The bull case for DESO!

3 min readJul 21, 2021

On March 29th 2021, I saw a few tweets about this new crypto social network called BitClout now rebranded to DeSo & DiamondApp.com (twitter like implementation) & I joined. As someone who has been passionate about the creator economy (tried my hand at a Youtube show), I was generally intrigued by the possibilities of ways for creators to maximise their income.
And BTW, I have my first name ‘manu’ as the handle on DeSo.

(FYI — DESO (Decentralised Social ) is the blockchain powering DiamondApp.com which is just the first Proof of Concept implementation of what all can be built on top of the blockchain)

A few reasons I actually took DESO seriously then

Backed by investors like a16z, Social Capital, Sequioa Capital, Coinbase Ventures and many more
Active participants on the platform included Dharmesh Shah (Cofounder & CTO of Hubspot), Ryan Hoover (Founder of Product Hunt) & many more people I admire.
A post by Jake Udell highlighting the 7 trends why BitClout (now DeSo) could explode.

What I experienced

A deeply engaging platform (DiamondApp.com) that mixes social & finance
A community of fantastic builders & artists
A way to participate as an early adopter in the Web 3.0 revolution that is happening right now.

Some more reading resulted in me curating some videos from top thinkers & investors I admire.

Naval Ravikant

Is there ability to buy & sell BitClout? — Yes, $DeSo is listed on exchanges
Is the code open sourced — 100% of the code is open sourced
Security issues — What Naval referred to has been implemented (identity). But security could be better for sure.
You can’t be banned — Yes
Payments are built in — Yes (Creator coins, Diamonds, NFTs — true innovations are in place)
Peer governance — Clout Improvement Proposals are in place & the community is very actively participating.
Permissionlessly programmable — About 100+ applications already built & developer adoption happening at a fast pace. New Bapps (BitClout Apps) are being added every single day. Check BitHunt here

Chris Dixon (General Partner — Andreessen Horowitz)

While this video does not directly talk about BitClout,

The video is a primer on social tokens and why they will become big.
How design patterns from the gaming industry will be used by broader internet products
The idea of the creator using the coin to offer benefits & the investor speculating on creators and buying tokens.
The right business model on the internet is to find some balance between abundance & scarcity — examples from the gaming industry

Shaun Maguire (Sequoia Capital)

DeSo being open source & why DeSo does not need to sell data
Why 15K profiles were reserved?

Dharmesh Shah (Cofounder & CTO of Hubspot)

Scammers are everywhere — even Google was being scammed in the early days
Believer in self governance — excited to see what all gets built
Dharmesh believes DeSo is legit.

Chamath Palihapitiya (Social Capital)

DeSo — Quantifying reputation & trust
Excited about what can be built on top of DeSo

Balaji Srinivasan

DeSo is genuinely decentralised social media from a technology perspective.
Payments are built in & that makes it interesting

Andy Artz (Social Capital)

Why did Social Capital invest in DeSo?
His definition of DeSo — If Burning Man & Las Vegas had a baby, that’d be DeSo.
DeSo brings a sense of wonder and possibility — and you can build applications on top of it

Vitalik Buterin mentions DeSo

Vitalik personally cares about building out the social media ecosystem.
There’s a widespread belief that existing platforms suck and we need better ones.
Vitalik mentions that DeSo is not a ghost town. There is evidence in the need for decentralised social media.

I will continue to curate and add videos from investors & thought leaders to this post. Overall, I am excited about DESO & can’t wait to see what all gets built on it.