The Opportunity and Mission of Web3 Social
Forward the Original Title ‘无声之处等惊雷：Web3 Social的机遇与使命’
Foreword:
The current discourse on Web3 is filled with hostility. To both insiders and outsiders, Web3 seems like a massive field of speculation, where exchanges, project teams, institutions, and ordinary investors are engaged in mutual exploitation. Some friends from the Web2 world bluntly told me, “Web3 social is just a scam!”
However, in my view, Ponzi schemes are neutral—they are financing techniques that reduce project operational costs and act as a safeguard for the project’s ultimate success. Whether it’s DeFi, social, or other tracks, there have always been dedicated builders striving continuously. As long as the forward momentum continues, the Web3 revolution has not failed. All technological innovations emerge spontaneously. A short-term lull in Web3 technology emergence is not enough to prove the industry lacks prospects. We believe in the power of encryption and look forward to a decentralized future.
Given the skepticism facing the Web3 industry today, this article seeks to review the contributions of Web3 builders in the social sector over the past eight years, covering two cycles, from a developmental perspective. By summarizing the experiences and lessons learned, we aim to uncover potential opportunities and blueprints.
In my opinion, although Web3 social has not yet fully matured, the industry’s achievements are noteworthy. Different people have different expectations for Web3—some hope for a better experience and more engaging digital interactions, while others seek better protection of their personal data sovereignty. As Web3 technology continues to advance, lowering barriers and costs, the emergence of truly innovative products may be happening right now.
The Fundamental Need Theory of Web3 Social
Any successful product is built on 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 demonstrate the demand for social interaction within Web3.
Humans are social animals with intrinsic social needs. This conclusion has been repeatedly proven by various social products. People need to establish connections with others to perceive their emotions, attitudes, and psychological activities and to receive feedback that helps adjust their own emotions and cognition. This need is as fundamental as eating, drinking, and breathing, ingrained in our genes through thousands of years of evolution. In essence, human social needs can be summarized as connection, mental interpretation, and self-regulation.
Holding tokens represents a new form of connection. An open, verifiable database expands the dimensions of information we can obtain from these connections. This new information environment fosters new social relationships and interaction methods.
The psychological motivations behind most online social behaviors can be attributed to the need for self-expression, emotional venting, and seeking recognition. Compared to traditional offline interactions, the internet, through multimedia, has created more social scenarios. From forums, BBS, and chat rooms to blogs, instant messaging (IM), social media, and gaming spaces, the internet has continuously evolved. Innovative features, such as the bullet comments on China’s Bilibili platform, have created new scenarios with unique interpersonal networks, content, and presentation methods, leading to a series of successful projects.
Looking at the development of internet social platforms, economies of scale are a significant characteristic. Historical experience tells us that social projects or products that cannot achieve economies of scale within specific groups and purposes cannot survive. Compared to global Web2 social giants with millions of concurrent users, Web3 social platforms are minuscule in scale. Economies of scale are a significant challenge. Without achieving economies of scale in certain scenarios, these platforms cannot avoid perpetual subsidization. The scale of social networks and content determines whether social nature and motivation can be better realized. How can products without scale help users expand their social relationships, achieve personal expression, or empathize with others?
The trajectory of Web3 development was set from its inception: an industrial ecosystem supported by a trustworthy open data environment and a financial environment supported by tokens. How can this environment foster a new industrial landscape? With underlying information supporting cross-database and cross-organizational interactions, and freely chosen, modular, pluggable social interfaces, Web3 social offers unique advantages. Tokens are a hallmark of Web3, and organizing social relationships around token issuance and quantified rights interactions is a distinct application scenario for Web3 social.
In recent years, the Web3 industry has gone to great lengths to achieve scale advantages in specific social markets.
Development Trajectory of Web3 Social
This section aims to demonstrate the continuous progress of Web3 social platforms, highlighting how accumulated experiences, lessons learned, and advancing technologies are driving the industry closer to a breakthrough.
Due to the advantages that the Web3 environment provides for entrepreneurs, the development of social projects follows two parallel trends:
- Developing decentralized social technology standards.
2.Establishing token consensus through social interactions.
Competition in Decentralized Social Technology Standards
If we consider humans as social animals, our information inputs determine who we are. Consequently, the power of internet social platforms is immense. The potential consequences of this power being held by corporations and governments are alarming. Losing sovereignty over social information equates to losing freedom of cognition and choice. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted how easily our will can be manipulated, underscoring the necessity for individuals to control their data sovereignty. Hence, decentralized social technology solutions are a critical need for the future.
To achieve decentralized social platforms, breakthroughs are required 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. Building on the experiences of STEEM, new projects like Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, and Farcaster have each proposed their decentralized social protocols. By compromising on the decentralization of some data aspects, these protocols have made significant progress. On any of these protocols, replicating Web2 social tools is no longer an issue. In fact, decentralization enhances user autonomy, allowing users to maintain their intangible assets within the system. However, as previously mentioned, Web3 businesses face significant challenges due to the lack of economies of scale.
Technology is not the problem. The challenge lies in overcoming the immense barrier of achieving economies of scale on the path to success. To address this disadvantage, most projects have resorted to token incentives as the most direct short-term strategy.
Establishing Token Consensus through Social Interaction
Creating token consensus via social platforms involves designing systems where tokens play a central role in user interactions and content creation. This approach leverages the unique features of Web3, such as verifiable ownership and decentralized governance, to build new types of social environments. Users earn tokens through participation, which can then be used within the platform, fostering a sense of ownership and loyalty.
The integration of tokens into social platforms transforms user engagement by introducing financial incentives. This model has been seen in various Web3 projects where users are rewarded with tokens for their contributions, whether through content creation, moderation, or other forms of engagement. These tokens can then be traded, creating a direct link between social interaction and financial value.
The challenge remains in scaling these platforms to achieve network effects comparable to those of Web2 giants. This requires not only technological advancements but also innovative economic models that can attract and retain a critical mass of users. As projects experiment with different incentive structures and governance models, they contribute valuable insights to the collective understanding of how to build sustainable and scalable decentralized social networks.
In conclusion, the development of Web3 social platforms is characterized by ongoing efforts to establish robust decentralized technology standards and to use social interactions to build token consensus. While significant challenges remain, particularly in achieving economies of scale, the continuous progress in technology and the strategic use of token incentives are bringing the industry closer to a transformative breakthrough.
The New Journey of Attention Sovereignty:The Development 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-weighted voting to rank and organize content. This idea has been repeatedly adopted by various projects since then.
Content Recommendation Projects in Web3
A project more inclined towards content recommendation is Yup, which exists as a social plugin. By issuing tokens, Yup incentivizes users to interact with content through this Web3 plugin. Using these interactions, combined with token staking weights, Yup replicates and reorganizes content from other Web2 platforms under its own lists.
Wormhole3 is another content recommendation plugin. Unlike Yup, Wormhole3 supports multiple tokens as incentives for content recommendations. The entire incentive process is implemented through code. Different incentive tokens have their independent tag lists on Wormhole3’s website, achieving diversified content recommendations. In Wormhole3’s model, it is assumed that holders of different tokens belong to corresponding communities, and the amount of token staking determines their voice within the community channel. Some tokens’ distribution rights are also controlled by this voice.
Projects like Matters, Torum, BBS, and Bihu, which used token incentives for list-based content recommendations, have all failed. The core issue is that list-based recommendations incentivized by tokens fail to capture attention. In the attention market, the previous generation’s simple sorting and tagging-based content recommendation struggles to compete with intelligent algorithm-based recommendations. As advertising systems, Web3 projects, in pursuit of decentralization and programmability, have not yet developed algorithms as precise as those in Web2 for pricing advertising space. The monopoly in the advertising market is not as strong as in centralized exchanges. Therefore, projects like QuestN and RSS3, which use data to influence content distribution, have also shifted their focus.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Experience and lessons tell us that even with low-cost token incentives, we must incentivize advanced production methods. Phavor still relies on Web3 databases to create cross-database recommendation middleware, though the processes and solutions are more abstract. A content recommendation system is a necessary component of any social media platform. Token incentives are not the key to Web3 recommendation systems; rather, it is the token holding structure and on-chain behavior. The participation of on-chain data in system decision-making is the essential difference between Web3 and Web2 recommendation systems. Compared to airdrops, the cost of on-chain social interactions is extremely low, leading to Sybil attacks.
Controlling content recommendations with tokens implies that attention is managed by organizations rather than individuals. I believe that allocating content based on organizational needs resembles work communication platforms like DingTalk and Feishu. Rather than being social tools, they are tools for DAOs, where voting reflects power. Trustlessly managing organizational power is undoubtedly an advantage of blockchain and Web3. Current content recommendation incentives based on organizations (platforms or communities) reflect this.
For individual users, social tools are driven by personalized attention solutions. Modern social media platforms push content to individuals based on their preferences, adjusting recommendations in real-time. If we advocate for 1V1 content pushes, on-chain information should serve as raw data for content and user tags.
BlueSky’s “subscription feed generator” combines recommendation algorithms with communication protocols. Anyone can provide self-developed recommendation algorithms for the protocol. Users can subscribe to their preferred recommendation algorithms as needed.
Debank’s social module holds great potential. Although many people use Debank as a data tool, its badges and account display combined with streams have achieved heights that purely badge-focused projects have not. Long-term NFT players’ insights on NFTs are undoubtedly more valuable than those from others. A user who never participates in DeFi cannot guide others in DeFi. As on-chain activities increase, using accounts to adjust user 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 efforts will help it dominate this area.
Current State of Decentralized Social Development
Token incentive scale strategies are not progressing smoothly, and no independent user groups have emerged that showcase scale advantages.
Content on-chain and user autonomy over their social assets are not prioritized without scale.
Content recommendation systems continue to develop, showing some promise after multiple iterations. Creating a social product that better serves users with on-chain interactions could be the first step towards the realization of decentralized social projects.
Among Web3 users, finding the unique scale advantage of Web3 social platforms seems feasible. The biggest advantage is token integration, which introduces not just financial elements but also new relationship and interaction possibilities.
Positive Developments
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions. Seamlessly combining social and trading activities suits users’ trading habits, enabling previous online behaviors to become social interactions.
Farcaster: Incorporates asset issuance into the social scene platform. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more efficient than seeking information on Twitter. More teams are willing to migrate their projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
By capitalizing on these developments, Web3 social platforms can leverage their unique advantages and move closer to achieving widespread adoption and success.
The emergence of STEEM has inspired and encouraged a wave of blockchain projects. One of STEEM’s main innovations was using token-weighted voting to rank and organize content. This idea has been repeatedly adopted by various projects since then.
Content Recommendation Projects in Web3
A project more inclined towards content recommendation is Yup, which exists as a social plugin. By issuing tokens, Yup incentivizes users to interact with content through this Web3 plugin. Using these interactions, combined with token staking weights, Yup replicates and reorganizes content from other Web2 platforms under its own lists.
Wormhole3 is another content recommendation plugin. Unlike Yup, Wormhole3 supports multiple tokens as incentives for content recommendations. The entire incentive process is implemented through code. Different incentive tokens have their independent tag lists on Wormhole3’s website, achieving diversified content recommendations. In Wormhole3’s model, it is assumed that holders of different tokens belong to corresponding communities, and the amount of token staking determines their voice within the community channel. Some tokens’ distribution rights are also controlled by this voice.
Projects like Matters, Torum, BBS, and Bihu, which used token incentives for list-based content recommendations, have all failed. The core issue is that list-based recommendations incentivized by tokens fail to capture attention. In the attention market, the previous generation’s simple sorting and tagging-based content recommendation struggles to compete with intelligent algorithm-based recommendations. As advertising systems, Web3 projects, in pursuit of decentralization and programmability, have not yet developed algorithms as precise as those in Web2 for pricing advertising space. The monopoly in the advertising market is not as strong as in centralized exchanges. Therefore, projects like QuestN and RSS3, which use data to influence content distribution, have also shifted their focus.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Experience and lessons tell us that even with low-cost token incentives, we must incentivize advanced production methods. Phavor still relies on Web3 databases to create cross-database recommendation middleware, though the processes and solutions are more abstract. A content recommendation system is a necessary component of any social media platform. Token incentives are not the key to Web3 recommendation systems; rather, it is the token holding structure and on-chain behavior. The participation of on-chain data in system decision-making is the essential difference between Web3 and Web2 recommendation systems. Compared to airdrops, the cost of on-chain social interactions is extremely low, leading to Sybil attacks.
Controlling content recommendations with tokens implies that attention is managed by organizations rather than individuals. I believe that allocating content based on organizational needs resembles work communication platforms like DingTalk and Feishu. Rather than being social tools, they are tools for DAOs, where voting reflects power. Trustlessly managing organizational power is undoubtedly an advantage of blockchain and Web3. Current content recommendation incentives based on organizations (platforms or communities) reflect this.
For individual users, social tools are driven by personalized attention solutions. Modern social media platforms push content to individuals based on their preferences, adjusting recommendations in real-time. If we advocate for 1V1 content pushes, on-chain information should serve as raw data for content and user tags.
BlueSky’s “subscription feed generator” combines recommendation algorithms with communication protocols. Anyone can provide self-developed recommendation algorithms for the protocol. Users can subscribe to their preferred recommendation algorithms as needed.
Debank’s social module holds great potential. Although many people use Debank as a data tool, its badges and account display combined with streams have achieved heights that purely badge-focused projects have not. Long-term NFT players’ insights on NFTs are undoubtedly more valuable than those from others. A user who never participates in DeFi cannot guide others in DeFi. As on-chain activities increase, using accounts to adjust user 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 efforts will help it dominate this area.
Current State of Decentralized Social Development
Token incentive scale strategies are not progressing smoothly, and no independent user groups have emerged that showcase scale advantages.
Content on-chain and user autonomy over their social assets are not prioritized without scale.
Content recommendation systems continue to develop, showing some promise after multiple iterations. Creating a social product that better serves users with on-chain interactions could be the first step towards the realization of decentralized social projects.
Among Web3 users, finding the unique scale advantage of Web3 social platforms seems feasible. The biggest advantage is token integration, which introduces not just financial elements but also new relationship and interaction possibilities.
Positive Developments
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions. Seamlessly combining social and trading activities suits users’ trading habits, enabling previous online behaviors to become social interactions.
Farcaster: Incorporates asset issuance into the social scene platform. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more efficient than seeking information on Twitter. More teams are willing to migrate their projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
By capitalizing on these developments, Web3 social platforms can leverage their unique advantages and move closer to achieving widespread adoption and success.
Tokenization of Social Assets
Another evolutionary path for Web3 social platforms is leveraging social interactions for token issuance. For projects, tokens are a means of fundraising. For users, tokens can be a product in themselves—a financial product. Issuing tokens is straightforward; the challenge lies in establishing market value consensus and ensuring token liquidity.
Establishing Value Consensus through Social Interactions
How to gain market recognition for token value is a form of crypto alchemy every project wants to master. Historical experience offers three formulas:
Tokenization of Attention:
Tokenizing attention is the secret behind meme coins. The key to creating attention and thus token attention includes content, key opinion leaders (KOLs), communities, and the wealth effect. The first three are inherently social. Whether it’s Farcaster’s “frames” framework integrating social and token sales directly on the platform, ERC404’s integration of content and tokens, or Donut’s attempt to put recommendation relationships on-chain, each approach enhances the meme value of token issuance from various technical angles.
Meme tokens can build consensus quickly but are hard to sustain. Absent external factors, meme tokens lack consumers and only establish asset liquidity. Unless meme tokens get listed on centralized exchanges (turning from ownerless to owned tokens, as centralized exchanges have market makers), they face an irreversible collapse in both value and liquidity once peak attention wanes.
Tokenization of Social Relationships:
If meme tokens’ cultural value feels abstract, injecting the value of social relationships into tokens is more tangible. Even outside of Web3 and the internet, in economics, “relationships” are considered capital. Tokenizing social relationship capital is a logical step.
My first encounter with the tokenization of social relationships was with DAOs. Broadly defined, DAOs are often seen as token-governed groups. Holding my tokens makes you part of my group, with different tokens or quantities conferring different rights. The tokens represent organizational permissions. Projects like Friends with Benefits (FWB), which sell high-end network value (requiring application approval and a fee), and Moonbird DAO, centered around premium investment information, establish token value through social relationship permissions. Friend.tech, emerging this cycle, explores this path further by targeting small-scale organizations. Its bonding curve pricing shows a steep increase in member cost beyond 200 people, contrasting with the thousands-strong organizations formed by NFT minting and listing.
Tokenization of Content:
The distinction between content tokenization and content-assisted attention tokenization lies in the former’s emphasis on the relationship between tokens and content property rights. From earlier products like Mirror and Paragraph to current platforms like Lens and Farcaster, the focus on assetizing content property rights remains strong. Technically, this function is simple but rarely applied in reality. Copyright is a real-world asset (RWA) issue, transitioning from off-chain to on-chain. When on-chain property rights are uncertain and increase enforcement costs, these functions are ornamental. Content tokenization will only show economic value when most copyright services migrate to blockchain, enforcement paths mature, and economies of scale take effect.
Content tokenization lacks a wealth effect and cannot accelerate industry maturity through financial incentives. In a society overwhelmed by AIGC, content is not scarce—attention is. The absence of scarcity hinders the wealth effect.
Emerging Trends in Web3 Social Platforms
Given the current landscape, several positive developments are worth noting:
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions, seamlessly merging social and trading activities. This suits users’ trading habits, making past online behaviors interactive.
Farcaster: Brings asset issuance into social platforms. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more effective than seeking alpha on Twitter. More teams are migrating projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
In summary, the tokenization of social assets in Web3 is an evolving field with significant potential. While challenges remain, especially regarding establishing economies of scale and creating lasting value consensus, the continuous advancements in technology and strategic approaches to token incentives are promising. Leveraging unique Web3 advantages, particularly the integration of tokens into social interactions, can drive the industry towards a transformative breakthrough.
Bonding Curves and Liquidity Solutions
Although bonding curves are not a social innovation, they address the liquidity cost issues of small-scale projects. The steep bonding curve introduced by Friend.tech significantly reduced the operational costs of providing liquidity for personal tokens, creating a wealth effect even with small-scale funding. As a result, many projects are experimenting with new pricing curves in their respective fields. For instance, Bodhi used bonding curves for content valuation, and DeBox employed bonding curves for community asset issuance.
Despite Friend.tech (FT) losing attention to Farcaster due to operational pace issues, the impact of bonding curves remains profound. FT’s experiments demonstrated that different token application scenarios require suitable bonding curves. Each bonding curve has its pros and cons, necessitating a careful selection based on specific circumstances. Friend.tech V2 follows this consensus by experimenting with multi-centered, networked community asset issuance (clubs) and incorporating a steeper bonding curve.
Pump.fun innovated with a segmented bonding curve, using a steep curve for fundraising below 20,000 USD and switching to a conventional decentralized exchange curve once this threshold is reached. This is another liquidity supply innovation.
Opportunities and Missions of Web3 Social
Throughout two cycles, Web3 social platforms have conducted rich experiments across various fields and perspectives, despite facing challenges and failures. The progress is evident:
Technological Advancements
Front-End Evolution: Transitioned from PC to mobile, from apps to progressive web applications. Wallet login has evolved from mnemonic phrases to MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and abstract accounts, lowering the barriers for users to access Web3 social platforms.
Blockchain Infrastructure: Advancements have significantly reduced ledger costs and transaction times, enabling near-instant transaction completion.
Decentralized Social Protocols: Builders are creating layer 3 solutions tailored to decentralized social platforms, determining the decentralization level based on the credibility and importance of information. Network scaling has improved user experiences, accommodating more concurrent user information from text to multimedia.
Embedded Social Scenarios
Combinatorial Flexibility: As open-source projects with open-source databases, Web3 social platforms offer permissionless, Lego-like combinatorial capabilities. Any interaction can be embedded into social interactions (e.g., direct NFT trading within social platforms), and social interactions can be embedded into any other interactions (e.g., embedding a social tool within a game).
Middleware Achievements
Data Integration and Analysis: Integrating, analyzing, and tagging on-chain data.
Token Behavior Management: Utilizing game theory for token behavior management.
Diverse Liquidity Solutions: Developing various liquidity provision strategies.
Compared to the previous cycle, our infrastructure and tools are more sophisticated. The number of Web3 natives is steadily increasing. Meme tokens and NFTs, understandable to users, have continuously educated potential users through waves of interest.
Social Innovation and Emerging Trends
Social innovation is not a dead end; every era has its challengers. Recently launched projects like ReelShort, which uses dramatic short stories to attract users, exemplify this. ReelShort enables broadcasters, MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks), and media companies to create their social media platforms at low costs, supported by appropriate recommendation algorithms to drive traffic and form a federated network structure.
Envisioning the Future with “Traffic Secrets”
To make this vision more vivid, let’s integrate the “traffic secrets” concept. Here is a blueprint for my ideal Web3 social platform:
Personalized Content Delivery: Implement advanced recommendation algorithms to deliver personalized content that caters to users’ preferences, similar to the approach of ReelShort. Use engaging, dramatic content to capture and retain user attention.
Integrated Financial Incentives: Incorporate bonding curves to manage token liquidity efficiently. Tailor the bonding curve to specific use cases, ensuring it suits the scale and nature of the project. For example, use steep bonding curves for small-scale fundraising and switch to conventional curves once the project reaches a certain threshold.
Decentralized Data Ownership: Ensure users have complete control over their data, reinforcing the value of data sovereignty. Implement robust mechanisms to tokenize social relationships and content, ensuring these tokens represent real, enforceable property rights.
Seamless Social and Financial Integration: Create an environment where social interactions and financial activities are seamlessly integrated. Users can trade assets, interact socially, and participate in decentralized finance (DeFi) within the same platform.
Layer 3 Solutions for Scalability: Develop and implement layer 3 solutions that provide scalable, efficient, and decentralized social protocols. These solutions should support high throughput and low latency, enhancing user experience and enabling real-time interactions.
Community-Driven Development: Foster a community-driven development approach where users contribute to and benefit from the platform’s growth. Encourage user participation in governance through DAOs, ensuring that token holders have a say in the platform’s evolution.
By focusing on these elements, Web3 social platforms can overcome current challenges and unlock new opportunities, driving the industry towards a transformative future.
Dopamine, the Opium of the Masses, and Web3’s Antidote
In the previous discussion, we analyzed the development of social interactions within the Web3 industry in a conventional manner. However, placing it in the broader context of the overall competition among social products, including meme coin issuance through social interactions, seems naïve and overly idealistic. Allow me to present my vision of the social scene.
Since the advent of streaming media, we have hardly seen any pure text and image-based social platforms. Even within streaming media, fierce competition exists. On the top short video platforms, what kind of content do we see? Over-the-top dramas, intense late-night challenges, and outrageous stunts dominate. Now compare this with Farcaster, STEEM, or Mirror—is there any engaging content? Without the allure of Web3 ideals or the promise of airdrop gains, I wouldn’t waste a second on them. Yes, Web3 social development has diverged, but the issue isn’t technical. The threshold for massive adoption of Web3 technology is being approached. To achieve massive adoption, Web3 social platforms need to connect with mainstream content.
Previously, we thought introducing content meant airdropping to creators or heavily incentivizing those who couldn’t generate significant traffic, claiming to break platform monopolies. In reality, 1% of super KOLs create 90% of the traffic and don’t get rewarded accordingly.
In social media, certain technical details are not as crucial. For example, if TikTok decided to implement its own wallet login, whether it uses MPC or AA wouldn’t matter much. Whoever controls the traffic is king. Whoever can create traffic-driving content owns the traffic. Could it be that the industry’s organizational structure isn’t about protocol-driven or project-driven platforms akin to Web2 but rather placing each content creator at the center of a small economic cycle? These creators freely choose protocols and tools that suit their content and organically combine these protocols and tools, allowing other social participants to engage in their economic cycle through tokens.
This typical fan economy already has a prototype in real life:
A high-end “emotional massage therapist” might have Twitter accounts, Telegram groups, OnlyFans, and Pornhub channels. Their positioning is not simply as a provider of sexual services but as a comprehensive SEX dream solution provider. These workers build their private traffic through social media, guide paid habits by selling their premium short videos and live streaming, and then monetize through girlfriend experiences and role-playing services. Social media and media multiply their labor value and help them escape platform exploitation due to the traffic brought by self-media.
Another example is Zaiko, a Japanese artist live-streaming and selling platform. It adopts decentralized technology, allowing artists to issue NFTs and preparing for platform token issuance. The founder of Zaiko has a history of successful entrepreneurship and established business relationships with many Japanese artists in previous ventures. Thus, Zaiko never lacks users. Today, a single live-streaming session on Zaiko can generate sales worth millions of dollars. Decentralized technology has already begun transforming our social landscape from another direction.
Taking Back Control from Platforms
The most direct method to reclaim control from platforms is to let content create platforms. Platforms can form connections through third-party curation or recommendation tools. Let’s envision a potential Web3 blueprint.
Decentralized Fan Economies: Empower content creators to be at the core of their small economic cycles. Each creator uses protocols and tools suited to their content style, combining them organically. Social participants engage with these cycles through tokenized interactions.
Integrated Financial Incentives: Utilize bonding curves to manage token liquidity effectively. Adapt bonding curves to specific use cases, ensuring they suit the project’s scale and nature. For example, steep curves for small-scale fundraising that switch to conventional curves once thresholds are met.
Personalized Content Delivery: Implement advanced recommendation algorithms for personalized content, similar to ReelShort’s approach with dramatic content to capture attention.
Decentralized Data Ownership: Ensure users control their data, reinforcing data sovereignty’s value. Implement mechanisms to tokenize social relationships and content, representing enforceable property rights.
Seamless Social and Financial Integration: Create an environment where social interactions and financial activities integrate seamlessly. Users can trade assets, socialize, and participate in DeFi within the same platform.
Community-Driven Development: Foster community-driven development where users contribute to and benefit from the platform’s growth. Encourage user participation in governance through DAOs, ensuring token holders influence the platform’s evolution.
Real-World Integration: Learn from real-world models like Zaiko, where decentralized technology enhances artist-audience interactions and monetization, applying similar strategies to Web3 social platforms.
By focusing on these elements, Web3 social platforms can overcome current challenges and unlock new opportunities, driving the industry toward a transformative future.
Blueprint for Web3 Social
Imagine a venture capitalist hiring a sensational novelist to write a dramatic screenplay titled “Back to 2010: Stirring Waves in the Crypto World,” incorporating elements that trigger dopamine and hormonal responses. Before the script is completed, a public announcement is made that the writer has gone bankrupt and fled, creating hype. The project then continues, moving into the filming phase. To evade regulations, decentralized media solutions such as Farcaster and Livepeer are employed, and early viewers receive content token airdrops.
Engaging the Audience through Tokenization
Influence and Participation: Users holding a certain amount of tokens can influence the plot, vote on new character actors, and access new episodes and various merchandise ahead of time.
In-Show Commerce: In specific regions, custom products like the protagonist’s outfits and real estate can be sold directly within the show through frames.
Fan Tokens: Each main character has their fan tokens, and fans can communicate through platforms like Friend.tech or a custom fan system. Additional services like chat, exclusive videos, and companionship can be negotiated separately.
Unlocking Content: Passionate scenes require fan tokens and content tokens to unlock.
Token Sales: New tokens issued in the plot are simultaneously launched on platforms like Pump.fun.
Curating and Monetizing Content
Decentralized Streaming: The show’s independent streaming service uses curation tools like Tako and Phavor to sell and rent its traffic overflow.
Compliance and Web2 Integration: Edited short videos that comply with regulations are simultaneously released on Web2 platforms.
Enhanced Social Experience for Web3 Users
Rewarding Engagement: Watching the show earns viewers tokens, which can be used to increase their meme exposure in the plot, manipulate traffic, and gain rewards.
Direct Interaction with Actors: Support favorite actors and interact with them face-to-face. Engage in close, direct communication and even join the cast as an extra for a satisfying cosplay experience.
Seamless Integration: The experience is enriched with convenient login methods, low content storage costs, and minimal latency.
Technical Support and Requirements
To achieve this immersive experience, we need:
Convenient Login: Simplified user authentication methods to facilitate easy access.
Low Content Storage Costs: Efficient and cost-effective content storage solutions.
Reduced Latency: Technology to ensure minimal delay in streaming and interactions.
The Future of Web3 Social Interaction
The blueprint for Web3 social interaction is about merging engaging content with tokenized participation, creating a deeply immersive and rewarding experience that surpasses traditional Web2 capabilities. By leveraging the power of decentralized technology, users can gain unprecedented control and interaction within their favorite shows, transforming passive viewership into active participation and investment.
This vision illustrates how Web3 can revolutionize the social experience, blending entertainment, commerce, and personal interaction into a cohesive ecosystem driven by user engagement and tokenization.
Web3’s mission
Web3 is neither a savior nor a messiah. The core of the Web3 revolution is liberalism. There’s nothing wrong with gambling, paid friendships are legitimate, and enjoying addictive short videos is human nature. Just as God gave humans choices, Web3 aims to provide more options. Wide gates and narrow gates, hell and heaven, are all a matter of choice. Our mission in Web3 is to restore the rights taken by centralization back to each individual, without imposing our ideals on others.
Conclusion:
Web3 social is not a scam, but it’s also not child’s play. Even my Web3 social concepts have been mocked as child’s play by some friends, yet the industry’s success often rises from such seemingly laughable failures.
Currently, Web3 social faces challenges primarily due to immature technology. Our costs are still too high, and our recommendation mechanisms are still in their infancy compared to Web2. Although we champion the respect for creators, the industry’s organizational structure remains technology platform-centric. Social interactions must revolve around human nature, and simply respecting human nature isn’t enough to generate the initial traffic. Consequently, leveraging content has become a common strategy in the industry. I predict that future social media will center around content issuers, with users and related service providers forming the surrounding ecosystem.
Moreover, we have yet to determine how to use Web3 technology to enhance user social interactions effectively. Interactivity, along with autonomy and censorship resistance, is a crucial attribute of Web3 social platforms. Mastering interactivity to improve user experience will be key to the success or failure of Web3 social. Understanding how content and communities interact in a decentralized technological environment will be pivotal in attracting traffic and achieving practical implementation.
Disclaimer：
- This article is reprinted from [thoughtful]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Armonio, AC capital]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
- Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
- Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.
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Web3’s mission
Forward the Original Title ‘无声之处等惊雷：Web3 Social的机遇与使命’
Foreword:
The current discourse on Web3 is filled with hostility. To both insiders and outsiders, Web3 seems like a massive field of speculation, where exchanges, project teams, institutions, and ordinary investors are engaged in mutual exploitation. Some friends from the Web2 world bluntly told me, “Web3 social is just a scam!”
However, in my view, Ponzi schemes are neutral—they are financing techniques that reduce project operational costs and act as a safeguard for the project’s ultimate success. Whether it’s DeFi, social, or other tracks, there have always been dedicated builders striving continuously. As long as the forward momentum continues, the Web3 revolution has not failed. All technological innovations emerge spontaneously. A short-term lull in Web3 technology emergence is not enough to prove the industry lacks prospects. We believe in the power of encryption and look forward to a decentralized future.
Given the skepticism facing the Web3 industry today, this article seeks to review the contributions of Web3 builders in the social sector over the past eight years, covering two cycles, from a developmental perspective. By summarizing the experiences and lessons learned, we aim to uncover potential opportunities and blueprints.
In my opinion, although Web3 social has not yet fully matured, the industry’s achievements are noteworthy. Different people have different expectations for Web3—some hope for a better experience and more engaging digital interactions, while others seek better protection of their personal data sovereignty. As Web3 technology continues to advance, lowering barriers and costs, the emergence of truly innovative products may be happening right now.
The Fundamental Need Theory of Web3 Social
Any successful product is built on 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 demonstrate the demand for social interaction within Web3.
Humans are social animals with intrinsic social needs. This conclusion has been repeatedly proven by various social products. People need to establish connections with others to perceive their emotions, attitudes, and psychological activities and to receive feedback that helps adjust their own emotions and cognition. This need is as fundamental as eating, drinking, and breathing, ingrained in our genes through thousands of years of evolution. In essence, human social needs can be summarized as connection, mental interpretation, and self-regulation.
Holding tokens represents a new form of connection. An open, verifiable database expands the dimensions of information we can obtain from these connections. This new information environment fosters new social relationships and interaction methods.
The psychological motivations behind most online social behaviors can be attributed to the need for self-expression, emotional venting, and seeking recognition. Compared to traditional offline interactions, the internet, through multimedia, has created more social scenarios. From forums, BBS, and chat rooms to blogs, instant messaging (IM), social media, and gaming spaces, the internet has continuously evolved. Innovative features, such as the bullet comments on China’s Bilibili platform, have created new scenarios with unique interpersonal networks, content, and presentation methods, leading to a series of successful projects.
Looking at the development of internet social platforms, economies of scale are a significant characteristic. Historical experience tells us that social projects or products that cannot achieve economies of scale within specific groups and purposes cannot survive. Compared to global Web2 social giants with millions of concurrent users, Web3 social platforms are minuscule in scale. Economies of scale are a significant challenge. Without achieving economies of scale in certain scenarios, these platforms cannot avoid perpetual subsidization. The scale of social networks and content determines whether social nature and motivation can be better realized. How can products without scale help users expand their social relationships, achieve personal expression, or empathize with others?
The trajectory of Web3 development was set from its inception: an industrial ecosystem supported by a trustworthy open data environment and a financial environment supported by tokens. How can this environment foster a new industrial landscape? With underlying information supporting cross-database and cross-organizational interactions, and freely chosen, modular, pluggable social interfaces, Web3 social offers unique advantages. Tokens are a hallmark of Web3, and organizing social relationships around token issuance and quantified rights interactions is a distinct application scenario for Web3 social.
In recent years, the Web3 industry has gone to great lengths to achieve scale advantages in specific social markets.
Development Trajectory of Web3 Social
This section aims to demonstrate the continuous progress of Web3 social platforms, highlighting how accumulated experiences, lessons learned, and advancing technologies are driving the industry closer to a breakthrough.
Due to the advantages that the Web3 environment provides for entrepreneurs, the development of social projects follows two parallel trends:
- Developing decentralized social technology standards.
2.Establishing token consensus through social interactions.
Competition in Decentralized Social Technology Standards
If we consider humans as social animals, our information inputs determine who we are. Consequently, the power of internet social platforms is immense. The potential consequences of this power being held by corporations and governments are alarming. Losing sovereignty over social information equates to losing freedom of cognition and choice. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted how easily our will can be manipulated, underscoring the necessity for individuals to control their data sovereignty. Hence, decentralized social technology solutions are a critical need for the future.
To achieve decentralized social platforms, breakthroughs are required 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. Building on the experiences of STEEM, new projects like Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, and Farcaster have each proposed their decentralized social protocols. By compromising on the decentralization of some data aspects, these protocols have made significant progress. On any of these protocols, replicating Web2 social tools is no longer an issue. In fact, decentralization enhances user autonomy, allowing users to maintain their intangible assets within the system. However, as previously mentioned, Web3 businesses face significant challenges due to the lack of economies of scale.
Technology is not the problem. The challenge lies in overcoming the immense barrier of achieving economies of scale on the path to success. To address this disadvantage, most projects have resorted to token incentives as the most direct short-term strategy.
Establishing Token Consensus through Social Interaction
Creating token consensus via social platforms involves designing systems where tokens play a central role in user interactions and content creation. This approach leverages the unique features of Web3, such as verifiable ownership and decentralized governance, to build new types of social environments. Users earn tokens through participation, which can then be used within the platform, fostering a sense of ownership and loyalty.
The integration of tokens into social platforms transforms user engagement by introducing financial incentives. This model has been seen in various Web3 projects where users are rewarded with tokens for their contributions, whether through content creation, moderation, or other forms of engagement. These tokens can then be traded, creating a direct link between social interaction and financial value.
The challenge remains in scaling these platforms to achieve network effects comparable to those of Web2 giants. This requires not only technological advancements but also innovative economic models that can attract and retain a critical mass of users. As projects experiment with different incentive structures and governance models, they contribute valuable insights to the collective understanding of how to build sustainable and scalable decentralized social networks.
In conclusion, the development of Web3 social platforms is characterized by ongoing efforts to establish robust decentralized technology standards and to use social interactions to build token consensus. While significant challenges remain, particularly in achieving economies of scale, the continuous progress in technology and the strategic use of token incentives are bringing the industry closer to a transformative breakthrough.
The New Journey of Attention Sovereignty:The Development 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-weighted voting to rank and organize content. This idea has been repeatedly adopted by various projects since then.
Content Recommendation Projects in Web3
A project more inclined towards content recommendation is Yup, which exists as a social plugin. By issuing tokens, Yup incentivizes users to interact with content through this Web3 plugin. Using these interactions, combined with token staking weights, Yup replicates and reorganizes content from other Web2 platforms under its own lists.
Wormhole3 is another content recommendation plugin. Unlike Yup, Wormhole3 supports multiple tokens as incentives for content recommendations. The entire incentive process is implemented through code. Different incentive tokens have their independent tag lists on Wormhole3’s website, achieving diversified content recommendations. In Wormhole3’s model, it is assumed that holders of different tokens belong to corresponding communities, and the amount of token staking determines their voice within the community channel. Some tokens’ distribution rights are also controlled by this voice.
Projects like Matters, Torum, BBS, and Bihu, which used token incentives for list-based content recommendations, have all failed. The core issue is that list-based recommendations incentivized by tokens fail to capture attention. In the attention market, the previous generation’s simple sorting and tagging-based content recommendation struggles to compete with intelligent algorithm-based recommendations. As advertising systems, Web3 projects, in pursuit of decentralization and programmability, have not yet developed algorithms as precise as those in Web2 for pricing advertising space. The monopoly in the advertising market is not as strong as in centralized exchanges. Therefore, projects like QuestN and RSS3, which use data to influence content distribution, have also shifted their focus.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Experience and lessons tell us that even with low-cost token incentives, we must incentivize advanced production methods. Phavor still relies on Web3 databases to create cross-database recommendation middleware, though the processes and solutions are more abstract. A content recommendation system is a necessary component of any social media platform. Token incentives are not the key to Web3 recommendation systems; rather, it is the token holding structure and on-chain behavior. The participation of on-chain data in system decision-making is the essential difference between Web3 and Web2 recommendation systems. Compared to airdrops, the cost of on-chain social interactions is extremely low, leading to Sybil attacks.
Controlling content recommendations with tokens implies that attention is managed by organizations rather than individuals. I believe that allocating content based on organizational needs resembles work communication platforms like DingTalk and Feishu. Rather than being social tools, they are tools for DAOs, where voting reflects power. Trustlessly managing organizational power is undoubtedly an advantage of blockchain and Web3. Current content recommendation incentives based on organizations (platforms or communities) reflect this.
For individual users, social tools are driven by personalized attention solutions. Modern social media platforms push content to individuals based on their preferences, adjusting recommendations in real-time. If we advocate for 1V1 content pushes, on-chain information should serve as raw data for content and user tags.
BlueSky’s “subscription feed generator” combines recommendation algorithms with communication protocols. Anyone can provide self-developed recommendation algorithms for the protocol. Users can subscribe to their preferred recommendation algorithms as needed.
Debank’s social module holds great potential. Although many people use Debank as a data tool, its badges and account display combined with streams have achieved heights that purely badge-focused projects have not. Long-term NFT players’ insights on NFTs are undoubtedly more valuable than those from others. A user who never participates in DeFi cannot guide others in DeFi. As on-chain activities increase, using accounts to adjust user 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 efforts will help it dominate this area.
Current State of Decentralized Social Development
Token incentive scale strategies are not progressing smoothly, and no independent user groups have emerged that showcase scale advantages.
Content on-chain and user autonomy over their social assets are not prioritized without scale.
Content recommendation systems continue to develop, showing some promise after multiple iterations. Creating a social product that better serves users with on-chain interactions could be the first step towards the realization of decentralized social projects.
Among Web3 users, finding the unique scale advantage of Web3 social platforms seems feasible. The biggest advantage is token integration, which introduces not just financial elements but also new relationship and interaction possibilities.
Positive Developments
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions. Seamlessly combining social and trading activities suits users’ trading habits, enabling previous online behaviors to become social interactions.
Farcaster: Incorporates asset issuance into the social scene platform. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more efficient than seeking information on Twitter. More teams are willing to migrate their projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
By capitalizing on these developments, Web3 social platforms can leverage their unique advantages and move closer to achieving widespread adoption and success.
The emergence of STEEM has inspired and encouraged a wave of blockchain projects. One of STEEM’s main innovations was using token-weighted voting to rank and organize content. This idea has been repeatedly adopted by various projects since then.
Content Recommendation Projects in Web3
A project more inclined towards content recommendation is Yup, which exists as a social plugin. By issuing tokens, Yup incentivizes users to interact with content through this Web3 plugin. Using these interactions, combined with token staking weights, Yup replicates and reorganizes content from other Web2 platforms under its own lists.
Wormhole3 is another content recommendation plugin. Unlike Yup, Wormhole3 supports multiple tokens as incentives for content recommendations. The entire incentive process is implemented through code. Different incentive tokens have their independent tag lists on Wormhole3’s website, achieving diversified content recommendations. In Wormhole3’s model, it is assumed that holders of different tokens belong to corresponding communities, and the amount of token staking determines their voice within the community channel. Some tokens’ distribution rights are also controlled by this voice.
Projects like Matters, Torum, BBS, and Bihu, which used token incentives for list-based content recommendations, have all failed. The core issue is that list-based recommendations incentivized by tokens fail to capture attention. In the attention market, the previous generation’s simple sorting and tagging-based content recommendation struggles to compete with intelligent algorithm-based recommendations. As advertising systems, Web3 projects, in pursuit of decentralization and programmability, have not yet developed algorithms as precise as those in Web2 for pricing advertising space. The monopoly in the advertising market is not as strong as in centralized exchanges. Therefore, projects like QuestN and RSS3, which use data to influence content distribution, have also shifted their focus.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Experience and lessons tell us that even with low-cost token incentives, we must incentivize advanced production methods. Phavor still relies on Web3 databases to create cross-database recommendation middleware, though the processes and solutions are more abstract. A content recommendation system is a necessary component of any social media platform. Token incentives are not the key to Web3 recommendation systems; rather, it is the token holding structure and on-chain behavior. The participation of on-chain data in system decision-making is the essential difference between Web3 and Web2 recommendation systems. Compared to airdrops, the cost of on-chain social interactions is extremely low, leading to Sybil attacks.
Controlling content recommendations with tokens implies that attention is managed by organizations rather than individuals. I believe that allocating content based on organizational needs resembles work communication platforms like DingTalk and Feishu. Rather than being social tools, they are tools for DAOs, where voting reflects power. Trustlessly managing organizational power is undoubtedly an advantage of blockchain and Web3. Current content recommendation incentives based on organizations (platforms or communities) reflect this.
For individual users, social tools are driven by personalized attention solutions. Modern social media platforms push content to individuals based on their preferences, adjusting recommendations in real-time. If we advocate for 1V1 content pushes, on-chain information should serve as raw data for content and user tags.
BlueSky’s “subscription feed generator” combines recommendation algorithms with communication protocols. Anyone can provide self-developed recommendation algorithms for the protocol. Users can subscribe to their preferred recommendation algorithms as needed.
Debank’s social module holds great potential. Although many people use Debank as a data tool, its badges and account display combined with streams have achieved heights that purely badge-focused projects have not. Long-term NFT players’ insights on NFTs are undoubtedly more valuable than those from others. A user who never participates in DeFi cannot guide others in DeFi. As on-chain activities increase, using accounts to adjust user 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 efforts will help it dominate this area.
Current State of Decentralized Social Development
Token incentive scale strategies are not progressing smoothly, and no independent user groups have emerged that showcase scale advantages.
Content on-chain and user autonomy over their social assets are not prioritized without scale.
Content recommendation systems continue to develop, showing some promise after multiple iterations. Creating a social product that better serves users with on-chain interactions could be the first step towards the realization of decentralized social projects.
Among Web3 users, finding the unique scale advantage of Web3 social platforms seems feasible. The biggest advantage is token integration, which introduces not just financial elements but also new relationship and interaction possibilities.
Positive Developments
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions. Seamlessly combining social and trading activities suits users’ trading habits, enabling previous online behaviors to become social interactions.
Farcaster: Incorporates asset issuance into the social scene platform. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more efficient than seeking information on Twitter. More teams are willing to migrate their projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
By capitalizing on these developments, Web3 social platforms can leverage their unique advantages and move closer to achieving widespread adoption and success.
Tokenization of Social Assets
Another evolutionary path for Web3 social platforms is leveraging social interactions for token issuance. For projects, tokens are a means of fundraising. For users, tokens can be a product in themselves—a financial product. Issuing tokens is straightforward; the challenge lies in establishing market value consensus and ensuring token liquidity.
Establishing Value Consensus through Social Interactions
How to gain market recognition for token value is a form of crypto alchemy every project wants to master. Historical experience offers three formulas:
Tokenization of Attention:
Tokenizing attention is the secret behind meme coins. The key to creating attention and thus token attention includes content, key opinion leaders (KOLs), communities, and the wealth effect. The first three are inherently social. Whether it’s Farcaster’s “frames” framework integrating social and token sales directly on the platform, ERC404’s integration of content and tokens, or Donut’s attempt to put recommendation relationships on-chain, each approach enhances the meme value of token issuance from various technical angles.
Meme tokens can build consensus quickly but are hard to sustain. Absent external factors, meme tokens lack consumers and only establish asset liquidity. Unless meme tokens get listed on centralized exchanges (turning from ownerless to owned tokens, as centralized exchanges have market makers), they face an irreversible collapse in both value and liquidity once peak attention wanes.
Tokenization of Social Relationships:
If meme tokens’ cultural value feels abstract, injecting the value of social relationships into tokens is more tangible. Even outside of Web3 and the internet, in economics, “relationships” are considered capital. Tokenizing social relationship capital is a logical step.
My first encounter with the tokenization of social relationships was with DAOs. Broadly defined, DAOs are often seen as token-governed groups. Holding my tokens makes you part of my group, with different tokens or quantities conferring different rights. The tokens represent organizational permissions. Projects like Friends with Benefits (FWB), which sell high-end network value (requiring application approval and a fee), and Moonbird DAO, centered around premium investment information, establish token value through social relationship permissions. Friend.tech, emerging this cycle, explores this path further by targeting small-scale organizations. Its bonding curve pricing shows a steep increase in member cost beyond 200 people, contrasting with the thousands-strong organizations formed by NFT minting and listing.
Tokenization of Content:
The distinction between content tokenization and content-assisted attention tokenization lies in the former’s emphasis on the relationship between tokens and content property rights. From earlier products like Mirror and Paragraph to current platforms like Lens and Farcaster, the focus on assetizing content property rights remains strong. Technically, this function is simple but rarely applied in reality. Copyright is a real-world asset (RWA) issue, transitioning from off-chain to on-chain. When on-chain property rights are uncertain and increase enforcement costs, these functions are ornamental. Content tokenization will only show economic value when most copyright services migrate to blockchain, enforcement paths mature, and economies of scale take effect.
Content tokenization lacks a wealth effect and cannot accelerate industry maturity through financial incentives. In a society overwhelmed by AIGC, content is not scarce—attention is. The absence of scarcity hinders the wealth effect.
Emerging Trends in Web3 Social Platforms
Given the current landscape, several positive developments are worth noting:
TGbot: Integrates trading directly into social interactions, seamlessly merging social and trading activities. This suits users’ trading habits, making past online behaviors interactive.
Farcaster: Brings asset issuance into social platforms. Engaging with investors on Farcaster is more effective than seeking alpha on Twitter. More teams are migrating projects to Farcaster, indicating a surge in project emergence.
In summary, the tokenization of social assets in Web3 is an evolving field with significant potential. While challenges remain, especially regarding establishing economies of scale and creating lasting value consensus, the continuous advancements in technology and strategic approaches to token incentives are promising. Leveraging unique Web3 advantages, particularly the integration of tokens into social interactions, can drive the industry towards a transformative breakthrough.
Bonding Curves and Liquidity Solutions
Although bonding curves are not a social innovation, they address the liquidity cost issues of small-scale projects. The steep bonding curve introduced by Friend.tech significantly reduced the operational costs of providing liquidity for personal tokens, creating a wealth effect even with small-scale funding. As a result, many projects are experimenting with new pricing curves in their respective fields. For instance, Bodhi used bonding curves for content valuation, and DeBox employed bonding curves for community asset issuance.
Despite Friend.tech (FT) losing attention to Farcaster due to operational pace issues, the impact of bonding curves remains profound. FT’s experiments demonstrated that different token application scenarios require suitable bonding curves. Each bonding curve has its pros and cons, necessitating a careful selection based on specific circumstances. Friend.tech V2 follows this consensus by experimenting with multi-centered, networked community asset issuance (clubs) and incorporating a steeper bonding curve.
Pump.fun innovated with a segmented bonding curve, using a steep curve for fundraising below 20,000 USD and switching to a conventional decentralized exchange curve once this threshold is reached. This is another liquidity supply innovation.
Opportunities and Missions of Web3 Social
Throughout two cycles, Web3 social platforms have conducted rich experiments across various fields and perspectives, despite facing challenges and failures. The progress is evident:
Technological Advancements
Front-End Evolution: Transitioned from PC to mobile, from apps to progressive web applications. Wallet login has evolved from mnemonic phrases to MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and abstract accounts, lowering the barriers for users to access Web3 social platforms.
Blockchain Infrastructure: Advancements have significantly reduced ledger costs and transaction times, enabling near-instant transaction completion.
Decentralized Social Protocols: Builders are creating layer 3 solutions tailored to decentralized social platforms, determining the decentralization level based on the credibility and importance of information. Network scaling has improved user experiences, accommodating more concurrent user information from text to multimedia.
Embedded Social Scenarios
Combinatorial Flexibility: As open-source projects with open-source databases, Web3 social platforms offer permissionless, Lego-like combinatorial capabilities. Any interaction can be embedded into social interactions (e.g., direct NFT trading within social platforms), and social interactions can be embedded into any other interactions (e.g., embedding a social tool within a game).
Middleware Achievements
Data Integration and Analysis: Integrating, analyzing, and tagging on-chain data.
Token Behavior Management: Utilizing game theory for token behavior management.
Diverse Liquidity Solutions: Developing various liquidity provision strategies.
Compared to the previous cycle, our infrastructure and tools are more sophisticated. The number of Web3 natives is steadily increasing. Meme tokens and NFTs, understandable to users, have continuously educated potential users through waves of interest.
Social Innovation and Emerging Trends
Social innovation is not a dead end; every era has its challengers. Recently launched projects like ReelShort, which uses dramatic short stories to attract users, exemplify this. ReelShort enables broadcasters, MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks), and media companies to create their social media platforms at low costs, supported by appropriate recommendation algorithms to drive traffic and form a federated network structure.
Envisioning the Future with “Traffic Secrets”
To make this vision more vivid, let’s integrate the “traffic secrets” concept. Here is a blueprint for my ideal Web3 social platform:
Personalized Content Delivery: Implement advanced recommendation algorithms to deliver personalized content that caters to users’ preferences, similar to the approach of ReelShort. Use engaging, dramatic content to capture and retain user attention.
Integrated Financial Incentives: Incorporate bonding curves to manage token liquidity efficiently. Tailor the bonding curve to specific use cases, ensuring it suits the scale and nature of the project. For example, use steep bonding curves for small-scale fundraising and switch to conventional curves once the project reaches a certain threshold.
Decentralized Data Ownership: Ensure users have complete control over their data, reinforcing the value of data sovereignty. Implement robust mechanisms to tokenize social relationships and content, ensuring these tokens represent real, enforceable property rights.
Seamless Social and Financial Integration: Create an environment where social interactions and financial activities are seamlessly integrated. Users can trade assets, interact socially, and participate in decentralized finance (DeFi) within the same platform.
Layer 3 Solutions for Scalability: Develop and implement layer 3 solutions that provide scalable, efficient, and decentralized social protocols. These solutions should support high throughput and low latency, enhancing user experience and enabling real-time interactions.
Community-Driven Development: Foster a community-driven development approach where users contribute to and benefit from the platform’s growth. Encourage user participation in governance through DAOs, ensuring that token holders have a say in the platform’s evolution.
By focusing on these elements, Web3 social platforms can overcome current challenges and unlock new opportunities, driving the industry towards a transformative future.
Dopamine, the Opium of the Masses, and Web3’s Antidote
In the previous discussion, we analyzed the development of social interactions within the Web3 industry in a conventional manner. However, placing it in the broader context of the overall competition among social products, including meme coin issuance through social interactions, seems naïve and overly idealistic. Allow me to present my vision of the social scene.
Since the advent of streaming media, we have hardly seen any pure text and image-based social platforms. Even within streaming media, fierce competition exists. On the top short video platforms, what kind of content do we see? Over-the-top dramas, intense late-night challenges, and outrageous stunts dominate. Now compare this with Farcaster, STEEM, or Mirror—is there any engaging content? Without the allure of Web3 ideals or the promise of airdrop gains, I wouldn’t waste a second on them. Yes, Web3 social development has diverged, but the issue isn’t technical. The threshold for massive adoption of Web3 technology is being approached. To achieve massive adoption, Web3 social platforms need to connect with mainstream content.
Previously, we thought introducing content meant airdropping to creators or heavily incentivizing those who couldn’t generate significant traffic, claiming to break platform monopolies. In reality, 1% of super KOLs create 90% of the traffic and don’t get rewarded accordingly.
In social media, certain technical details are not as crucial. For example, if TikTok decided to implement its own wallet login, whether it uses MPC or AA wouldn’t matter much. Whoever controls the traffic is king. Whoever can create traffic-driving content owns the traffic. Could it be that the industry’s organizational structure isn’t about protocol-driven or project-driven platforms akin to Web2 but rather placing each content creator at the center of a small economic cycle? These creators freely choose protocols and tools that suit their content and organically combine these protocols and tools, allowing other social participants to engage in their economic cycle through tokens.
This typical fan economy already has a prototype in real life:
A high-end “emotional massage therapist” might have Twitter accounts, Telegram groups, OnlyFans, and Pornhub channels. Their positioning is not simply as a provider of sexual services but as a comprehensive SEX dream solution provider. These workers build their private traffic through social media, guide paid habits by selling their premium short videos and live streaming, and then monetize through girlfriend experiences and role-playing services. Social media and media multiply their labor value and help them escape platform exploitation due to the traffic brought by self-media.
Another example is Zaiko, a Japanese artist live-streaming and selling platform. It adopts decentralized technology, allowing artists to issue NFTs and preparing for platform token issuance. The founder of Zaiko has a history of successful entrepreneurship and established business relationships with many Japanese artists in previous ventures. Thus, Zaiko never lacks users. Today, a single live-streaming session on Zaiko can generate sales worth millions of dollars. Decentralized technology has already begun transforming our social landscape from another direction.
Taking Back Control from Platforms
The most direct method to reclaim control from platforms is to let content create platforms. Platforms can form connections through third-party curation or recommendation tools. Let’s envision a potential Web3 blueprint.
Decentralized Fan Economies: Empower content creators to be at the core of their small economic cycles. Each creator uses protocols and tools suited to their content style, combining them organically. Social participants engage with these cycles through tokenized interactions.
Integrated Financial Incentives: Utilize bonding curves to manage token liquidity effectively. Adapt bonding curves to specific use cases, ensuring they suit the project’s scale and nature. For example, steep curves for small-scale fundraising that switch to conventional curves once thresholds are met.
Personalized Content Delivery: Implement advanced recommendation algorithms for personalized content, similar to ReelShort’s approach with dramatic content to capture attention.
Decentralized Data Ownership: Ensure users control their data, reinforcing data sovereignty’s value. Implement mechanisms to tokenize social relationships and content, representing enforceable property rights.
Seamless Social and Financial Integration: Create an environment where social interactions and financial activities integrate seamlessly. Users can trade assets, socialize, and participate in DeFi within the same platform.
Community-Driven Development: Foster community-driven development where users contribute to and benefit from the platform’s growth. Encourage user participation in governance through DAOs, ensuring token holders influence the platform’s evolution.
Real-World Integration: Learn from real-world models like Zaiko, where decentralized technology enhances artist-audience interactions and monetization, applying similar strategies to Web3 social platforms.
By focusing on these elements, Web3 social platforms can overcome current challenges and unlock new opportunities, driving the industry toward a transformative future.
Blueprint for Web3 Social
Imagine a venture capitalist hiring a sensational novelist to write a dramatic screenplay titled “Back to 2010: Stirring Waves in the Crypto World,” incorporating elements that trigger dopamine and hormonal responses. Before the script is completed, a public announcement is made that the writer has gone bankrupt and fled, creating hype. The project then continues, moving into the filming phase. To evade regulations, decentralized media solutions such as Farcaster and Livepeer are employed, and early viewers receive content token airdrops.
Engaging the Audience through Tokenization
Influence and Participation: Users holding a certain amount of tokens can influence the plot, vote on new character actors, and access new episodes and various merchandise ahead of time.
In-Show Commerce: In specific regions, custom products like the protagonist’s outfits and real estate can be sold directly within the show through frames.
Fan Tokens: Each main character has their fan tokens, and fans can communicate through platforms like Friend.tech or a custom fan system. Additional services like chat, exclusive videos, and companionship can be negotiated separately.
Unlocking Content: Passionate scenes require fan tokens and content tokens to unlock.
Token Sales: New tokens issued in the plot are simultaneously launched on platforms like Pump.fun.
Curating and Monetizing Content
Decentralized Streaming: The show’s independent streaming service uses curation tools like Tako and Phavor to sell and rent its traffic overflow.
Compliance and Web2 Integration: Edited short videos that comply with regulations are simultaneously released on Web2 platforms.
Enhanced Social Experience for Web3 Users
Rewarding Engagement: Watching the show earns viewers tokens, which can be used to increase their meme exposure in the plot, manipulate traffic, and gain rewards.
Direct Interaction with Actors: Support favorite actors and interact with them face-to-face. Engage in close, direct communication and even join the cast as an extra for a satisfying cosplay experience.
Seamless Integration: The experience is enriched with convenient login methods, low content storage costs, and minimal latency.
Technical Support and Requirements
To achieve this immersive experience, we need:
Convenient Login: Simplified user authentication methods to facilitate easy access.
Low Content Storage Costs: Efficient and cost-effective content storage solutions.
Reduced Latency: Technology to ensure minimal delay in streaming and interactions.
The Future of Web3 Social Interaction
The blueprint for Web3 social interaction is about merging engaging content with tokenized participation, creating a deeply immersive and rewarding experience that surpasses traditional Web2 capabilities. By leveraging the power of decentralized technology, users can gain unprecedented control and interaction within their favorite shows, transforming passive viewership into active participation and investment.
This vision illustrates how Web3 can revolutionize the social experience, blending entertainment, commerce, and personal interaction into a cohesive ecosystem driven by user engagement and tokenization.
Web3’s mission
Web3 is neither a savior nor a messiah. The core of the Web3 revolution is liberalism. There’s nothing wrong with gambling, paid friendships are legitimate, and enjoying addictive short videos is human nature. Just as God gave humans choices, Web3 aims to provide more options. Wide gates and narrow gates, hell and heaven, are all a matter of choice. Our mission in Web3 is to restore the rights taken by centralization back to each individual, without imposing our ideals on others.
Conclusion:
Web3 social is not a scam, but it’s also not child’s play. Even my Web3 social concepts have been mocked as child’s play by some friends, yet the industry’s success often rises from such seemingly laughable failures.
Currently, Web3 social faces challenges primarily due to immature technology. Our costs are still too high, and our recommendation mechanisms are still in their infancy compared to Web2. Although we champion the respect for creators, the industry’s organizational structure remains technology platform-centric. Social interactions must revolve around human nature, and simply respecting human nature isn’t enough to generate the initial traffic. Consequently, leveraging content has become a common strategy in the industry. I predict that future social media will center around content issuers, with users and related service providers forming the surrounding ecosystem.
Moreover, we have yet to determine how to use Web3 technology to enhance user social interactions effectively. Interactivity, along with autonomy and censorship resistance, is a crucial attribute of Web3 social platforms. Mastering interactivity to improve user experience will be key to the success or failure of Web3 social. Understanding how content and communities interact in a decentralized technological environment will be pivotal in attracting traffic and achieving practical implementation.
Disclaimer：
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