• Mask Network acquired Pawo.net, an instance of Mastodon with 800,000 users.
• Mask Network says this is a milestone towards building a “decentralized social media network.”
• The news comes as Twitter is facing increasing criticism from cryptocurrency natives.

Twitter is in chaos, so the time might be right for competitors to emerge. One company is seizing the moment with an acquisition that could be a major milestone for decentralized social networks.

Mask Network, a Web3 social networking company, announced the acquisition of Pawo.net on Wednesday. Pawo.net is one of the largest instances of a decentralized social network, Mastodon.

The Social Coop Limited, an affiliated entity of the Mask Network, will be the new owner of Pawo.net.

Pawoo.net is the second largest instance of the Mastodon decentralized social network. The instance is prevalent in Japan and has 800,000 users.

“The acquisition of Pawoo marks another milestone for the Mask team toward building a decentralized social network and a free and open internet,” the announcement wrote. According to Mask Network, the new team will take over on Wednesday. There will be no immediate impact on Pawo.net users, the company said.

Mask Network is a Web3 social media company focused on adding Web3 integrations for Web2 social media platforms. The company was also active in the Mastodon Network.

The Mask Network maintains two of the most active Mastodon instances; mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They also created the first official Mastdon app.

Twitter getting worse?

News of the acquisition comes as Twitter CEO Elon Musk faces increasing criticism from advocates of decentralized technology. In particular, Musk is under fire for banning users from sharing links to their profiles on other platforms.

Mastodon’s user interface and core functionality is similar to that of Twitter. Many users are starting to see it as a decentralized alternative to the platform.

Users unhappy with the direction Musk is taking on Twitter are increasingly turning to Mastodon. According to the developers, the decentralized social media platform has gained more than two million users since Musk took over Twitter.

One of Musk’s critics is founder Vitalik Buterin. On Sunday, Buterin challenged who challenged Musk’s ban and shared a profile of him on the mastodon instance cryptodon.lol.

He also pointed to an earlier tweet from Musk, in which the tech CEO appears to criticize a policy similar to the one he just implemented.

“The litmus test for two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad guy!” Musk wrote in June.

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a decentralized social media network made up of federated servers running the same open source software and connected.

This means that users can communicate with people on different servers without using an external platform or service, such as Twitter or Facebook (NASDAQ:).

“As a decentralized and open-source-based social network, Mastodon, which currently has 1.9 million monthly active users, has become the preferred choice for many users who believe in self-control and autonomy,” Mask Network writes. Mastodon also allows users to create their servers, or “instances”, to host communities with different rules and guidelines. Pawo.net is one of many such examples. Others include mastodon.social, the largest instance on the network, and crypto-focused cryptodon.lol.

“Despite its features like Twitter, Mastodon allows individual users to set up their own social networks and determine how it works and what their users can share,” they add.

In the reverse

• Decentralized social networks still have a long way to go before they become competitive with major platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
• Monetization is a particular issue, something Mastodon supports.

why should you care

Mask Network’s acquisition of the Mastodon Pawo.net instance could be a step towards creating a better and more user-friendly social networking experience. It could also be an important test of whether or not decentralized technology can compete with Web2 platforms at this point.

See original on DailyCoin