Exclusive: After Telegram, Another Giant Social Network Planning an ICO?

After Telegram, it seems another big network is gearing up for an initial coin offering, and this time, we suspect it is Ask.fm, a Q&A social network that rose to popularity a few years ago, and today claims to have over 200 million users from around the world.

Social networks were major drivers for internet adoption and usage in the past decade, and naturally managed to accumulate large user-bases. Now, with blockchain technology and initial coin offerings gaining hype, it makes sense for these networks to leverage their adoption for large-scale ICOs.

While there have been several rumors surrounding names such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), WhatsApp and even Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), only a few popular entities have so far stepped into the crypto space publicly, the main one being Telegram, and others like Kik and Kodak.

Initially we got alerted to a job posting for “...a global social Q&A network with more than 200 million registered users. They are looking for an Ethereum Solidity Developer to join their team to help develop a new blockchain / cryptocurrency project globally” and started investigating further.

We obviously looked at Quora first, since it is also believed to have around 200 million users, and spoke to some of our sources, but did not find any solid leads. After further digging, we started considering Ask.fm, and looked into their recent domain purchase history via a reverse lookup, only to find that a week before the job posting above, Askfmico.com was registered.

The finding further confirmed that the Q&A network might be looking to launch its own coin.

For those who are not very familiar with Ask.fm, the network rose to prominence with its anonymous questions feature, allowing users to ask their friends and peers personal questions without revealing their identities.

Now it seems Ask.fm is aiming for a blockchain powered network, seeking to build on its existing user base of 200 million (potential crypto adopters) and create a Q&A ecosystem where content creators are rewarded with a native cryptocurrency.

Having reached out to one of our sources, we have obtained officially unconfirmed details on Ask.fm’s potential, tokenized Q&A economy model. The platform is likely to allow users to exchange information for native tokens, and get rewards for qualitative content (both questions and answers) . Additionally, celebrities or experts will be able to either accept bids for answers or set their own bids.

We also believe Ask.fm may revamp their mobile applications to add wallet support for tokens (Askcoins?), which are likely to be issued on the Ethereum blockchain.

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While an interesting concept, it remains to be seen if and how Ask.fm executes this blockchain-powered network and whether it manages to gain the first-mover advantage. A successful start for Ask.fm might incentivize other networks, particularly Quora, to go down this path, if it is not already considering it.

Please note, as of now, none of the information in this article is confirmed or coming from an official source. We are awaiting an official response from Ask.fm and will continue to update our readers as we learn more.