After studying neuroscience at UCD and spending several years auditing aircraft leasing companies for KPMG, Waivlength founder and CEO Niall O'Reilly returned home to Oristown near Kells, Co Meath at the start of the pandemic and started to develop an interest in the crypto space.
The blockchain and web 3.0 were not concepts he was exposed to in "extremely by the book" KPMG, but as he neared the end of his four-year contract with the professional services giant, he started trying to build business concepts around his new-found passion.
"Web 3.0, for me, just made perfect sense," the 26-year-old said of the latest iteration of the internet, which aims to decentralise and democratise the web while incorporating the blockchain (cryptocurrency, NFTs) and concepts such as virtual/augmented reality and the metaverse.
"I've invested in a little bit of a speculative future in that regard, or so people may think looking in, but I'm 100% confident that this is kind of the way of the internet, and we're already trending in that direction."
Waivlength, the blockchain-based social media platform O'Reilly founded that rewards its fully verified users with cryptocurrency($WAIV), was the result of his efforts, and he turned down an extension at KPMG to pursue the idea last May.
In Association with
Since then Waivlength has received a €250,000 grant from the Algorand Foundation, a blockchain host that rewards high-potential start-ups, and raised more than €200,000 in an ongoing pre-seed crowdfunding campaign that started last week.
Waivlength, which is currently in its build phase and on track for a beta launch in the second quarter, won't be radically different from established social networks in terms of its offering -- news feed, search bar, groups, direct messaging, etc.
However, it won't sell user data to advertisers, although it will service adverts, and the platform's user base will be rewarded with $WAIV tokens for contributions (liking posts, creating groups, etc.) while being limited initially to one post and one share per day, and 45% of Waivlength’s annual profits will be redistributed back to its community of users.
The verification aspect will also create a higher bar for entry and, in theory, reduce anti-social behaviour compared to established networks where hate content has become a major issue, but O'Reilly sees "huge potential value" in full verification "for the simple fact it hasn't been done before".
Mainly, however, full verification will be put in place to ensure users are real human beings, not bots, and to prevent duplicate accounts and scammers from infiltrating the platform.
"People will feel truly safe in the knowledge that the person that [they're] talking to on the other side of the screen is a real person and their intentions are obviously good if they verified themselves in the first instance," he said.
When Waivlength launches, a user base of 10,000 people who took part in a prior Waivlength crypto trading initiative that raised $50,000 in commissions last summer will be the first to be invited onto the platform, and it will very much be targeted at crypto converts at first.
Beyond that though, who knows? Facebook just reported its first drop in users in its 18-year history, and people who came of age with social media, anecdotally at least, are reverting to more private groups and spaces, while younger users are flocking to TikTok with its powerful algorithms and potential for near-instant virality.
"Certainly, the first target audience that we do anticipate that will use our platform will be let's say the web 3.0 generation of people that understand everything blockchain, understand everything cryptocurrency," O'Reilly explained.
"We're not so much as focused on, let's say, the continuous feed kind of structure. Of course, that's going to be a feature of the platform, but we are focused on building these communities, these kind of atomic networks that will provide a space for people to interact with, in a bit more of a private manner.
"So we do want to target people that I guess, number one, are crypto native, but after that we want to bring new people into the platform to kind of see the novel features that they maybe haven't experienced before."
He added: "We're focusing in on quality of content, so it won't be the same viral nature as TikTok or anything like that. We do want to essentially focus on quality here, reduce the spread of misinformation."
The third version of Waivlength is currently being built, and O'Reilly estimates that it has 150 screens, and it will also incorporate a social finance aspect, which ties into O'Reilly's desire to reward "positive" contributions, and while 70% of the $WAIV token supply will be set aside for rewards, Waivlength will earn some back.
"There's going to be a finite number of tokens set out from the get go," O'Reilly said, "but what will happen is when people interact and trade with the currency on the platform, there'll be small transactional tax that will be incurred on each transaction, whether it's actually pulling back some of the tokens that are interacted with, or if it's actually taking some of the rewards back from the user when they interact with the exchange."
Waivlength has a team of seven at present, comprising O'Reilly and three other C-suite executives, lead and senior blockchain engineers and a frontend mobile engineer, plus it has the backing of IrishTechNews' Simon Cocking and crypto venture capitalist Shane Kehoe.
With the €500,000 it is aiming to raise through its current crowdfunding campaign -- at time of writing Waivlength has raised just over €230,000 in less than a week -- the company hopes to hire a machine learning engineer, a blockchain testing engineer, and experienced heads of growth and marketing.
O'Reilly said Waivlength will not embark on a seed funding round until at least 2023, and not until the platform has 500,000 users or annual revenues in excess of €1m, but the company is planning to reach out to blockchain VCs about funding for the $WAIV token as early as April.
