DeSo (formerly BitClap)

Nader Al-Naji began developing the DeSo blockchain in early 2019 after his previous startup Basis (where he raised $140 million) didn't work out—he made the decision to give the money back. Working alone for almost two years, he recognized a fundamental limitation in existing blockchains: Bitcoin and Ethereum were optimized for different use cases (Bitcoin for security and value storage, Ethereum for general programmability), but none were designed for social networks. "Social networks are basically about posting photos and videos," he explained. Existing blockchains couldn't efficiently handle the storage and indexing of rich media content at scale. This was the technical gap he saw: the world needed a blockchain built specifically for social.

Al-Naji assembled a small team of about a dozen people and worked on the DeSo blockchain in stealth mode throughout 2019-2020. The vision was radical: create a blockchain where content data is completely open and accessible to anyone, allowing multiple applications to build on top of the same data layer. This flipped the traditional social network model on its head—instead of Facebook or Twitter keeping their database under lock and key to maintain a monopoly on eyeballs and ad revenue, DeSo made the database the product itself. BitClap was designed as the first prototype app to "exercise and test a lot of the functionality" of the blockchain, particularly the hard problem of efficient storage and indexing of posts.

Before launch, Al-Naji raised funding from tier-one VCs including Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, and Sequoia. Over 44,000 purchases were made into a treasury wallet—"5,000 Bitcoin, which has appreciated a bit"—without a corporate entity even being set up. Investors simply sent Bitcoin to a wallet and received DeSo coins automatically on the blockchain. To bootstrap user adoption, Al-Naji employed a growth hack: pre-populated user profiles for high-profile accounts (Naval Ravikant, Chamath Palihapitiya, Kim Kardashian) with initial coin allocations so their profiles had value waiting to be claimed.

In March 2021, BitClap launched with password-protected links shared to a few hundred early users. The plan was to stay quiet and test the network through mid-2021, but the links got massively overshared and the project exploded beyond control. Al-Naji, wanting to follow Satoshi Nakamoto's playbook of anonymous launching, maintained a pseudonym: "Diamond Hands." However, this backfired spectacularly. "It was kind of very hard to get press. It was hard to get people to kind of listen to the story that is the real story versus making up their own," he recalled. The media called it a scam. The early app had major UX issues—you couldn't cash out your money, the code wasn't open source, and the site went down frequently. As Sean summarized the criticism: "There's a website that you invest money in. You don't know who made it. It doesn't work a lot of the times. And you can't get the money out."

Despite the rocky launch, the core mechanic—creator coins tied to user profiles—proved viral and compelling. Within months, approximately $80 million was invested across user coins on the network. Some creators made substantial sums through NFT royalties; one creator reportedly accumulated over $100,000 flowing to their coin holders through secondary sales. The distributed model also worked: 100+ applications were built on top of the DeSo blockchain, including Diamond App, Polygram (for NFTs), Pulse (for trading), Cloud Feed (mobile), and Flick App. Diamond App surpassed BitClap in popularity shortly after launching.

What didn't work was the anonymity. When the code wasn't open source and you couldn't withdraw funds, combined with an unknown founder, the project looked like an obvious scam. Regulatory uncertainty and difficulty hiring made the early phase chaotic. Al-Naji eventually realized he had to abandon the Satoshi playbook: "Immediately, it was kind of very hard to get press... we were just not prepared at all."

By late 2021, the blockchain had decentralized sufficiently (running on thousands of nodes) that Al-Naji came out of pseudonymity and revealed himself as the 29-year-old founder. The code went fully open source. DeSo coins began trading on major exchanges (blockchain.com, Ascendex, with others incoming). The team formally established the DeSo Foundation as a nonprofit where creators are paid in a mix of cash and DeSo tokens. Rather than building products themselves, they focus purely on blockchain development and fund third-party developers to build apps on top.

The long-term vision has crystallized: use blockchain-native monetization mechanisms (creator coins, NFTs with royalties, pay-to-promote features) to let fans invest in creators early and share in their upside. As Sean articulated it: "This lets your true fans go on the ride with you, and it turns your fans into sort of shareholders with you." Unlike traditional social networks where followers have zero equity, on DeSo a fan who believed in Sam early could buy his coin, profit if he grows, and have aligned incentives to support his success. The blockchain now powers what Al-Naji sees as the future of social media: open data, multiple competing apps, direct creator-to-fan monetization, and no central gatekeeper.