Blocking journalist Jessy
Social applications are a public product that is related to communication between people and also related to freedom of speech. In the world of Web2, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, WeChat, etc. are national-level social applications with massive users. In addition to national-level applications, there are also social products like Discord and Tinder that dominate vertical classification circles or meet people’s specific needs.
They have two main aspects for changing people’s lives: 1. Improving the efficiency of communication between people and reducing the cost of communication. 2. Becoming a square for the free expression of various thoughts and opinions, allowing opinions and facts to flow.
Web3’s social applications are considered to be the entrance for users to enter Web3 on a large scale. Generally, when a new form of product can overturn and surpass the previous generation of products in terms of efficiency, safety, and cost, it can promote the large-scale transfer of users. How is the development of Web3 social products? Does it have the potential to overturn the previous generation of social products?
Blocking summarizes the main product categories on the current social track and finds that Web3 social products currently have two major characteristics, and the loudest Lens protocol and Nostr protocol and social products based on these two protocols actually represent different two directions and characteristics: One type constructs an economic model that allows people to “make money” through their own creation in the product. Such projects have high thresholds and are relatively closed, and can currently only be applied to the encryption circle on a small scale. The second is a completely open registration anonymous social product, which has no embedded economic model inside, and the entry threshold is relatively low, but in the eyes of the public, it is not as good as the existing Web2 social products, and there is no need to migrate. For the encryption community, it cannot “make money.”
Overall, Web3 social products are actually trying to solve the major pain points of existing Web2 social products in a big direction: 1. complete anonymization, anti-centralized review. 2. Non-advertising economic rewards for content creators on social platforms. 3. Not limited by a single platform, users control their own social information and data and can migrate across multiple platforms.
In addition to the Web3 social innovation in more underlying protocols mentioned above, there are also some Web3 products that are not based on the above-mentioned protocols, but are targeted at encrypted users to meet some unique social needs of encrypted users. These products may not even be decentralized, but they are indeed “born for encryption”.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of various protocols and products in the Web3 social track, and what are the development directions of future social products and protocols?
Social data becomes assets, and economic models are embedded in Web3 social
The Lens protocol is currently the leader in the social track , and in early June, it just completed a new round of financing of $15 million. According to data statistics created by Dune user @rustamov, the number of daily active users on the protocol in April this year was about 55,000.
The operating mode of Lens is roughly that users create an interactive profile NFT that can be reused when they create an account for the first time and register personal information. This NFT will save the content, comments, likes, and reposts published by users. The wallet address is associated with their personal information. The design core of Lens is to build a social graph based on NFTs, such as when following others, you will also get a Follow NFT, and each NFT has a unique number to record the order of follow.
Based on this protocol, multiple applications have been developed, such as social media application Lenster, video sharing platform Lenstube, and so on.
And because these NFTs can be transferred or traded, Lens transforms social relationships from data into assets. The Lens team has adopted a hungry marketing strategy for Profile NFTs. Only some early users can get Profile NFTs, and only those who have received this NFT can get the attention of others. Now a Profile NFT trading market has been formed.
In the view of Blocking reporters, the Lens protocol, in the overall logic of building, that is, turning social data and information into assets, and introducing economic models in the protocol to promote people to benefit from Web3 social. For example, CyberConnect, which is a multi-chain decentralized social graph protocol, is similar to Lens in building underlying social relationships, but the difference is that Lens is based on NFT architecture to realize relationship construction, while CyberConnect is a database form to precipitate social relationships, and social data is stored through middleware Ceramic.
Additionally, CyberConnect is deployed on two different chains: ETH and Solana, which are two separate social graphs, while Lens has only chosen to deploy on Polygon. Unlike Lens, CyberConnect mostly collaborates with other projects, providing social relationships as a complementary function. The downside is that it is difficult to establish its own ecosystem, but it is easier for third-party applications to access it, making the ecosystem more open.
Regarding the economic model, CyberConnect has completed the public sale of its protocol token, which can be used to pay for fees when minting CyberProfile, as well as gas and governance.
Web3 social with decentralized anti-censorship as its core narrative
The Nostr protocol is essentially an information transmission protocol for decentralized social scenarios. The last time it gained popularity was in February, when it was recommended by the former CEO of Twitter. Unlike the other social protocols mentioned above, it does not turn social information data into assets, but insists that information is just information. The logic of the protocol is that everyone runs a client program, and when they want to publish information, they sign the text with their private key and send it to multiple relays. To obtain information, inquiries are made to various relays. The information that the client publishes is actually stored on these relays. As long as you have the private key of the account, you have all the data of the account, and if you have the private key, you can freely migrate to various third-party applications built on the Nostr protocol.
From the operating logic of the protocol, we can see that it still emphasizes the decentralized and anti-censorship characteristics of Web3 social applications.
Damus, Amethyst, and snort.social are all third-party applications developed based on this protocol. In February of this year, these applications all had participated in breaking into new markets due to the recommendation of the former CEO of Twitter.
The protocol that Blocking journalist believes can be compared with it in the same dimension is Farcaster, which is a social protocol mainly aimed at Ethereum users and technology entrepreneurs. Both of them use relays to store social data and transmit it to users. Farcaster uses Ethereum architecture (e.g. accounts use Ethereum key pairs), while Nostr is not built on the blockchain. Mastodon, which was born in 2016, seems to be a product that inherits the spirit of decentralized socialization earlier. It is called a federated replacement for Twitter. The entire network is not operated by a single centralized organization, but is composed of decentralized social networks that exchange data in a federated manner through multiple independently operated servers run by different operators.
From a commercial perspective, Nostr has introduced the Lightning Network for tipping, allowing relays on the platform to charge subscription fees or display ads, or to choose which content to remove. This business model is not too different from that of Web 2.0 social media.
A vertical social product designed only for the encryption industry
The above-mentioned innovations in Web3 social networks at the protocol level seem to have a side that is more consistent with the spirit of crypto punk. However, many teams directly satisfy the needs of crypto users for social products by starting with the product itself, which can be said to be a more vertically segmented social product. Some of them are not even decentralized. In this regard, typical projects include RSS3, which does not focus on the underlying map, but wraps its own C-side products. Formally, it is more like a friend circle that records the user’s on-chain behavior. For example, on the user’s personal page, it will display the on-chain behavior allowed by the user, such as posting on Mirror, buying NFTs, receiving airdrops, etc.
Web3 social applications like Debox are dedicated to building blockchain circles and doing blockchain communities. It positions itself as a DID-based community management tool for blockchain. It can determine the user’s identity through on-chain asset proof, and join the corresponding group according to the user’s identity without demand permission. Similarly, it has also launched its own NFT, and holding the platform’s NFT also represents the identity of entering the corresponding community within the platform.
For these Web3 social innovations that focus on applications rather than infrastructure, their relationship with users is closer and they can adjust specific products based on users’ actual needs. However, it is inevitable that they only serve vertical users in the blockchain field.
It is also a success to only provide vertical social products that serve encrypted users well. But overall, how Web3 social networks can break through the circle actually requires breakthroughs in efficiency, security, decentralization, and other aspects that surpass Web2 social applications. However, the development and breaking of Web3 social networks must be closely integrated with the process of breaking the circle in the encryption industry. “When there are more Web3 users, more users will naturally flow into Web3 social networks,” said Arno, the head of the Debox ecology, in an interview with Blocking.
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