The IOST blockchain infrastructure is looking to incorporate a social engagement-based micropayments and staking ecosystem onto its platform to spur widespread blockchain adoption for over six million active users, especially in Latin America, before the end of 2019.

The Emogi Network is a blockchain-based product development studio incubated by IOST which just launched its two inaugural decentralized applications (dApps) – Berminal and Bermi – to offer millions of users and audiences wider access to news, information, and a balanced exchange of ideas.

Designed as an open and permissionless system with Proof-of-Stake validation and rewards, the Emogi Network combines the power of blockchain with the traditional web to eliminate reliance on centralized intermediaries for news generation, curation and distribution. Its reported over six million users are expected to be onboarded onto the IOST blockchain by end of 2019 to broaden users’ ability to be a part of a wider community and marketplace.

“By the number of total users and active users, Emogi Network’s DApps will be the biggest launched (on the IOST platform),” says IOST’s CEO, Jimmy Zhong via email. “When Emogi Network moves onto the IOST blockchain, it will be the biggest onboarding of active users onto a public blockchain resulting in the biggest one-time adoption of crypto ever.”

Zhong adds that his platform will continue to provide strategic and financial backing to projects like Emogi Network to unleash the true value of blockchain through its “powerful and scalable Proof-of-Believability consensus algorithm, the foundation’s institutional backing, and large network of partners…” for mass adoption of dApps.

IOST currently supports 13 dApps on its network including a suite of games, wallets and stablecoins. Its ecosystem includes over 250 developers and partners, including Huobi and CoinGecko. It prides itself as solving the scalability trilemma i.e. having to select between levels of security, scalability, and decentralization; and enables dApps to build and deploy services on its platform through a “Proof-of-Believability” consensus mechanism that helps more everyday users experience the mass benefits of blockchain services.

Bermi is a community of video creators sharing the best in short video content and is available on the Apple App Store and Android Play Store. Users earn rewards as they create and share engaging video. It has reportedly surpassed both Snapchat and TikTok in overall downloads on the Colombia Google Play Store as well as become one of the ten most downloaded apps in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. Over 40% of its users are said to be based in Colombia and Mexico of which 72% are between the ages of 18 and 34. Berminal, on the other hand, is a real-time news terminal with a full-time staff of professional crypto reporters creating and curating content around the clock, and has more than one million active users in the space. Both dApps are powered by Emogi, a widely-distributed digital currency that users may stake and to provide payment to content creators simply through social engagement.

The two dApps’ addition to the IOST blockchain is strategic to the Asia-based platform’s global expansion drive following a recent venture into the Eastern Europe market through a partnership with the largest crowdfunding platform in the region. Partnering with the Russia-based Boomstarter, a platform that has so far helped projects raise over $7.5 million, is to motivate entrepreneurs broaden their fundraising reach by enabling projects from the region raise funds without the supporters being limited to holding the Russian Ruble.