What Is ZOOP? The Blockchain Social App You'll Need to Vote in Eurovision Asia

Every article about Eurovision Asia mentions ZOOP in a single sentence and moves on. Almost nobody explains what it actually is — which is odd, because it is the platform the contest’s voting and fan engagement runs through, and it has a genuinely unusual backstory.

Here is the full picture.

The basics

ZOOP is a social platform that launched globally on 9 April 2026, with Eurovision Song Contest Asia as one of its first flagship channels. It was announced as the contest’s Official Digital Platform and Fan Engagement Partner in the same 31 March launch that revealed the contest itself.

Its offering for Eurovision Asia covers live broadcast access, fan interaction, exclusive content drops, prediction games, behind-the-scenes access and voting.

The CEO is RJ Phillips. Roughly a million people had signed up or taken part through the web version and beta before launch.

The model: channels, not one feed

ZOOP’s pitch is a deliberate contrast with Meta and TikTok. Rather than one endless feed where everything competes for attention, it launches channel by channel, each built around a distinct cultural property, community or live event.

The commercial hook is creator revenue share: the platform states it intends to pay creators up to 80% of the revenue they generate, and rewards ordinary users for engagement too.

The bits nobody mentions

It runs on blockchain. ZOOP is built on Hedera, which the contest’s coverage frames as enabling transparent digital voting alongside traditional televoting. If you have wondered how a contest with no shared telecoms infrastructure across eleven countries handles voting, that is the answer.

It tried to buy TikTok. ZOOP drew industry attention in 2025 as part of the consortium bidding for TikTok’s US operations. Eurovision Asia is not a minor sponsorship for a small startup — it is a flagship deployment for a company with considerable ambition.

It’s also a European Eurovision partner. ZOOP joined the Eurovision Song Contest as an Official Partner for its 70th year, hosting a creator house in Vienna during contest week. So this is a two-contest relationship, not an Asia-only arrangement.

Do you actually need it to vote?

This is where sourcing gets muddy, and it is worth being straight about.

The official Eurovision guide to Bhutan’s national final directed voters to eurovisionasia.com. Other coverage, including reporting on Bangladesh’s selection, describes voting as taking place via the ZOOP platform.

Both may be true — a web entry point and an app entry point into the same system. But we have not found a single official document that states plainly whether the app is required or optional for the Grand Final on 14 November.

Where this stands as of early October: the official pages direct viewers to eurovisionasia.com/voting, and ZOOP is promoted alongside it rather than as the gateway to it — the site pitches ZOOP for watching, reacting and predicting together, with a separate “Vote Now” route. So ZOOP is still very much part of the contest’s digital layer, but voting has not become ZOOP-only.

Practical advice: if you plan to vote, go through eurovisionasia.com/voting. We cover the mechanics — eight free votes, spread across at least three songs, plus a paid Booster Pack of ten more — in our Rest of the World voting guide.

Why the contest chose this route

It fits the wider design. Eurovision Asia is built as a commercial, digital-first product for mobile-heavy markets, with free global YouTube streaming and international voting from day one. A dedicated app that captures fan data, sells extra votes and runs prediction games is a revenue and retention layer, not a bolt-on.

We unpack that structure in our explainer on the commercial model.

What to watch

Whether ZOOP becomes the mandatory route for the Grand Final vote is still the open question. As of early October it is not — the contest’s own guide to Nepal’s 7 October final again sent voters to the Eurovision Asia website, with ZOOP positioned as the companion experience. Expect clarity closer to November, and we will update this page when it arrives.

Everything else confirmed and unconfirmed is logged in our Eurovision Asia fact-check.

Last updated 7 October 2026.