In brief

  • Voice is opening its doors to a public beta on July 4 but you still have to be invited to join.
  • The decentralized social network wants to usurp Web2 social media sites, like Facebook.
  • But will it just turn out to be a rehash of Dan Larimer's last Facebook killer, Steem?

Voice, the ambitious decentralized social network from the creators of EOS.IO, Block.one, now has a launch date for its public beta: July 4. The platform, which went into private beta in February, will also release an iOS app that verifies the identities of users without government IDs. 

But there’s a catch. Only registered users will be able to use the platform, and only those invited can access the public beta. 

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You can request access by signing up to Voice on its site and registrations are open to international users. When it gets to August 15, users can start to invite their friends. 

What is Voice?

Voice is an incredibly ambitious crypto project that was originally destined for the EOS public blockchain—but will run on a separate version of the blockchain instead. 

It describes itself as “a transparent, rewards-based social network for creating, distributing, and discovering content.” Users can earn Voice tokens for watching ads, which can then be spent on promoting posts or posting comments.

The project wants to “take social back from big tech,” tweeted Salah Zalatimo, CEO of Voice, on Saturday. In an FAQ, Voice claims that social media platforms are full of “large scale attacks and manipulation,”which result in “a rampant environment for fake, commercialized, and manipulative content and behavior.

Voice has a lot of money behind it. Its parent company, Block.one, raised $4 billion in a year-long ICO. Voice cost $150 million to build, $30 million of which went on the Voice.com domain name. But it has no plans to end up out of pocket. As Decrypt reported last year, it will use an “inflation tax” on Voice tokens to get its money back. But to get taxed, you'll need an invite first.

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