New look for SOMA as it aims to slip ‘altcoin’ tag

Blockchain-powered e-commerce platform venture, SOMA, has rebranded to reflect progress made and future plans.

The platform is due to go live in 2019, initially targeted to the luxury goods industry. “SOMA began life with an ICO, a capital-raising mechanism that strongly identifies the company as a member of the ‘altcoin’ crowd within the cryptocurrency space. But we’re much, much more than that,” the company says in a Medium post.

“In fact, we’re rolling out an e-commerce platform based on blockchain, but with an entire suite of features and benefits that the industry desperately needs. These include the ability of buyers and sellers to socially connect, the ability of folks to monetise social influence and resell products; and, of course, SOMA’s Heimdall Protocol to secure verification and authentication information on the blockchain. This latter functionality aims to thwart counterfeiting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance via immutable and verifiable proofs. So here we have it. A new look, just in time for the ramp-up to our pilot programme,” it continues.

The startup’s old fox logo came about “during the turbulent ICO period, when portions of the SOMA vision were consolidated, and other portions were still quite nascent. The fox has a cultural meaning in Scandinavian culture that fit certain aspects of the SOMA vision, and so we adapted the circular “dollar-sign fox” logo for which we’ve been known to date.”

However, members of its community said that the logo too closely resembled that of the Firefox browser. “Additionally, the fox in Anglo culture tends to bring associations of cunning and trickery (here at SOMA, we like to be as clever as we can, but do keep things on the up-and-up). Finally, there was no clear-cut connection between the creature itself and SOMA’s business model (contrast to the Twitter ‘bird’ logo, which clearly references the platform). The new logo dials back the ‘fox factor’ while keeping a more muted reference for the sake of continuity,” it concludes.

Jacob Andra

Earlier this week, we interviewed Jacob Andra, Chief Marketing Officer at SOMA, who told us: “Blockchain is not some homunculus that fits a single description. It’s messy, chaotic, and full of good, bad, and everything in between. There’s no doubt that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to revolutionise the way human beings transact. I’d say that’s pretty substantial. But there’s hype aplenty, as well.”

And when asked if the crypto bubble had burst, he responded: “Everybody’s so obsessed with the ‘bubble’ metaphor. Ocean tide is a better one; it waxes and wanes. We’ve had this cycle over and over. Right now, the tide is definitely out. It’ll come in again. And each time, the sector is further along from lessons learned, more advanced infrastructure, and greater mainstream recognition. The lean times keep the genetic pool healthy (if I may horribly mix my metaphors).”

Read the full interview here.