach the almost 3 billion Facebook users, even though Block.One has announced a major advertising campaign.

However, if Voice is successful, it could be the first application on the Blockchain to find mass adoption. EOS would certainly benefit greatly from this. At the moment, however, the EOS price is unimpressed by the announcement and is showing a sideways trend (-0.3%) at the time of writing, within the last 24 hours.