Catalyze: The Decentralized Social Platform for Thriving Communities

A social platform on the Internet Computer blockchain where Web3 communities can evolve in a safe and open environment.

Published in

The Internet Computer Review

4 min readNov 14, 2022

As social platforms have grown into monopolistic and data-mining ecosystems, online communities have steadily lost the ability to evolve within safe and welcoming environments. Web3 cohorts in particular are searching for a community-building platform that genuinely aligns with their ethos and values. They have been stuck using unfit-for-purpose Web2 platforms like Discord or Telegram, mostly due to the lack of a coherent Web3 alternative.

At Catalyze Software, we believe it’s time to create a whole new paradigm based on user data ownership and allowing community members to evolve on a decentralized platform that is truly customized to their needs. This is why we created Catalyze, a feature-packed decentralized social (DeSo) platform on the Internet Computer blockchain that is designed to host engaged and thriving Web3 communities.

Catalyze, United the Champions

Integrated and Web3 native features

At Catalyze Software, we have been through the process of operating with community tools that were clearly unfit for purpose — and the experience was a true nightmare! Using three to four different platforms and adding seven to ten bots to make sure we could serve our community in a professional manner didn’t make any sense in terms of security and user-friendliness.

But working collaboratively with communities that were experiencing the same difficulty was very fruitful, leading us to develop a set of native and integrated Web3 tools for Catalyze. The platform’s core focus is to make using it as secure and simple as possible for both community leaders and their members.

These tools include:

Direct communication: Chat, group chat, voice, and video conferencing.
Event Management: Planning a Twitter space or a real-life (IRL) presence during conferences was never so simple.
Task Management: Working with fellow community members on getting things done.
Web2 bridging: Potentially linking a Catalyze chat to a Web2 platform such as Discord, Telegram, or Slack, easing the transition from Web2 to Web3.
Proof of Humanity (PoH): Making sure that community members are really who they say they are is of the utmost importance.

We are also huge believers in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and think they have a very bright future. Therefore, we are working hard with industry leaders to integrate outstanding and useful NFT-related features into the Catalyze platform.

These NFT-related features include:

NFT Gating: Communities will be able to gate channels or communities according to the ownership of particular NFTs. No more costly and unsafe third party add-ons.
NFT airdrop and sales management: Communities will be able to manage the entire NFT airdrop process on the platform, from whitelisting to drop.
Integrated NFT marketplaces: Partnerships with flagship NFT marketplaces such as Yumi and Entrepot will streamline the listing process of NFT collections.
Reputation signaling: Community members will have the opportunity to carry their achievements and highlights throughout the whole platform.

Turning audiences into loyal communities

Catalyze empowers online communities to reach their full potential. A gamified and user-friendly experience coupled with an Engage-to-Earn (E2E) token model will prove to be a revolution within the industry.

Catalyze founder & CEO Ray Laracuenta envisions the platform as a powerful tool to turn unstructured audiences into proactive, organized, and engaged communities.

“Catalyze is here to turn unstructured Web3 audiences into structured communities. Using thoughtful incentive models and data, we help community managers get their members engaged and proactive about community building. This changes the engagement experience for users into one where there is clarity at each point and pathways for shared value building in the new economy.”
— Ray Laracuenta, Catalyze founder & CEO

Catalyze’s token model will be a game-changer in the way communities organize themselves and will certainly help them evolve from a loose group of individuals to a passionate and value-sharing community. Indeed, the platform’s tokenized economy will be structured in a way that incentivizes positive and impactful behavior (active participation, etc…) and disincentivize negative ones (spamming, scamming, etc…).

A home for Web3 communities and beyond

With its community-building expertise, the Catalyze Software team is designing Catalyze to be optimized for the needs of today’s Web3 users, supporting a range of functions, features, and integrations. NFT creators and collectors, dapp developers, metaverse gaming enthusiasts, and everyone in between will evolve their communities in an environment designed with them in mind.

In addition to the Internet Computer, Catalyze will also begin to support other leading blockchains in the coming months as part of its multi-chain strategy. The team expects Catalyze to become the first DeSo platform to achieve multi-ecosystem adoption and penetrate the traditional social media market.

A strong vision backed by a solid roadmap

Catalyze recently opened its Beta to the public after successful Alpha and Private Beta phases. The platform is currently in its Web2 parity phase with the fine-tuning of basic functions and low friction migration capability. The upcoming milestones on Catalyze’s roadmap will be to activate Web3 features (wallets, NFTs, and more), integrate Web3 partners, and initiate the tokenomics layer.