We've been talking about this rebrand for quite some time now. The past several months have brought an interesting atmosphere to the LeoVerse... and yes, we can still say LeoVerse!
We've been ramping up on all fronts from development to onboarding to marketing and now, to rebranding LeoFinance to a much broader and friendlier name & logo.
Keeping LEO in the name wasn't a requirement but it was desirable. We went through many different name iterations and even launched a community competition to help come up with a name.
Through all of that, we couldn't find a name that really stuck. If any of you met me (Khal) in Vegas for the Breathe! conference in September, then you may have heard me spitballing some names. At the time, the #1 name was "Roarly" which I didn't love but also hadn't found one superior to it.
I was collecting feedback about that name and a few others from anyone I met. 99% of people did not like Roarly when they first heard it. Some came back and said that it was growing on them, but ultimately, the name did not stick. It wasn't catchy, it was hard to say phonetically and it just didn't feel right.
Introducing INLEO | Leo's Rebrand is Officially LIVE
This all brings us to INLEO! So many names and brainstorming sessions later and it struck me while I was flying back from Vegas.
This was my first message to Eric mentioning the name. I had just gotten back from Vegas and I spent the whole plane ride back reading a book and just taking any words that made sense and trying to jumble them together.
INLEO was born when I started thinking about the platform. You're on LEO. You're using LEO. You're threading on LEO. You're consuming content in LEO. You're *in LEO"... INLEO
INLEO Takes Shape
At first sight, the name took the #1 spot. Eric and I both liked it and we decided to ruminate on it some more. We had already begun working on the Roarly logo and during the design process of that logo, we then changed gears and changed the text to INLEO but kept the rest of the design, typography and logo the same.
Rebrand Rollout
If you visit the UI - https://leofinance.io or https://inleo.io, you'll notice that the rebrand is now live. The logos, typography and overall styling of the site has been completely overhauled.
We're now in the era of INLEO. The Domain changes will take some time to cache and catch up. So you'll slowly start to be redirected from the old domain https://leofinance.io -> https://inleo.io.
A few people asked during the Live Launch Party if the labs.leofinance.io (experimental new feature testing grounds) will be labs.inleo.io.
The answer is yes, that will get redirected as well.
Everything you used to do on leofinance.io will now be done on inleo.io.
Is Any Content Allowed?
I'd say the second most-asked question is about the content types on INLEO. In the past, LeoFinance focused specifically on crypto & finance.
The vision for what we would become has evolved quite a lot since we decided on that niche topic structure.
Now, any topics are allowed on INLEO and any topics can be curated by our community and by our community voting account, @leo.voter.
The Vision of INLEO
We're going to release a 30,000 foot bird's eye view of the vision for INLEO. This has been something I've been thinking about, writing and refining for weeks now. Ironically, on that same flight where INLEO was born.
The vision for INLEO is to be The Everything App. This is a key driver in the name change. We need something friendly, open and broad enough to handle this vision.
INLEO's mission is to build a sustainable creator economy that is centered around digital ownership, tokenization and communities. Some may question if this actually has any value to the world. Do we really need another social media platform? Can a tiny startup and tiny community compete with the big dogs of Web2? Aren't all altcoins just scams? Do we need another token?
No, maybe and kind of all come to mind as answers to these questions. The odds are incredibly not in our favor. Battling incumbents is never an easy task and they will throw everything in the book at you so that you fail and they continue to succeed. This all being said, the mission is necessary. It doesn't matter how you slice it - our data is becoming increasingly commoditized and it has never been more important than now to democratize digital identities.
The strategy of INLEO is to build a small (but powerful) initial base of users and a product that is nearly indistinguishable from Web2 (on the surface). Utilizing this base of users, we're able to build a massive content library that drives attention. Attention is monetized and that monetization drives value to the LEO token. People go where there is value and the value that LEO accumulates through this increasingly monetized attention ultimately leads to a pinwheel effect where more attention is gathered, monetized and driven back to - you guessed it, more attention.
Other Web3 platforms like INLEO have popped up all over the place. The idea of creating a "tokenized social media" is not entirely new. Why will INLEO succeed where others have not? The strategy of building an initial base of users on top of a product that is nearly indistinguishable from Web2 (again, on the surface) has not yet been successfully carried out... by anyone.
Now, we are onward to onboarding the next 10,000 Monthly Active Users to the Hive blockchain 🚀
See you in LEO, frens