One may have been bombarded with the raving surge of NFT mentions in the past few months or have felt the heat of the burgeoning crypto space. Some may wonder if there is a foolproof way to join the fun. For the Toronto-based company UTU.ONE that is what they are working on – building an app for everyone, without having to tread through the hustle of managing cryptos or understanding blockchain.
UTU.ONE is a blockchain-powered social media app that is designed to bring NFT creation, community building and tokenized economies together in one place, anchored by a ground-breaking community value share model. Since as early as 2017, the company’s R&D masterminds have predicted the role that unique, protected, and traceable digital assets (aka NFTs) will play in the future of ownership and social interaction. Working to debunk the complexities of the associated technicalities ever since, and UTU.ONE is the end product.
It is no small undertaking to be pledging to cater for all. UTU claims to build real social connections around a common interest, free sharing of content, data protection, NFT creation, and a decentralized mechanism to allow user royalty generation. Against the backdrop of what seems to be overheated discussions in the space right now, the most sensible thing to do is filter through the noise and look at a company’s core competitiveness. Here are a few points that positions UTU.ONE ahead of others in this market place.
UTU.ONE sets out to be a next-generation social media platform for users to take back control over their digital presence. It also allows users to receive the economic benefit that has long been reaped by most social giants while no longer at the risk of their data being tracked, harvested, and taken advantage of by advertisers. This is all made possible by smart contracts and UTU’s decentralized value share ecosystem.
UTU.ONE’s founders share an opinion that the awakening public frustration with traditional social media and its trailing problems. Fake news, cyberbullying, data leakage, ad targeting – a list that could go on – will ripple into a paradigm-changing effect comparable to the emergence of social networks in the early 2000s once a strong enough alternative comes into play. UTU.ONE is positioned to drive this shift.
UTU.ONE uses 3D facial recognition (real-person verification) technology for users to sign-up. The app requires no personal information, no email address, or birthday, so no personal data is gathered to target users with ads. Since each person can only have one face for authentication, it creates a social space with real people only. This will largely eliminate trolls, bots along with the resulting problems (e.g. fake news, piracy, etc.). The real-people environment also plays a crucial role in UTU’s anti-fraudulence and anti-piracy feature in managing its NFT marketplace.
Another interesting aspect, UTU’s NFT marketplace was not designed with the mere purpose of providing an easy solution for NFT trading. It serves to deepen the bond between creativity and social recognition. UTU’s co-founder and CTO, Stephan Zhang commented on the purpose of the marketplace:
“We designed the marketplace with the notion to power NFTs with social.We offer a space where both creators and followers are free to share their creation, obtain rewards, and enjoy sustained growth… and everything is backed by deep social connections and a strong networking effect.”
UTU.ONE does so by implementing the essence of a decentralized community and token-based value sharing into its business model. UTU’s NFT marketplace is built into each of its decentralized autonomous communities, or “DACs”, where users are gathered by interest, hobby or fandom. The value that each community creates gets redistributed back to the community members, resulting in accurate interest alignment.
EOSIO, the open-source blockchain infrastructure system where UTU is built, is primarily why it can boast no transaction fee, substantially less environmental footprint, and unbeatable transaction speed. EOSIO’s parent company, Block.one, has been benchmarked to process over 4,000 transactions per second on its public blockchain. The average processing speed of other blockchain systems is at 15-20 transactions per second. Moreover, according to calculations conducted by “social enterprise block producer candidate” GenerEOS, “EOSIO is 66,000 times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin and 17,000 times more energy-efficient than Ethereum.”
As this article is being written, thought-leaders like Elon Musk express concern about excessive energy consumption. The longstanding issue associated with bitcoin and Ethereum is currently under the spotlight. “UTU.ONE has been since day one advocating for a future of blockchain applications building on greener, faster, more flexible solutions, such as EOSIO blockchain. In short, we know we are ahead of the wave,” Zhang said.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
