Imagine a world where your digital identity is truly your own, where every post, connection, and interaction isn’t locked within the walls of a corporate platform but exists as an extension of your personal autonomy. This isn’t a utopian vision, it’s the necessary evolution of social media in an era where digital sovereignty is a fundamental right.

For decades, we have unknowingly traded our digital independence for the convenience of centralized platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, these platforms have shaped our digital lives, yet they function more like gilded cages. Every post we create, every relationship we cultivate, every conversation we engage in is ultimately controlled by corporations that can modify, monetize, or erase our digital existence with a single policy change or algorithmic decision.

A New Future for TikTok

As TikTok decides on its ownership future, Project Liberty has teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a pioneer in online community building, and Kevin O’Leary, renowned investor and entrepreneur known for his role on Shark Tank, to take the platform on-chain. Why?

At its core, this is about more than just TikTok. It’s about who controls the digital spaces where billions connect, create, and consume information. For too long, the internet’s most vibrant communities have been shaped –and ultimately governed– by a handful of corporations. Project Liberty is leading the movement to change that, ensuring that social networks serve the people who power them, not just those who own them.

The key to this shift is Frequency, a public, permissionless blockchain developed by Project Liberty’s technology team and designed specifically for high-volume social networking, reinforces the foundation of a user-driven internet, prioritizing interoperability, data sovereignty, and resilience against centralized control. Together, these initiatives aim to move social media away from corporate ownership and toward an open, user-controlled model.

TikTok, for all its cultural impact, is no different. As the debate over its ownership and data practices continues, the larger issue remains unresolved: should a single entity, whether a government or a corporation, control the social fabric of a generation? What’s at stake isn’t just who owns TikTok but whether a platform of its scale can operate outside the confines of centralized control. If it is to be reimagined within a decentralized framework, it will require a foundation built on true interoperability, user-owned data, and open governance. This is where Frequency comes in.

From TikTok to Bluesky: Building a Decentralized Future

The question of TikTok’s future highlights a much larger shift in how we think about social media. The need for decentralization is no longer theoretical, it’s an urgent necessity. Bluesky, an open-source social media project, is one attempt to answer that call.

Bluesky is not just another platform, it represents an effort to redefine the relationship between users and their digital identities. But true digital liberation demands more than good intentions, it requires a structural commitment to full decentralization. It offers a glimpse into what a decentralized social web could look like, but key vulnerabilities remain.

Bluesky, for all its promise, still relies on structural choke points that pose a risk to its long-term decentralization. Storage nodes largely remain centralized under the control of Bluesky PBC or 3rd party providers, meaning user data is still housed in locations that could become points of control. Relay and Firehose systems, responsible for data distribution, remain concentrated in the hands of a few. And while it is positive that Bluesky has implemented the W3C standard for Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), the PLC (Public Ledger of Credentials) directory is also centralized. These may seem like small technical details at present, but history has repeatedly shown how seemingly minor technical decisions can become the very mechanisms through which power is consolidated and autonomy is eroded.

Frequency, the Backbone of a Decentralized Social Web

This is where Frequency enters the picture, not just as a blockchain, but as an entirely new framework for digital identity and social media governance. Frequency isn’t merely modifying the current model; it is rethinking how we interact online from the ground up. Instead of central authorities dictating terms, Frequency ensures that users — not platforms — hold the keys to their digital lives.

Decentralization is more than a technical shift, it’s about restoring fundamental rights. Users must have the ability to grant access to their data, but just as crucially, they must have the power to revoke it. The relationships they build online — followers, connections, conversations — must belong to them, not to a platform that can manipulate or erase them at will.

Decentralization With Purpose

Frequency operates on the principle of minimal, purposeful decentralization which makes long term sustainability of the ecosystem at population scale viable. The only data stored on-chain is what is essential to guarantee individual data rights. This design approach allows for efficient chain optimization focused on core social events, primarily activity related to account, graph, and communication primitives.This focus on core social allows for tokenized incentives to be designed around management of network capacity, with specific incentives for creators, consumers and other more specific actors left to higher levels of the technology stack.

The promise of a user-owned internet is incomplete without robust safeguards that protect personal data. Frequency ensures that users have cryptographic protection over their information, along with granular controls that dictate how their data is shared. At the same time, they should have the flexibility to impose platform-specific restrictions, ensuring that their content appears only in the digital spaces where they want it to be seen. Further, they must be able to delete their content at their discretion. They should also have the power to restrict content to specific platforms if they choose to do so.

This approach directly addresses the fundamental roadblocks that have prevented previous attempts at decentralization from scaling. Frequency ensures that no single entity — not even its own node operators—has the power to alter or censor user data. It provides a decentralized backup of Bluesky’s Firehose, ensuring that user-generated content remains accessible beyond the control of a single party. Its architecture is designed not just for ideological purity but for practical sustainability and scalability, offering minimal latency and cost-efficient operations to ensure the system remains viable for mass adoption.

Achieving Digital Self-Sovereignty

The internet was meant to be open, interconnected, and free. But today, we stand at a crossroads: either we continue to rely on corporate-controlled social media, or we take the necessary steps to create a more open, user-owned digital future.

Bluesky is a step forward, but without addressing its remaining points of centralization, it risks becoming just another walled garden, perhaps a slightly more open one, but still one where users lack true control. TikTok presents an even bigger challenge. The debate over its ownership is missing the point. The real question isn’t who should own TikTok, but whether any social media giant should be owned at all in the traditional sense. Decentralization offers a new way forward, one where platforms are built around user sovereignty, rather than corporate control.

With Frequency, we are moving one step closer to reclaiming the original promise of the internet. True digital liberation requires breaking free from the data monopolies that have defined the social media era. This isn’t just a technological upgrade, it’s a necessary shift in power.

There is more to SEC’s recent memecoin guidance than meets the eye. On Feb. 27, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance issued guidance explaining that memecoins — which the SEC described as digital assets “inspired by internet memes, characters, current events, or trends for which the promoter seeks to attract an enthusiastic online community” — are generally not sold as securities.

This is consistent with the SEC’s shift away from efforts under former Chair Gary Gensler to claim regulatory power over virtually the entire digital-asset industry, and it could have implications for the industry that go far beyond memecoins.

The SEC’s attempts to regulate digital assets during the Biden Administration largely hinged on the Supreme Court’s so-called “Howey test” for determining whether a transaction involves an “investment contract.” Howey requires an investment of money in a common enterprise, with an expectation of profits from the efforts of others.

In the SEC’s enforcement actions against digital-asset exchanges, the defendants argued that secondary-market resales of digital assets lack the necessary “investment of money in a common enterprise” because investors’ funds are not “pooled” by developers into a common fund and then used to further a business in which the investors share the profits. In the SEC’s case against Kraken, for example, the agency told a federal court that “pooling of resale proceeds” by a developer is not “required under Howey.”

The SEC’s new guidance confirms the opposite. It says that purchasers of memecoins make no investment in a common enterprise because their funds “are not pooled together to be deployed by promoters or other third parties for developing the coin or a related enterprise.” The guidance also explains that memecoin purchasers do not expect profits derived from the efforts of others, another Howey requirement. Rather, the value of memecoins comes from “speculative trading and the collective sentiment of the market, like a collectible.”

The SEC’s memecoin guidance is most obviously consequential for the sale and promotion of memecoins, which are the subject of recent private class-actions brought by individual plaintiffs. But it has broader implications for all secondary-market transactions in digital assets, including on exchanges. In secondary-market transactions on exchanges, purchasers’ funds likewise “are not pooled together to be deployed by promoters or other third parties for developing the coin or a related enterprise.” Thus, the SEC now seems to recognize that under a proper application of the Howey test, those transactions are beyond the agency’s reach, as defendants have consistently argued in the SEC’s prior enforcement cases.

This doctrinal reversal may be part of the impetus behind the SEC’s recent decisions to voluntarily dismiss several cases involving secondary-market transactions, and to stay further proceedings in others.

To be sure, the SEC’s new guidance includes statements that it “represents the views of [agency] staff,” not necessarily the SEC itself, and that the statement “has no legal force or effect.” The SEC also attempted to restrict the guidance to “the offer and sale of meme coins” under the specific circumstances described elsewhere in the release.

The agency could try to use those boilerplate recitals to wriggle out of the guidance at some point in the future. But constitutional principles of due process and fair notice may constrain the agency’s ability to impose retroactive liability based on any future flip-flop. Moreover, although the SEC’s guidance is not binding on courts, the SEC’s change in position on pooling will make it difficult for private plaintiffs to credibly argue that most digital assets are sold as securities.

The SEC’s guidance on memecoins is consistent with the agency’s other recent steps to pull back from the regulation-by-enforcement approach that plagued the industry under former Chair Gary Gensler. And the guidance offers welcome clarity from the agency in an area where the agency’s prior approach had significantly muddied the waters. It is, in short, a significant step in the right direction for crypto law and policy in the United States.

One of the most intriguing aspects of crypto is its sense of anonymity. Bitcoin (BTC), for example, was created in 2008 by an unknown figure using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and to this day, the true identity of its inventor remains unknown. The veil of anonymity has allowed users to create distinct identities through wallet addresses, adding an extra layer of privacy and discretion to transactions. 

This concept of openness and universal access is one of the core promises of digital currencies, allowing anyone with internet access to engage, regardless of their financial history or background. However, even though the ethos of crypto promotes inclusivity, the reality hasn’t always reflected this. 

The early days of crypto were defined by the archetype “crypto bros,” referring to a specific demographic of young, tech-savvy men who influenced the industry’s direction. Their influence extended to the design of projects, development of key protocols, and framing of the culture surrounding digital assets. 

However, as the industry matured and evolved, efforts were made to reflect and include more female voices. This shift helped address the imbalance between gender representation, bringing new perspectives into the industry. 

A 2024 study revealed that over 560 million cryptocurrency owners exist globally, with 61 percent identifying as male and 39 percent as female. This marks an increase from the previous year, when the global total was 420 million, with 37 percent of owners being female, signaling a positive shift. 

In response to this trend, organizations have emerged to address crypto’s gender imbalances. Conferences and events once primarily targeted toward the male-dominated demographic have changed to allow women to step into the space and take the lead.

The Association for Women in Cryptocurrency, or AWC, for example, was founded in 2022 as a platform for women looking to enhance their knowledge and education in crypto. Led by Amanda Wick, AWC hosts various events, like webinars and in-person meetups, where women can learn from industry experts and connect with mentors who can guide them and help them discover new career opportunities. 

Recently, Binance shared that it will offer global programs exclusively for women through its Binance Academy platform in honor of International Women’s Day. The events will be held across five continents at 11 venues to help women ease their way into the industry.

While women have made significant strides in the DeFi space, now accounting for 40 percent of Binance’s workforce, leadership positions have been predominantly held by men. Despite this, several women have established themselves as leaders in the space.

Perianne Boring, for instance, is the founder and CEO of the blockchain advocacy group The Digital Chamber, working alongside Congress and the government to promote and regulate blockchain technology. Her leadership role has made her an advocate for adopting blockchain technologies, as she has become a well-known voice in the space discussing the future of finance. In December, President Trump also considered Boring as a potential CFTC chair. 

Another established female leader in the space is Joanna Liang, the founding partner of Jsquare, a tech-focused investment firm specializing in blockchain and web3. With a previous background as CIO at Digital Finance Group (DFG), a global Venture Capital firm focusing on crypto projects, Liang recently launched Jsquare’s latest fund, the Pioneer Fund. The fund has successfully raised $50 million in capital, making its first investment in the startup MinionLabs. The fund will focus on emerging technologies in the crypto space, including PayFi, real-world assets (RWAs), and consumer apps. 

Laura Shin is also a prominent name in crypto and is recognized as one of the first mainstream media reporters to cover cryptocurrency full-time. She is the author of the book, ‘The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze,’ and the host of the podcast Unchained. Laura has shared her expertise at events such as TEDx San Francisco and the International Monetary Fund. 

Over the past 16 years, women have been instrumental in helping legitimize crypto assets throughout the financial landscape. Their contributions have spanned various sectors in the ecosystem, helping shift the narrative around crypto from a niche, speculative asset to a more widely recognized and accepted financial tool.