Ryan X. Charles left his role as a cryptocurrency engineer at Reddit with a single goal: build a social network powered by blockchain and Bitcoin. The project he's launched, called Datt, represents on
Ryan X. Charles left his role as a cryptocurrency engineer at Reddit with a single goal: build a social network powered by blockchain and Bitcoin. The project he's launched, called Datt, represents one attempt within the cryptocurrency community to answer a question it has pursued for years: can you decentralize social media?
Charles introduced the project through a Medium post and interviews conducted earlier this year. Over the past several months, he has focused on converting those ideas into working code. During a presentation at a San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup, he provided the audience with a development roadmap showing when the platform might become usable.
The application sits at 75 percent completion. Charles himself has handled the vast majority of the programming work, though he maintains an open GitHub repository where interested developers can contribute. The software features an interface and allows users to create accounts, but it remains too unfinished to demonstrate. "There is an actual app with an interface and stuff, so you can create a new identity but it's too unworking to demo," Charles said during his presentation.
A prototype build set for November will give early testers a chance to experiment with the platform. Charles said he intends to email selected individuals with access to the invite-only version and solicit their feedback once the application reaches a state of basic functionality. The entire codebase will be open source, allowing anyone to inspect and run the code. "The goal is in November we'll launch an invite-only prototype, of course open source, you can download it and run it. But I'll specifically email some people and try to get feedback at that point once it's actually usable enough that people can understand how it really works," Charles said.
The target for a full public release is March. In a recent blog post, Charles mentioned March 14 as a possible date. Before that rollout occurs, Charles acknowledged that the platform requires additional development across multiple components. What shape Datt takes in its final form remains uncertain. The product may look different from Reddit when it reaches the public.
Datt rests on a contentious premise: a social platform where posting content generates income for contributors. The specific mechanisms that would accomplish this remain unclear. The platform might struggle to attract meaningful usage as a general publishing tool. It could also develop into something more targeted, serving as a bridge between individual creators and their audiences in ways that existing platforms have not managed.
