Decentralized Social Names Former Meta Exec as COO

Salil Shah joins DeSo after holding exec roles at Meta and Pinterest, most recently leading global go-to-market for Meta Fintech

Key Takeaways  :

• Salil Shah, former Meta, and Pinterest executive, has joined DeSo, a blockchain platform that has raised $200 million from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, CAA, and Coinbase.

• The announcement comes as DeSo has experienced two consecutive months of over 120% Month over Month growth, particularly as consumers seek open, decentralized alternatives with the turmoil at Twitter

• Shah’s motivation for joining stems from his belief that DeSo has the potential to transform the creator economy.

DeSo is the first layer-1 blockchain capable of supporting content-rich social applications, and has raised over $200 million in funding from Sequoia, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase, CAA, and others. DeSo is well positioned to power next-generation web3 apps that give more ownership, transparency, and control to both creators and their fans.

After years spent building the category-defining technology underlying the platform, DeSo has now hired Salil Shah to scale the business. Shah has deep experience in business development, go-to-market, and partner ecosystems, most recently leading global go-to-market for Meta’s Fintech group.

With Shah’s expertise, DeSo is primed to accelerate its mission to re-imagine the creator economy, and expand the scope of web3 from purely financial applications to creator-focused social applications.

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“Empowering and supporting creators is a mission I’m deeply passionate about,” Shah says. Shah adds that DeSo has built “the first blockchain platform that allows social content to be stored directly on-chain, giving creators more ownership, the ability to engage with fans across platforms, and the opportunity to build direct financial relationships with fans.”

“I’m excited to join this incredible team and partner with Nader to build the business as the industry moves towards the next phase of the creator internet, powered by web3,” he continues.

Shah will complement DeSo founder Nader Al-Naji’s deep technical expertise with his extensive business experience as a tech executive and strategy leader.

Leading an Emerging Category

Shah joins as the emerging category of “decentralized social” is showing signs of early growth, with DeSo recently experiencing 120% month-over-month growth (following 160% growth the previous month).

“This growth is being driven by DeSo’s ecosystem of hundreds of third-party apps, which are now starting to find retention,” says Al-Naji. For example, Diamond and Desofy have earned creators over $20 million in its early days off of novel monetization primitives like social tipping, social NFTs, and social tokens.

Several promising apps have recently launched on the DeSo platform, including Pearl, a web3 Instagram, NFTz, a decentralized NFT marketplace, and DAODAO, a social Kickstarter-like fundraising tool. And tools like OpenProsper, a social block explorer, provide data and insights into the growing DeSo ecosystem of developers, partners, and users.

“We’re seeing a flywheel start to form,” says Al-Naji. “Now that we have a seed of users and content, developers are building apps like never before, which is growing usage and content even more in a virtuous cycle.”

DeSo recently listed on Coinbase, and its mission of re-imagining the creator economy has never been more relevant with the turmoil at Twitter. One of the first apps launched on DeSo is Diamond, which offers a decentralized Twitter-like experience where communities can support creators with micro-tipping.

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