- Billionaire Frank McCourt is among the many events who’ve put in a bid for TikTok within the US, and there are studies that he may decentralize the social media big on Polkadot.
- McCourt is an outspoken critic of Large Tech and has been calling for customers to personal their information for years, lending credence to the studies a couple of large shift in TikTok America’s mannequin.
The way forward for TikTok within the US could possibly be decentralized, and Polkadot is main the best way to turn into the community that anchors the social media app with 170 million American customers.
Frank McCourt, the true property billionaire famend as the previous proprietor of Main League Baseball franchise LA Dodgers, is among the many events serious about buying the American operations of the Chinese language firm. TikTok has been compelled right into a sale by the Biden administration, which has accused the corporate of cannibalizing Individuals’ information for the Chinese language authorities. It’s not the primary try and unload the corporate to American house owners, with a previous push by the Trump administration falling by.
McCourt is main a consortium of people and firms below his Undertaking Liberty umbrella. He has introduced on Guggenheim Securities because the funding financial institution and Kirkland Ellis because the legislation agency that can take cost of the deal. He says he has been in talks with a number of events to companion up on the sale, hinting that participation could possibly be open to the general public.
An outspoken critic of the info silo mannequin of Large Tech, McCourt instructed one information outlet that he intends to rebuild the social media platform as “a brand new and higher model of the web the place people are revered, and so they personal and management their identification and their information.”
He doubled down on his intention to rework TikTok from its present mannequin, stating, “We’re speaking a couple of completely different structure, a unique mind-set concerning the web and the way it operates.”
TikTok on Polkadot?
In a press launch, McCourt revealed that he intends to rebuild TikTok utilizing instruments that his Undertaking Liberty has been engaged on. Considered one of these is the open-source Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). Undertaking Liberty believes DSNP is the inspiration of equitable web that places the consumer first.
DSNP has already been put to make use of. In a single such implementation, the social media platform MeWe used DSNP to deploy its app on Frequency, a parachain community on the Polkadot blockchain. Frequency has been a parachain since late 2022.
Whereas McCourt didn’t explicitly point out Polkadot or Frequency, the blockchain neighborhood believes that it’s solely a matter of time earlier than one of many world’s most essential platforms is on the community.
McCourt commented:
We wish all of the capital to be values-aligned [around]a brand new and higher model of the web, the place people are revered and so they personal and management their identification and their information.
Polkadot’s DOT has gained 6.79% up to now day to commerce at $7.53 for a market cap of $10.8 billion.