Why TikTok Should Be OnChain

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.