California-based startup Lino fights social-platform power with blockchain

With their promise to empower, decentralized platforms have quickly become havens for content creators. One group of Chinese entrepreneurs want in on that action, building a startup in California from where they are bringing their tech to the world—and possibly back to China one day. 

The company, Lino, was established in mid-2017. Lino—the name comes from “livestream now”—uses blockchain technology to create a decentralized autonomous content economy. This means, every creator or user in the community becomes part owner.

A decentralized approach to content sharing has empowerment as a basic tenet, putting individuals, not corporations or monopolistic organizations, at the center, its proponents say. Decentralized platforms have also become a haven for those content creators whose work is vulnerable to censorship, or who are being financially exploited by giant centralized platforms.

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