You may have noticed recently that there is no longer a Social tab in the ZBD app. Let us explain- last year ZBD Social was launched with a vision for a new type of social media experience, one where payments could be sent instantly around the world and directly to creators on a secure, private platform connected to the wider, growing network of Nostr.
If you didn’t know, Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is an open-source decentralized communication protocol. It is widely recognized as a tool for building a censorship-resistant social network by prominent figures like Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden. ZBD has been instrumental in the creation and development of Nostr to power this vision of seamlessly merging payments onto a social platform.
We’re not the only ones chasing this dream. As our world becomes more digitally connected, the demand for digital payments and communities (and currencies cough cough bitcoin) grows. Tech giants are racing to provide a comprehensive social platform with embedded payments. Be it X (formerly Twitter) pursuing US money transmitter licenses to enable peer-to-peer payments, or CashApp envisioning itself operating as a “social bank”, or PayPal preparing to launch a new social media-centric P2P app with more Venmo features, all of these major industry players are moving towards a similar market opportunity.
So what’s the problem?
One of the main challenges with executing this vision that both ZBD and the tech industry at large are facing is rising fraud. The FTC reported $1.5B in losses from social media platform-based scams last year, in part driven by AI-powered bots and schemes. It costs significant resources to monitor and moderate user generated content to combat this form of fraud. For example, Meta spent approximately $5 billion globally on content moderation in one year with a team of more than 40,000 people. We experienced unrelenting scammers on ZBD Social who were highly motivated by a social network containing bitcoin. You may have seen this spam first hand on the ZBD Social feed asking for zaps “to be matched” and sharing referral links. Even with tools and individuals dedicated to content moderation, the feed continued to be fraught with spam. This culminated in a sub-par experience for our users that we could not accept moving forward.
Beyond the fraud challenges previously discussed, ZBD Social lacked persistent engagement amongst our user base. Back when we first launched last year, I was an advocate and daily user of ZBD Social. You may have seen my profile on the Discover feed, clairevp@zbd.gg. I would post rewarded challenges (best joke gets 10k sats), food pics (my tortilla obsession became known), tv show commentary, and new feature updates. It was exciting being able to interact with and zap bitcoin to ZBD users directly. Unfortunately, as spam posts began clogging the feed, it became more difficult to find and interact with real users, making the experience less enjoyable. This led to less engagement from real users and even more spam on the feed. By mid this year, ZBD Social had too little user activity to justify investing more resources for improvement. Overall, Nostr is still an early technology and not perfectly aligned with the rest of the ZBD app’s current offering.
ZBD is a small but mighty team dedicated to building the future now and with that comes the excitement and challenge of innovation. While we continue to believe in the opportunity and potential of Nostr as a technology, we refuse to compromise on providing a great user experience. Consequently, we have discontinued ZBD Social in the app (for now). Users can still retain and access their profiles on different Nostr apps as well as receive their keys from Customer Support if needed. ZBD believes wholly in Nostr’s potential for providing a truly unstoppable communications network and will continue to be a supporter of its development.
As innovators, ZBD will continue to iterate in pursuit of our vision for a digitally connected world where money moves freely. Stay tuned for what we build next!
References
American Banker - What does the future hold for social media-powered payments?
PricewaterhouseCoopers - Payments 2025 & beyond
Payments Dive: Fraud picks up as the economy goes digital during the pandemic
Meta - Meta Launches New Content Moderation Tool as It Takes Chair of Counter-Terrorism NGO
Forbes - Roger Huang - Your Guide To Nostr, The Decentralized Network For Everything
Forbes - Brianna Honkawa d'Estries - How To Earn Bitcoin And Join The Creator Economy With Nostr
