Repost the original title: Exploring UXLINK: A new chapter in Web3 social networking, the power and potential of acquaintance social networking

Introduction:

The emerging Web3 social platform, UXLink, is carving a unique path through “acquaintance social networking,” distinct from other well-known social projects. It serves as a pioneer in exploring how to forge real and meaningful social connections in a decentralized world. What makes UXLink unique, and how does it differ from previous well-known Web3 social projects? This article delves into UXLink’s core philosophy and technological innovations, as well as its future prospects.

Chapter 1: What is UXLink and How Can Beginners Get Started?

UXLink is a burgeoning Web3 social project that kicked off in late April 2023, now rapidly expanding with over 3.1 million registered users and a daily active user count surpassing 200,000. Aiming for mass adoption within Web3, UXLink offers a user-friendly experience that doesn’t require any financial preparation or even a blockchain wallet. All that’s needed is a Telegram account and an invitation from an acquaintance, allowing for product exploration within one minute. Users can easily become new UXLink members by either reaching out to the official UXLink Telegram bot @uxlink_bot or by clicking an invitation link from another user, seamlessly entering the product interaction interface within Telegram.

For the average user, a core growth mechanism on UXLink is “Link to earn”. By inviting more friends to become UXLink users, they can earn UXUY token rewards, building their own social network and capturing their social value. Upon registration, UXLink automatically creates a wallet for the user on the Arbitrum blockchain using Account Abstraction (MPC-AA), allowing users to view their social relationships, blockchain balance, and perform further actions like minting SBTs. Users can also create UXLink groups, each with its own wallet address and account system. The process for a user to get started with UXLink is outlined below. Compared to other Web3 social products (such as Lens Protocol, FriendTech, etc.), this user experience is considerably user-friendly.

For many readers, there might be a question: There have been many social products & protocols before, so what makes UXLink different? Why should I spend time learning & experiencing it?

The following part of the article will focus on answering this question.

Chapter 2: Acquaintance Social Networking — The Differentiated Protocol Path of UXLink

2.1 The Difference Between UXLink and Previous Social Protocols

The field of Web3 social products & protocols has always been a highly discussed and debated topic within Web3. For example, in 2023, social protocols such as Nostr, Farcaster, Lens Protocol, and Cyberconnect have all attracted widespread attention and discussion.

Although these social protocols differ in narrative focus, technical architecture, initial user profile, operational tactics, and the relationship between protocol and product, they share a commonality: the social relationships they accumulate tend to lean towards the one-way follower relationships between KOLs and fans, similar to those on Twitter or Weibo, rather than the two-way acquaintance relationships found on messaging platforms like WeChat or WhatsApp. This model emphasizes a “following” mechanism where KOLs produce content consumed by fans.

UXLink, however, takes a different path, focusing on transforming and retaining users’ existing acquaintance social relationships into the social protocol and helping users build new acquaintance relationships. Acquaintance social relationships refer to those based on real-life acquaintance, closeness, or shared experiences. The essence of these relationships is trust and deep personal connections, far surpassing the simple KOL-fan connections. As seen widely in Web3, various small community groups are established and maintained through built trust among members. The value of trust generated from these social relationships is higher than that of KOL-fan relationships.

Imagine a common scenario: a new Web3 project has just launched its token, but its activities and the value of its token are highly controversial in the market. For a user, if there is a KOL-fan connection, they will only be significantly influenced when they have great trust in the KOL’s professional judgment in this field, leading them to research and take action. However, in the case of connections through personal social networks, within a group of acquaintances, users may be driven by curiosity and trust in their friends to proactively inquire and learn about this new project; moreover, if they have doubts about the project, they can discuss and exchange views with each other. It is evident that, from the perspective of project promotion and conversion, social connections based on personal acquaintances have greater potential conversion value compared to KOL-fan relationships. Therefore, the UXLink protocol, which is built on personal social relationships, may have greater commercial value than some social protocols built on KOL-fan relationships.

2.2 The core of UXLink’s acquaintance-based social product: Groups

When discussing UXLink’s acquaintance-based social relationships, an essential concept is “groups”. Groups, as a collective communication space within UXLink, are not just simple chat rooms. They reflect the practical application of an individual’s social graph, transforming personal social networks into real-time, dynamic platforms for communication and interaction.

To illustrate with a specific example, suppose a user has a social graph of 200 people, including relatives, friends, teachers, classmates, and colleagues from work. Although such a vast social network sounds valuable, the user may face a dilemma: How can I effectively utilize this network?

UXLink offers a solution: integrating these 200 people into one group. This group is not just a place for information exchange but a living embodiment of a social graph. Currently, UXLink primarily supports creating scenarios like Telegram groups, making such groups feasible. In this 200-person Telegram group, members can make and receive payments and distribute interests, fully reflecting a dynamic social network.

More importantly, new social graphs can emerge between groups. This means that groups are not just closed communication spaces but platforms that can continuously expand and deepen social networks. In reality, discussions in these groups might cover various topics, from everyday life trivia to professional investment discussions, offering rich and diverse content.

In UXLink groups, the group owner plays a central role in spreading messages. Currently, the platform has over 70,000 groups, some of which are very active and efficient. This vast network not only facilitates rapid information flow but also offers a new perspective for marketing.

From a marketing standpoint, users face three main challenges: distrust, not being persuaded, and not understanding. In UXLink groups, these three issues can be effectively addressed. Recommendations from acquaintances are more trustworthy than advertisements; if users have questions about a topic or product, ongoing discussions and interactions within the group can help persuade them; for complex concepts or products, groups provide an ideal place for real-time problem-solving.

In summary, UXLink’s unique group feature not only promotes the active application of social graphs but also provides a powerful platform for building trust, exchanging information, and solving problems. In this new era of acquaintance-based socialization, UXLink’s group feature undoubtedly serves as an important bridge connecting personal social networks with practical applications.

Speaking of groups, some readers might think of FriendTech, a Web3 social product that was very popular in the second half of 2023. The concept of Rooms in FriendTech shares many similarities with UXLink’s groups, but FriendTech’s financial attributes were too strong. Users bought another user’s Key often because they believed its value would increase, not necessarily to participate in Room discussions or build social connections. This mechanism required FriendTech to maintain a high user growth rate, sustaining the price of Keys by continuously adding new users to boost community confidence.

However, FriendTech had a relatively high barrier to entry for outsiders. Once almost all potential Web3 users were converted, it became challenging to sustain user growth. In contrast, UXLink focuses on interpersonal communication and influence, resembling a class or a small company, where interests are built on collaboration rather than KOL monetization, bringing real value to users and third parties.

Other inappropriate economic models and product designs in FriendTech are not discussed here. However, FriendTech’s case illustrates the potential impact of the “group” social function.

2.3 The Value of UXLink Protocol for Developers and Third-party Web3 Projects

UXLink has accumulated a significant number of real users and social relationship groups among acquaintances, and has deployed a protocol layer at the foundational level. The UXLink product is divided into three layers:

1. UXLink Basic Application Layer: This provides basic product services for ecological applications such as growth fission, groups, etc., along with wallet account services based on MPC-TSS (Multi-party computation, Threshold Signature Scheme), and EOA account services based on groups.
2. UXLink Protocol Service Layer: WEB3 developers can efficiently handle user’s social identity and social relationship data services through the APIs provided by UXLink (APIs and ABIs for onchain and offchain systems). The UXLink Protocol has a scalable technical architecture that combines on-chain and off-chain elements (EVM+IPFS+Cloud) to support scenarios of mass adoption. It stores identity and relationship data on-chain, while off-chain it processes complex business scenario data to support applications using the UXLink Protocol.
3. UXLink Infrastructure Layer: This is a hybrid scalable architecture (EVM + IPFS + Cloud), mainly involving EVM chains (Ethereum Mainnet, Arbitrum L2 Chain, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Base Chain, etc.), decentralized storage, and centralized data indexing services.

Focusing back on social relationships among acquaintances, because the nature of relationships differs, the data richness also varies, similar to the relationship between WeChat and Weibo. The nature of the relationship determines trust levels, while data determines precision. To illustrate with a recent feature launch as an example:

Since February, UXLink launched a multi-wallet feature, encouraging users to link WEB3 wallets under the same account and helping users manage these wallets. Throughout February, there has been a cumulative wallet balance of over 1 billion USD. A certain well-known WEB3 wallet is the main wallet promoted by UXLink, and in just 14 days, over 200,000 addresses were linked to the UXLink network, with an average of about 70U per wallet. In terms of facilitating registrations for this well-known wallet, 8500 Linkers and 4200 groups contributed to more than 80% of the achievements, with a conversion rate exceeding 40%. The high conversion and deposit rates highlight UXLink’s strong force in promoting user participation through social and group interactions. On average, each Linker contributed more than 20 new wallets, not only showcasing UXLink’s strong social network effect but also proving its user base’s high activity level and quality. Additionally, a deposit rate of 72% indicates the high engagement and investment level of these new wallet users.

Geographically, this activity successfully attracted users from regions such as Southeast Asia, Africa/Nigeria, India, Europe, the USA, and Singapore, achieving the activity’s geographic coverage goals.

In summary, through the promotional activities in cooperation with third-party wallets, UXLink has demonstrated its immense commercial potential as a social product in the Web3 social field. For projects with promotional needs, collaborating with UXLink for user growth could become a viable strategy.

Chapter 3: The Future Prospects and Challenges of UXLink

UXLink, in addition to bringing a new social experience to Web3 users through its innovative acquaintance social model, has also paved a new path for more users to enter the world of Web3.

Web3 social has always been considered one of the core applications in the narrative of Mass Adoption of Web3, mainly because it can build a bridge that allows outsiders to comfortably step into. Unlike the previous bull market, various high-performance public chains, account abstraction wallets, and other infrastructure have matured. Users outside the Web3 circle experiencing a new generation of Web3 social products like UXLink no longer need to understand the complex concepts of blockchain, public and private keys, wallets, etc., which significantly lowers their entry barrier. Additionally, the invitation-based social networking of acquaintances, compared to the KOL-fan mechanism, is easier to achieve viral spreading.

Bringing more users to the Web3 industry and allowing users to continuously progress, enabling more developers and third-party applications to better serve users, is what holds long-term value for this industry. This is what UXLink is doing, and we look forward to its further growth and development in this bull market. Social networking is the crown jewel of any WEB phase. Does UXLink have the chance to be that jewel on the crown of WEB3?

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reprinted from [global-ambulance-ff7], with the original title “Exploring UXLINK: A New Chapter in Web3 Social, The Power and Potential of Acquaintance Socializing”. Copyright belongs to the original author [global-ambulance-ff7]. If there are any objections to the reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and the team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not constitute any investment advice.

3. Other language versions of the article have been translated by the Gate Learn team. Without mentioning Gate.io, the translated articles may not be copied, disseminated, or plagiarized.