Bridging TikTok’s future on-chain and Tuvalu’s digital legacy

On March 4, 2025, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his audacious plan to join Frank McCourt’s bid for TikTok’s United States operations, aiming to bring the cultural juggernaut “on-chain” using blockchain technology via Frequency. This move, detailed in Ohanian’s X posts and amplified by trending discussions, promises to empower TikTok’s creators and users with ownership of their data and audience, reimagining social media as a decentralized, transparent ecosystem.

Exciting news for the digital world…

I'm officially now one of the people trying to buy TikTok US — and bring it on-chain.

TikTok has been a game-changer for creators, and it's future should be built by them↓ pic.twitter.com/SPq1Ppv1kK

— Alexis Ohanian 🗽 (@alexisohanian) March 4, 2025

As someone deeply invested in the intersection of culture, community, and technology—particularly through my work on the Tuvalu National Digital Ledger—I see a profound synergy between Ohanian’s vision and my past efforts, offering lessons and opportunities to bridge digital empowerment with cultural preservation.

TikTok’s cultural transformation: A blockchain opportunity

TikTok, with its billions of daily users and global cultural influence, has become a powerhouse for viral trends, music, dance, and storytelling, shaping youth culture worldwide. Ohanian’s proposal to integrate blockchain—where users “own their data” and “creators own their audience”—could democratize this platform, reducing the centralized control of ByteDance
and U.S. regulatory pressures. As noted in the earlier Reuters article, this aligns with McCourt’s Project Liberty, which seeks to rearchitect social media for greater transparency and user empowerment.

Culturally, this shift could amplify marginalized voices, from Pacific Islander creators to indigenous artists, by ensuring they retain ownership and profit from their content. However, it also risks fragmenting TikTok’s global cultural cohesion, as highlighted in Noema’s analysis of social media decentralization, potentially creating silos that dilute its unifying power. Balancing this tension—preserving TikTok’s role as a cultural exchange hub while decentralizing control—is a critical challenge Ohanian must navigate.

Lessons from Tuvalu’s National Digital Ledger

My work on the Tuvalu National Digital Ledger, launched in 2020 with Faiā and nChain, offers a compelling parallel. Facing existential threats like climate change and globalization, Tuvalu sought to preserve its culture, land, and heritage through a blockchain-based digital infrastructure, as detailed in AP News. This initiative aimed to transform government and economic processes while ensuring Tuvaluans retained sovereignty over their digital assets, with a strong local element to avoid external exploitation—a concern echoed in Sage Journals’ critique of “Blockchain Imperialism in the Pacific.”

Like Ohanian’s TikTok vision, Tuvalu’s project prioritized community empowerment, transparency, and cultural integrity. By leveraging blockchain’s unalterable ledger, we enabled Tuvaluans to manage their data securely, countering imperialistic tech pressures while fostering economic equity. This experience highlights how blockchain can safeguard cultural identity in digital spaces, a model that could guide TikTok’s transition to ensure diverse communities—especially non-Western or indigenous groups—aren’t marginalized in a U.S.-centric blockchain framework.

Bridging the gaps with ‘Notion UTXOs: Platform Decoupling’ In a past article of mine (Notion UTXOs: Platform Decoupling), I explored how Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) and blockchain can decouple centralized platforms like Notion, enhancing user control, interoperability, and cultural resilience. This line of thinking directly addresses gaps Ohanian might face in his TikTok initiative, such as user adoption, scalability, and cultural sensitivity.

• User Adoption and Education: TikTok’s young, non-technical audience may struggle with blockchain concepts. My article suggests using UTXOs to create granular, transparent transactions (e.g., for content ownership or rewards), making blockchain more intuitive and accessible, much like Notion’s modular design, which simplifies productivity for diverse users.
• Scalability and Performance: TikTok’s high-volume interactions require a scalable blockchain solution. UTXOs, as used in BSV for Tuvalu, offer high throughput and low-cost transactions, providing a technical blueprint for Frequency to handle TikTok’s real-time demands without alienating users with fees or latency.
• Cultural Sensitivity and Inclusion: Drawing from Tuvalu’s approach, my article emphasizes platform decoupling to prioritize community-led governance and cultural representation. For TikTok, UTXOs could track and secure cultural content (e.g., dances, stories) by their originating communities, ensuring fair ownership and countering U.S.-centric dominance risks identified in Global Media Journal’s study on TikTok’s cultural imperialism.
• Regulatory and Trust Challenges: My Tuvaluan experience navigating regulatory hurdles and building trust through transparent governance could provide guidance on Ohanian’s approach to U.S. laws and creator skepticism. Decoupling TikTok’s infrastructure with UTXOs could create a flexible, compliant blockchain model that balances decentralization with national security concerns.

A call for synergy

Ohanian’s TikTok vision and my Tuvalu/Notion work share a common thread: using blockchain to empower communities, preserve culture, and resist overly centralized control. For TikTok, this means designing a platform where creators worldwide—especially from underrepresented regions (like the Pacific)—can thrive, drawing inspiration from Tuvalu’s community-centric approach. My insights into UTXOs and platform decoupling offer practical solutions to Ohanian’s challenges, ensuring TikTok’s blockchain transition is culturally sensitive, scalable, and trusted.

As we stand at this crossroads of digital transformation, I invite Ohanian, McCourt, and Project Liberty to explore this synergy. By integrating lessons from Tuvalu’s National Digital Ledger and the modular, user-centric design of Notion UTXOs, there is enough there to create a TikTok that revolutionizes social media and honors the cultural richness of global communities.

The future of tech lies in such synchronicities—where culture, community, and innovation converge to build a more equitable digital world.

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