Yours social platform uses Bitcoin to compete with Steemit

Blockchain-based decentralized social media platforms have been very popular recently, such as Steemit and Synereo, and another social network Yours is also being tested.

In April, Yours Network core developers Ryan X. Charles, Steven McKie, and Clemens Ley unveiled their plans to the public: a Bitcoin-based social media platform for content creators.

Yours social network challenges other blockchain social networks

Not long ago, Ryan X Charles left Reddit — where he briefly worked as a cryptocurrency engineer for the site — to start Yours Network. The project aims to use Bitcoin to bring a new flavor to content creation and social interactions, such as commenting and photo sharing, through economic incentives.

In April, Yours Network author and developer Steven McKie explained in a blog post:

“The Internet itself is a network, and the Yours peer-to-peer network exists on top of the Internet, attempting to monetize all other networks. More precisely – the Yours network is able to monetize content no matter where it comes from. – Yours allows you to control the content that goes online and create independent channels to earn the income you deserve for your creations.”

The Yours Network team hopes their project will fill the gap in the social networking space in the Bitcoin space, with popular social networks like Steemit and Synereo using altcoins to monetize their platforms.

Networks that use altcoins make those networks inaccessible to Bitcoin fans. Yours Network hopes to use Bitcoin to create a strong network to compete with Steemit and Synereo.

Other blockchains have no existing ecosystem

Ryan X Charles explained in July that the reason the team used Bitcoin was because it was the largest blockchain ecosystem in existence. It was a huge open source software, documentation, standards, APIs, and a huge community. For Charles, a new blockchain either had no ecosystem or it overlapped with Bitcoin.

Likewise, Charles does not believe that platforms like Steem can last, explaining in detail in a blog post:

“While we are very excited about the emergence of blockchain social media, we are concerned that Steem will not be sustainable. It is not that the cost of creating a community and technical platform is high, but the cost of creating an innovative cryptographic ecosystem and supporting economy is extremely high. Their blockchain has a small team of experts to solve security and scalability problems, so solutions will be slow. Services such as wallets and exchanges will also be few and far between, and have limited functionality. They will also have few allies when they encounter regulatory issues.”

On August 1, the development team said that the tests have proven that their technology can work, but developers still have a lot of work to do. Therefore, after the team has implemented the micropayment technology in the platform, Yours Network will release an official invite-only preview version, and users will be selected from the project's email subscription list.

As other social media networks build their user bases, many are looking forward to the launch of Yours Network. By incentivizing content creation and online interaction through Bitcoin, many enthusiasts believe that it will outperform other social networking platforms that use alternative coins.