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.

Also of interest: Q&A: Jacob Andra, Chief Marketing Officer, SOMA

“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.