Introduction:

Recently, the discourse around Web3 has been filled with hostility. Both insiders and outsiders perceive Web3 as a large-scale scam, where exchanges, project teams, institutions, and ordinary investors seem to be taking advantage of each other. Some friends from the Web2 world have even bluntly told me, “Web3 social is just a fraud!”

In my view, Ponzi schemes are neutral—they are a financing technique to reduce project operation costs and serve as a protective measure for the project’s eventual success. Whether it’s DeFi, social, or other sectors, there have always been dedicated builders who persist in their efforts. As long as the steps forward have not stopped, the Web3 revolution has not failed. All technological innovations occur emergently. A short-term emergence low in Web3 technology is not enough to prove the industry lacks prospects. We firmly believe in the power of encryption and look forward to a decentralized future.

In today’s environment of doubt towards the Web3 industry, this article aims to review, from the author’s perspective, the achievements of Web3 builders in the social field over the past eight years and two cycles, summarizing the experiences and lessons, and exploring potential opportunities and blueprints.

In my opinion, although Web3 social has not yet fully matured, the industry’s development achievements are still noteworthy. Different people have different expectations for Web3—some hope for a better experience and greater psychological satisfaction, while others seek more complete personal data sovereignty protection. With continuous technological advancements in Web3 and the ongoing reduction of thresholds and costs, the true emergence of products might be happening right now.

The Underlying Demand Theory of Web3 Social

Any successful product is built upon solid demand. One of the most criticized aspects of Web3 projects is their inability to integrate with the real economy. To break the stereotype that “Web3 is just a scam,” we need to fundamentally prove the demand for social interaction in Web3.

Humans are social animals with inherent social needs. This conclusion has been repeatedly validated by social products. People need to establish connections with others, perceive others’ emotions, attitudes, and mental activities through these connections, and obtain feedback to adjust their own emotions and cognition. This need is as essential as eating, drinking, and breathing; it is ingrained in our genes through thousands of years of evolution. This basic human need for social interaction can be summarized as connection, mental interpretation, and self-coordination.

Holding tokens is a brand new way of connecting. An open and verifiable database expands the dimensions of information we can obtain from these connections. A new information environment will foster new social relationships and new interaction methods.

We observe that the psychological motivations behind most social behaviors on the internet can be boiled down to the need for self-presentation, emotional expression, and seeking recognition. Compared to traditional offline social interactions, the internet has created more social scenarios through multimedia. The internet has evolved from forums, BBS, and chat rooms to blogs, instant messaging (IM), social media, and game spaces. Chinese platform bilibili even creatively introduced bullet comments. These new scenarios, containing different interpersonal networks, content, and presentation methods, have led to a series of successful projects.

Looking at the development of internet social interactions, economies of scale are a significant feature. Historical experience tells us that social projects or products that cannot establish economies of scale within a specific group of people or for a specific purpose cannot survive. Compared to the massive global Web2 social giants, the scale of Web3 social interactions is not even a fraction. Economies of scale are a major challenge; without achieving economies of scale in a particular scenario, a project is doomed to perpetual subsidies until its demise. The scale of social networks and content determines whether social nature and social motivation can be better realized. How can a product without scale help users expand their social connections, achieve personal presentation, and empathize with others?

The development direction of Web3 has been set from the very beginning: an industrial ecosystem supported by a credible open data environment and a financial environment sustained by tokens. How can such an environment nurture a brand-new industrial landscape? The unique advantage of Web3 social lies in the underlying information support that spans databases and organizations, allowing for freely chosen, combinable, and pluggable social interfaces. Tokens are a hallmark of Web3, and using social interactions to support token issuance, with rights interactions quantified by tokens as the core content, organizes the social relationship scenarios unique to Web3.

In recent years, the Web3 industry has gone to great lengths to achieve scale advantages in localized social markets.

The Development Trajectory of Web3 Social Networks

This chapter aims to demonstrate that Web3 social networks are continually progressing. It further seeks to illustrate that the industry’s accumulated experience, lessons learned, and advancing technologies are steadily pushing us closer to a critical breakthrough.

Thanks to the advantages provided by the Web3 environment for entrepreneurs, the development of social projects has exhibited two parallel trends:

The development of decentralized social technology standards

Building token consensus through social networks

The Competition for Decentralized Social Technology Standards

If we consider humans as social animals, our information inputs shape who we are. Consequently, the power held by internet social platforms is immense. The potential negative consequences of entrusting this power to corporations and governments are unimaginable. Losing sovereignty over social information results in a loss of cognitive and choice freedom. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, where personal data was misused on Facebook, starkly demonstrated how easily our will can be manipulated. This incident highlighted the urgent need for individuals to control their data sovereignty for themselves and future generations. Therefore, decentralized social technology solutions will be indispensable in the future.

Achieving decentralized social networking requires breakthroughs in communication protocols, data management, and applications. The communication technologies used by blockchain to achieve global consensus may not be suitable for decentralized social communication. Therefore, building on the experience of STEEM, new-generation projects like Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, and Farcaster have proposed their own decentralized social protocols. By relinquishing some aspects of data decentralization, all these protocols have made significant progress. On any given protocol, replicating Web2 social tools is no longer an issue, and the realization of decentralization enhances user autonomy. Users can maintain their intangible assets within the system. However, as previously mentioned, Web3 businesses face significant scale disadvantages.

Technology is not the issue. The challenge lies in overcoming the substantial economic scale barriers on the path to success. To penetrate these disadvantages, token incentives have become the most immediate strategy for most projects in the short term.

The Revolution of Token Incentives Faces Obstacles

The birth of tokens is akin to opening Pandora’s box. From the moment they step into the industry, all web3 users are forced to navigate a complex financial landscape. For project developers, using tokens allows them to leverage users’ desires as subsidies, thereby reducing operational costs.

The revolution of token incentives in the social environment faces two major dilemmas:

The subjective value of social content is difficult to assess, leading to doubts about the effectiveness of token incentives.

Token incentives are vulnerable to Sybil attacks.

These two issues remain unresolved to this day. To better understand, let’s look at a case study.

The STEEM blockchain can be considered a pioneer in the entire Web3 social industry. To this day, many of its concepts and structural designs are still mimicked and borrowed by current projects, and it has nurtured a team of blockchain applications and projects. In 2016, the STEEM blockchain made innovative attempts in multiple dimensions, including content incentivization with tokens, real-person curation with token incentives, a usable data layer, and layered security for accounts.

Applications built on the STEEM blockchain are a form of social media where content quality is determined by users weighted by the number of tokens staked. In the project’s early stages, the founding team held an absolute advantage in both reputation and staked tokens. At that time, content production and curation based on token stake weight were effective. Similar to most projects adopting token incentives, the immense wealth effect attracted swarms of Sybils. However, STEEM blockchain’s token staking included punitive powers, which provided a certain level of immunity against Sybil attacks.

This effectiveness was built on the centralization of assets and power and a solid consensus. When founder BM left, the founding team disbanded, and the project was sold to the notorious Justin Sun, leading to a collapse in consensus. Initially, the collapse in consensus led more individuals to opt for Sybil attacks for profit: token holders liked each other’s posts, and delegated mining ran rampant. Later, as algorithmic recommendation systems and AIGC (AI-generated content) technology matured, this token-weighted content production and recommendation system was destined to exit the stage of history. Today’s leading social media platforms have achieved personalized content for each user, a level of refined content selection that purely human resources or content tag-based sorting and pushing cannot match.

After STEEM, many projects have used token issuance to accelerate platform scale expansion, such as Torum and BBS. Any project aiming for scale adopted token incentives. Of course, later, there were also projects like Lens Protocol that used anticipated free giveaways. These incentives violate the “non-monetary reward” element of social interactions. Experiments show that external material rewards reduce intrinsic psychological rewards, mixing non-social content into social content. Social links are information channels, and the value of social platforms lies in aggregating information within these channels. Such mixed incentives lower social efficiency. When an already information-poor channel faces more noise, decline is inevitable.

On Farcaster, Degen is an example where some tokens are distributed through rewards. This leverages the unique financial functions of web3 social projects with meme tokens (rather than content creation or recommendations), creating a wealth effect through the financial attributes of encrypted social interactions and sparking ecological prosperity. A platform can only have one token, but it can have countless meme tokens. Meme tokens can fail, but the platform token cannot. Using meme tokens to boost social projects will become a superior technique for token-incentive platform projects. Degen’s wealth topics, combined with the innovative possibilities on Frames, have brought more builders to Farcaster, sparking its ecological prosperity. So far, I personally believe this is a classic operational campaign. The ecological emergence brought by this operation is noteworthy. So far, the ecosystem has generated tools including NFT piggy banks, various streaming media (voice chat rooms, short videos, GIFs), and launch platforms. Although I have not seen signs of Farcaster breaking through Lens’s business boundaries (the current industry bottleneck), this emergence is worth paying attention to.

Stages of Setbacks in the Content Autonomy Revolution

Web3’s primary objective is decentralization, which translates to eliminating monopolies in the business world.

The inception of Web3 social platforms can be traced back to 2016-2017, a time when Web2 social media products were flourishing. During the past two cycles, social projects have been focused on narratives of content autonomy. Various projects attempted to put content “on-chain,” and based on this, sought to transform content into assets.

STEEM, launched in 2016, faced setbacks due to the disintegration of its project team and slow development progress. Although it achieved content on-chain from the outset, it lacked an EVM environment to run smart contracts. Consequently, it fell behind after the DeFi summer of 2020, ceding its leading position in content on-chain to Mirror. Mirror’s selling point is its user-friendly text content editing environment. Users can publish their content by signing with their wallets. The content is then placed on-chain, immutable, and can be subscribed to or followed by others. Additionally, content can be minted as NFTs and traded on NFT marketplaces. While Mirror is still operational, its traffic has declined, though some Degen players continue to use it for publishing content and minting content NFTs.

Mirror is an excellent Web3 product, embodying minimalism and effectively utilizing a trustworthy and open database. Anyone can authenticate online content data through wallet signatures. Authenticated content can be issued as NFTs and traded in the NFTfi environment within the EVM ecosystem. Mirror’s user attrition is fundamentally due to two reasons: 1) Compared to traditional Web2 content operators, its operational capabilities are insufficient. 2) Text content, especially lengthy articles, inherently lacks traffic and is abandoned in the era of junk culture. During the same period, other projects also attempted to put audio and video content on-chain. However, the immense data volume rendered these projects unsustainable due to high operational costs. Running a content business equates to running a media company. You either have good content to attract users or a large user base to attract good content. A mere technical solution cannot create a successful business.

At the end of 2013, another content-based project, Bodhi, emerged. Bodhi, a minimalist product inspired by Friend tech, does not mint NFTs for related content at a uniform price but employs bonding curve technology for pricing— the more sales, the higher the price. Projects like CloudBit forcefully replicate Web2 content on the blockchain, creating NFT assets. Numerous similar projects exist, all attempting to transform content into certifiable assets. However, in the internet age, while content can be certified, the information it carries is easily transferable. Even in cases of direct content theft and infringement, putting content on-chain does little to increase the cost of illegal activities. Therefore, there is currently no successful case of issuing assets directly anchored to content value.

Another reason for the market’s indifference towards content assetization is timing. Although rationally, we understand that personal information is valuable, users do not care much about their content sovereignty.

The New Journey of Attention Sovereignty: The Evolution of Content Recommendation Systems

The emergence of STEEM has inspired and encouraged a wave of blockchain projects. One of STEEM’s main innovations was using token-staked, weighted voting to sort content and create lists. This concept has since been repeatedly borrowed by various projects.

A project more inclined towards content recommendation is Yup, which exists in the form of a social plugin. By issuing tokens, Yup incentivizes users to interact with content through this web3 plugin. Utilizing these interaction data, along with the weight of token stakes, Yup re-organizes content from other Web2 platforms into its own lists.

Wormhole3 is also a content recommendation plugin. Unlike Yup, it supports the use of multiple tokens as incentives for content recommendations. The entire incentive process is implemented through code. Different incentive tokens have independent tag lists on Wormhole3’s official website, achieving diversification in content recommendation. In Wormhole3’s model, it is assumed that people holding different tokens belong to corresponding communities, and the amount of tokens staked determines their voice within the community channels. A portion of token distribution power is also controlled by the voice authority.

A series of projects, including Matters, Torum, BBS, and Bihu, which all attempted token-incentivized list-style content recommendations, have failed. The core issue lies in the inability of token-incentivized list-style recommendations to capture attention. In the attention market, the simple sorting + tagging content recommendation of the previous generation is challenging to compete with intelligent algorithm-based content recommendations. As an advertising system, Web3 projects, in pursuit of decentralization and programmability, have immature algorithms that do not price ad slots as accurately as professional Web2 algorithms. The monopoly in the advertising market is not as strong as in centralized exchanges. Therefore, projects like QuestN and RSS3, which attempted to influence content distribution through data, have ultimately pivoted.

Experience and lessons tell us that even with low-cost token incentives, it is crucial to incentivize advanced production methods. Phavor still relies on a web3 database to act as an intermediary for cross-database recommendations. A content recommendation system is a necessary component of any social media. Token incentives are not the key to a web3 recommendation system, but the holding structure and on-chain behavior are. On-chain data participating in system decisions is the fundamental difference between Web3 and Web2 recommendation systems. Compared to airdrops, the cost of on-chain social interaction is extremely low, thus giving rise to Sybil attack arbitrage.

The core power logic behind token-controlled content recommendation is that attention is controlled by organizations rather than individuals. Personally, I believe that allocating content based on organizational needs is similar to the organizational work communication platforms like DingTalk and Feishu. Rather than being social tools, they are tools for DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), where voting reflects power dynamics. Trustless management of organizational power is undoubtedly an advantage of blockchain and Web3. Currently, content recommendation incentives are based on organizations (platforms or communities).

Social tools that ordinary people love have been replaced by attention solutions targeting individuals. Any new generation of social media currently pushes content to individuals, adjusting recommendations based on their likes and dislikes in real-time. If we advocate for 1V1 content pushing, then on-chain information should serve more as original data for content and user tags.

Here, BlueSky’s creation of the “Subscription Feed Generator” must be mentioned. It is a combination of a recommendation algorithm and a communication protocol. Anyone can provide self-developed recommendation algorithms for the communication protocol. Users can subscribe to their favorite recommendation algorithms as needed.

Debank’s social module has great potential. Although many people use Debank as a data tool, its badges, account displays, and stream integration have achieved heights that many badge-focused projects cannot reach. Information from long-term NFT players is certainly more important than from others. How can a user who never participates in DeFi guide others in DeFi? As on-chain activities increase, using accounts to correct user data and content data as data sources will improve the accuracy of the entire content recommendation system. Debank currently lacks an effective recommendation system, but its early accumulation will help it seize the high ground in recommendation systems.

Overall, the current state of decentralized social development is as follows:

1. Token Incentive Strategy: The token incentive strategy has not been successful, and an independent user group that highlights the scale advantage has not yet been found.

2. Content On-Chain: Users owning their social assets independently, without scale, does not interest users.

3. Content Recommendation Systems: Content recommendation systems are continuously evolving and showing some promise after multiple iterations. If we can create a social product that better serves users with on-chain interactions, it will be the first step in implementing decentralized social projects.

Within Web3 users, finding our unique scale advantages in Web3 social networks is feasible. The greatest advantage is the involvement of tokens, which not only introduces finance but, more importantly, forms new relationships and interaction possibilities based on tokens. Here are two positive trends:

1. TGbot: It integrates trading directly into social interactions. Social and trading seamlessly connect, which is very suitable for users’ trading habits. Instead of talking, more action is needed. Previously, online behavior could not become social interaction, but now it can.

2. Farcaster: It introduces asset issuance into the social scene platform. Rather than seeking Alpha on Twitter, investors should communicate directly on Farcaster and form communities. More teams are willing to migrate projects to Farcaster, and project emergence is happening.

Tokenization of Social Assets

Issuing Tokens via Web3 Social Evolution:

Another evolutionary path for Web3 social platforms involves utilizing social interactions to issue tokens. For projects, tokens represent a financing tool. For users, tokens can be seen as a type of product—a financial product. While issuing tokens is relatively simple, the challenge lies in establishing a consensus on the token’s value within the market and ensuring its liquidity.

Building Value Consensus through Social Interactions:

The key question for any project is how to gain market recognition for the token’s value, akin to a kind of cryptographic alchemy. Historical experience suggests three approaches:

1. Tokenization of Attention:

   Tokenizing attention is the secret sauce behind meme coins. To create attention and thus token value, the essential elements are content, Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), communities, and the wealth effect, all closely tied to social interactions. For instance, Farcaster’s frames integrate social interactions directly into the platform, ERC404 merges content and tokens, and Donut attempts to bring on-chain inscription recommendation relationships. These approaches enhance the meme quality of tokens from various technical angles.

   Although consensus for meme tokens is easy to build, it is hard to sustain. Meme tokens do not have intrinsic consumers; their value lies in asset liquidity. Unless listed on centralized exchanges where market makers can maintain liquidity, meme tokens risk a dual collapse in value and liquidity once peak attention wanes.

2. Tokenization of Social Relationships:

   While meme tokens may seem ephemeral, injecting the value of social relationships into tokens offers a more grounded approach. Even outside the context of Web3 or the internet, “relationships” are considered a form of capital in economics. Tokenizing social relationship capital is thus a natural progression.

   My first encounter with social relationship tokenization was through DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). While DAOs are broadly defined, they are commonly understood as token-governed community organizations. Holding a particular token signifies membership, with different tokens or quantities conferring varying rights. Tokens thus represent organizational privileges. Examples include FWB, which offers high-value connections requiring application and fees, and Moonbird DAO, centered around premium investment information. This approach builds token value through the permission of social connections. Friend.tech, rising this cycle, also explores this pathway, focusing on small-scale organizations. Their bonding curve model shows significantly increased costs for additional members beyond 200, contrasting with the large-scale organizations created by earlier NFT minting and listing models.

3. Tokenization of Content:

   Tokenizing content differs fundamentally from attention-driven tokenization by emphasizing the relationship between tokens and content ownership. From earlier products like Mirror and Paragraph to current platforms like Lens and Farcaster, the focus has always been on content ownership as a tokenizable asset. Technically straightforward, this concept sees little real-world application due to the complexities of intellectual property (IP) rights, which are off-chain matters. When on-chain property rights remain uncertain and enforcement increases costs, these functionalities remain underutilized. Content tokenization’s economic value will only emerge when a significant portion of IP rights transitions to the blockchain, with mature enforcement pathways and scale effects.

   However, content tokenization lacks the wealth effect needed to accelerate industry maturation. In a world flooded with AI-generated content, attention, not content, is the scarce resource. This lack of scarcity inhibits the wealth effect.

In summary, while the tokenization of attention, social relationships, and content presents various avenues for Web3 social evolution, each comes with unique challenges and requires careful consideration of market dynamics and technological implementation.

Bonding Curve Addressing Liquidity:

Although bonding curves are not a social innovation, they address the liquidity cost issues of small-scale projects. The steep bonding curve proposed by Friend.tech not only created a wealth effect with limited funds but also significantly reduced the operational costs of providing liquidity for personal tokens. Consequently, many projects are experimenting with new price curves in their respective fields. Some notable examples include Bodhi, which applied a bonding curve for content valuation, and DeBox, which developed a bonding curve for community asset issuance.

Despite the operational pace issues faced by Friend.tech (FT) leading to attention being diverted to Farcaster later on, the impact of bonding curves remains profound. FT’s experimentation showed us that for different token application scenarios, there will always be a more suitable bonding curve. Each bonding curve has its pros and cons, and it is essential to choose the appropriate curve based on the specific circumstances. Friend.tech’s V2 aligns with this consensus by simultaneously exploring asset issuance for multi-center, network-style communities (clubs) and introducing an even steeper bonding curve.

Pump.fun has effectively invented a segmented bonding curve. When fundraising does not exceed $20,000, a steep bonding curve is used. Upon reaching the $20,000 mark, it directly transitions to a regular decentralized exchange. This is also an innovation in liquidity provision.

In summary, over the course of two cycles, Web3 social projects have conducted extensive experiments across multiple fields and perspectives.

Opportunities and Mission of Web3 Social Networks

Traversing through two cycles, Web3 social networks, despite constantly exploring and frequently failing along the rugged path, have made undeniable progress:

Evolution of Frontend Technology:

Our frontend has evolved from PC to mobile, transforming from standalone apps to progressive web applications (PWAs). Wallet login methods have shifted from mnemonic phrases to MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and abstract accounts, significantly lowering the barrier for users to access Web3 social platforms. The advancement of blockchain infrastructure has not only reduced accounting costs exponentially but also made transaction completion times almost instantaneous.

Decentralized Social Protocols:

Builders of social protocol layers are actively constructing layer-3 solutions tailored to their unique characteristics to achieve decentralized social networks. These solutions determine the degree of decentralization based on the credibility and importance of the information. Network scalability directly enhances user experience, allowing for seamless text and multimedia interactions and accommodating more concurrent user information.

Embedded Social Scenarios:

Embedded social scenarios represent another innovative industry attempt. Being open-source projects with open-source databases, they inherently possess the combinability akin to LEGO bricks without requiring permission. We can now embed any interaction into social networks (e.g., conducting NFT transactions or handling social data directly within social platforms) and vice versa (embedding social tools into other interactions like games).

Middleware Achievements:

We have made significant strides in middleware, integrating, analyzing, and tagging various on-chain data, managing token behaviors based on game theory, and offering diverse liquidity solutions.

Improved Infrastructure and User Education:

Compared to the previous cycle, our infrastructure and tools are more refined. The number of Web3 natives is steadily increasing, with more user-friendly meme tokens and NFTs continuously educating potential users through various market cycles.

Innovative Social Concepts:

Social innovation is not a dead end; each era has its challengers. For instance, the recently launched ReelShort attracts users with dramatic short episodes, allowing a broadcaster, MCN (Multi-Channel Network), or media company to create their social media platforms at low costs. With suitable recommendation algorithms for traffic guidance, it forms a federated network structure.

Visualizing the Blueprint:

This plain narrative lacks vividness. Let’s combine traffic generation strategies and outline the blueprint in my mind.

Dopamine: The Opium of the Masses, the Remedy for Web3

In previous discussions, we adhered to conventional narratives regarding the social development within the Web3 industry. However, when considering the broader competition among social products, such as issuing meme coins through social platforms, the simplicity is almost naive. Let me present the social scenarios as I perceive them.

Since the advent of streaming media, we rarely see purely text and image-based social platforms anymore.

Even within streaming media, there is fierce competition. What kind of content do we see on top short video platforms? Dominant CEOs falling in love, late-night wild antics, and solo drunken performances. Now look at Farcaster, STEEM, or Mirror—do they have any content that speaks human language? If it weren’t for Web3 ideals or the meager rewards from airdrops, I wouldn’t waste a second on them. Yes, the direction of Web3 social development is somewhat skewed, but it’s not a technological fault. The threshold for massive adoption of the technology is being approached. For Web3 social to achieve massive adoption, it needs to integrate content.

Previously, we thought introducing content meant airdropping tokens to content creators, providing massive incentives to creators who couldn’t generate traffic, all under the guise of breaking platform monopolies. In reality, 1% of super KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) create 90% of the traffic but do not receive the rewards they deserve.

In the social domain, some technical details are not that important. For example, if one day TikTok decides to use its own developed wallet for login, whether it uses MPC or AA is not that important. Whoever has the traffic is the king. Whoever can create content that generates traffic owns the traffic. Is it possible that the organizational structure of the industry is not operated by technology-oriented protocols or projects running a “Web2” like platform, but by each content creator being at the core of a small economic cycle? They freely choose the protocols and tools suitable for their content format, then organically combine all the protocols and tools, allowing other social participants to join their economic cycle through tokens.

This typical fan economy already has prototypes in real life:

A high-end “emotional massage therapist” might simultaneously have a Twitter account, a Telegram group, an OnlyFans, and a Pornhub channel. Their product positioning in front of consumers is not simply providing sexual needs as a hooker but offering a comprehensive SEX dream solution. These workers establish their private traffic through social media, guide payment habits by selling their restricted short videos and live streaming time, and then monetize traffic through services like girlfriend experience and role-playing. Social media provides these individuals with multiple times the labor value-added, and self-media traffic helps them escape platform exploitation.

Another closer example is a Japanese celebrity live-streaming platform called Zaiko. The platform itself also adopts decentralized technology, allowing celebrities to issue NFTs. The platform is also well-prepared to issue its own tokens. The founder of the platform is a serial successful entrepreneur who had extensive business relationships with many Japanese celebrities in his previous ventures, so Zaiko doesn’t lack users. Now, a single live streaming session on Zaiko can generate millions of dollars in sales. Decentralized technology has already begun to change our social landscape from another perspective.

We have always talked about reclaiming the monopoly of content value from platforms. The most direct way is to let content create the platform, and let platforms form links through third-party curation or recommendation tools. Let’s imagine a possible blueprint for Web3.

The Blueprint of Web3 Social Networks

A certain venture capital firm has invested heavily in hiring a popular writer to create a sensational script titled “Back to 2010: Stirring Waves in the Crypto World,” incorporating elements that trigger dopamine and adrenaline. Before the script is even completed, they announced dramatically that the writer has gone bust and disappeared. Despite this, the project continues to move forward with the production of the show. To circumvent regulations, the project employs decentralized media solutions (such as Farcaster and Livepeer) and airdrops content tokens to early viewers. Users holding a certain amount of tokens can influence the plot’s direction, vote on new cast members, and get early access to new episodes and various merchandise.

In certain regions, we can even directly sell customized products like the protagonist’s outfits and real estate through frames in the show. The main characters in the show have their own fan tokens, allowing them to communicate on platforms like Friend.tech or their custom fan systems. Services like private chats, exclusive videos, or even companion experiences can be negotiated separately. Passionate scenes in the show require unlocking with the corresponding fan tokens plus content tokens. Newly issued tokens in the storyline are simultaneously launched for sale in reality through platforms like Pump.fun. The independent streaming service for the show uses curation tools such as Tako and Phavor to sell or rent out its overflow traffic. These edited short videos, after complying with regulations, are also released on Web2 platforms.

As a Web3 user, we can imagine how enhanced our social experience could be. We earn tokens just by watching shows, use these tokens to increase the exposure of our favorite memes in the plot, and manipulate traffic to gain profits. We can support our favorite actors and have face-to-face, intimate interactions with them. We could even insert ourselves into the crew as insignificant extras, fulfilling our cosplay desires. This kind of participatory experience is beyond what Web2 can offer.

What we need are more convenient login methods, lower content storage costs, lower latency, and other technical support.

The Mission of Web3

Web3 is neither the Bodhisattva of Compassion who relieves suffering nor the Messiah who saves the world. At its core, the Web3 revolution is rooted in liberalism. There’s nothing wrong with gambling, paid dating is certainly acceptable, and watching addictive short videos is just human nature. God gives people choices, and Web3 aims to provide even more choices. The wide gate, the narrow gate, hell and heaven—all lie in people’s choices. Our mission in Web3 is to return the rights taken by centralization to every individual. There’s no need to dramatize it or impose our ideals on others.

Conclusion

Web3 social is not a scam, but it’s also not a child’s play experiment. Even my Web3 social concept has been mockingly called a typical child’s play by some friends, but the success of the industry emerges from these repeated seemingly laughable failures.

Currently, the dilemma of Web3 social partly stems from immature technology; our costs have not yet dropped sufficiently. Compared to Web2, our recommendation mechanism is still in its infancy. On the other hand, although we highly respect creators, the industry’s organizational structure is still centered around technological platforms. Social interactions must revolve around human nature, and merely respecting human nature won’t generate initial traffic. Hence, borrowing traffic from content has become a common industry practice. I predict that future social media will be content issuer-centric, revolving around users and associated service providers.

Moreover, we have not yet concluded how to use Web3 technology to enhance user social interaction. Interactivity is a crucial feature of Web3 social, alongside autonomy and anti-censorship. How well we utilize interactivity to improve the user social experience will be the key to the success or failure of future Web3 social platforms. Finding ways for content and communities to interact better in a decentralized technology-built environment will determine whether Web3 can gather traffic and truly be implemented effectively.

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