Akasha Wants to Put Social Media on the Ethereum Blockchain

There’s been a lot of focus on cryptocurrency social media platforms lately. Now, a new application is coming to the market called Akasha, which aims to launch its alpha release this month.

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Centralized Social Media Soon to Be a Memory

The past few months have had quite a bit of news concerning platforms like Steemit, Synereo and the Yours Network. A new platform is launching this October called Akasha, which means “’ether’ in both its elemental and metaphysical senses.” The project is a social media application that splices the Ethereum network and Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS).  

Akasha is the brainchild of Bitcoin Magazine creator and Ethereum co-founder Mihai Alisie. The project aims to be a censorship resistant internet publishing site with many of the features found on traditional social media apps.

By utilizing IPFS, the infrastructure of Akasha will reportedly have no central point of failure or bandwidth issues. Additionally, using the Ethereum network as a backdrop, developers say, the project doesn’t depend on servers. The developers behind Akasha believe, with the cryptocurrency solutions we have today, users deserve a better social media model.

Akasha’s website explains its design purpose, stating:

With Akasha you can publish, share and vote for entries, similar to Medium and other modern publishing platforms, with the difference that your content is actually published over a decentralized network rather than on our servers. Moreover, the votes are bundled with ETH micro transactions so if your content is good you’ll make ETH from it – in a way, mining with your mind.

Akasha October Invite Only Alpha Launch Begins

This October, the Akasha team will gradually send out invites to 4,500 people. Alpha subscribers will be able to test the dApp on several operating systems, observe smart contracts, and hopefully, identify potential flaws and bugs before the public alpha. The team expects public alpha to release towards the end of Q4 2016.

The team says the first releases of the Akasha dApp may be unstable and have a few bugs. Developers explain this is a “tradeoff” for being one of the first projects to bundle technologies like IPFS and Ethereum. Both projects are in their infancy, and unexpected behavior will happen, but developers say they will “iron out the bugs” quickly. The team also asks users for feedback and to open bug issues via their Slack channel.

Akasha developers say throughout the first phase ETH will be the platform’s currency token. In time this could change, but the Akasha team wants to test the advantages and disadvantages first before introducing a native token. Besides using Ethereum and IPFS, the platform also utilizes Electron, React with Redux, and Node.js on its technical stack.

Open Sourcing the Code and the Ethereum Mainnet

The entire testing phase for Akasha will be gradual, and the team plans to open source the code after the alpha releases. The team will also be holding a community “breakathon” so users can find bugs that may have slipped by during development. After completing the breakathon and fixing any issues, the platform will beta launch on the Ethereum main network.

Akasha developers say they have spent over a year building the platform. Tough competition also awaits its release, with several other decentralized social networks on the way. One thing is for sure, though — the internet’s structure and social media habits are changing, and Akasha wants to be on the forefront in these innovative times.

What do you think about this social media project? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Akasha blog

Images via Shutterstock, Akasha’s Website and Pixabay.  

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