Web3 Social: Exploring Opportunities and Missions

Recently, the discourse around Web3 is filled with hostility, seen as a breeding ground for exploiting investors. However, in my view, Ponzi is a neutral financing technique that safeguards project success. Builders continue to strive in fields like DeFi and social applications, and the Web3 revolution is still underway. This article reviews the development of Web3 social platforms over the past eight years, summarizes experiences and lessons learned, and explores potential opportunities.

Although Web3 social is not yet mature, its achievements are noteworthy. Different people have different expectations for Web3; some seek better experiences, while others need protection of data sovereignty. With technological advances and lower barriers, the emergence of real products may be just around the corner.

The Underlying Demand Theory of Web3 Social

Successful products are built on solid demand. Web3 projects are often criticized for being disconnected from the real economy, and it is necessary to fundamentally prove the demand for social interactions in Web3.

Humans are social animals with social needs. People need to establish connections, perceive others, and receive feedback. Holding tokens is a new way of connection, and an open, verifiable database expands the dimensions of information. The new environment fosters new types of interpersonal relationships and interaction methods.

Motivations for online social behavior: self-presentation, emotional venting, seeking validation. The internet creates more social scenarios, from forums to social media. Economies of scale are a significant feature; projects that cannot establish economies of scale struggle to survive.

The scale of Web3 social networks is far less than that of Web2 giants. Scale determines whether the social nature and motivations can be realized. The advantages of Web3 lie in cross-database, composable social interfaces, and token-supported interactions.

In recent years, Web3 has been striving to achieve economies of scale, but still faces challenges.

The Development Context of Web3 Social

Web3 social presents two trends:

1. Develop decentralized social technology standards
2. Build token consensus through social engagement

Competition of Decentralized Social Technology Standards

Losing social information sovereignty means losing cognitive and choice freedom. Decentralized social technology is a necessity.

There is a need to break through in communication protocols, data, and applications. Projects like Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, and Farcaster provide new protocols that compromise on decentralization attributes, but their functionalities are not inferior to Web2.

Technology is not the problem; the key is how to overcome the disadvantages of scale. Token incentives have become a direct means for most projects.

Token Incentive Revolution Encountering Obstacles

Token incentives face two major dilemmas:

1. The subjective value of social media content is difficult to assess, and the effectiveness of incentives is questionable.
2. Facing Witch Attack

Taking STEEM as an example, content production and recommendation based on token staking weight were effective in the early stages. However, after the collapse of consensus, witch attacks ran rampant. Now, leading platforms have achieved personalized recommendations, making it difficult to rely solely on tag sorting.

Token incentives violate the social element of "non-monetary rewards," which in turn reduces social efficiency.

Degen on Farcaster creates a wealth effect and triggers ecological prosperity by giving out part of the tokens as rewards. Using Meme tokens to boost the platform may be a better solution.

Stage Frustration of Content Autonomy Revolution

Early projects attempted to "put content on-chain" and assetize it. Mirror allows users to publish content and mint NFTs. However, it lacks operational capability, and long texts themselves lack traffic.

Bodhi uses bonding curve technology to sell content NFTs at varying prices. However, the difficulty in establishing content rights makes it hard to change the current state of infringement. The market is insensitive to the assetization of content, and users do not care about content sovereignty.

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

STEEM has inspired a number of projects. Yup, Wormhole3 and others attempt to incentivize content recommendations with tokens. However, simple ranking struggles to compete with smart algorithms, and advertising pricing is not as precise as in Web2.

Experience shows that advanced production methods must be incentivized. Projects like Phavor utilize on-chain data to participate in recommendation system decisions, which is fundamentally different from Web2.

The social tools loved by ordinary people have shifted towards personalized recommendations. BlueSky's "Subscription Stream Generator" allows users to choose recommendation algorithms. Debank's social module combines on-chain behavior to refine user data, helping to capture the high ground of recommendation systems.

Overall, the current state of decentralized social development:

1. The token incentive scale strategy is not going smoothly.
2. Content on the chain, users do not care about their own assets in the absence of scale.
3. The content recommendation system continues to develop, showing signs of dawn.

Finding scale advantages or feasibility among Web3 users. Tokens introduce finance, creating new relationships and interaction possibilities.

Two positive signs:

• TGbot: Seamless integration of trading and socializing
• Farcaster: Asset issuance introduces social scenarios, projects are emerging.

Social Asset Tokenization

Using social channels to launch tokens is another evolutionary path. For projects, it is a means of financing, while for users, it may be a financial product. The key is to establish value consensus and liquidity.

Social Establishment of Value Consensus:

Historical experience provides three formulas:

Attention Tokenization:

The secret formula for Meme coins. Elements: content, KOL, community, and wealth effect. Farcaster's frames, ERC404, Donut, etc., enhance the Meme content of coin issuance from a technical perspective.

Meme tokens are easy to establish consensus but difficult to sustain. Unless they are listed on centralized exchanges, they are prone to a dual spiral collapse of value and liquidity after a peak in attention.

Social Relationship Tokenization:

"Relationships" are a form of capital. DAO tokenizes social relationship capital. Friend.tech focuses on the small-scale organization market and adopts bonding curve pricing.

Content Tokenization:

Emphasize the relationship between tokens and content ownership. From Mirror to Lens and Farcaster, the functionality of assetizing content ownership has been preserved. However, the uncertainty of on-chain ownership increases the cost of rights protection, and it is currently just a facade.

Content tokenization lacks the wealth effect. In the AIGC era, content is not scarce; what is scarce is attention.

Bonding curve solves liquidity:

The steep bonding curve proposed by Friend.tech reduces the liquidity cost of providing personal tokens. Projects like Bodhi and DeBox are experimenting with new pricing curves in their respective fields.

Pump.fun invented the segmented bonding curve to provide liquidity solutions for small-scale projects.

Web3 social is conducting rich experiments in multiple fields, and although it has faced setbacks, it is still making progress.

Opportunities and Mission of Web3 Social

Over the past two cycles, Web3 social has faced numerous setbacks, but has made significant progress.

• From PC to mobile, and then to progressive web applications
• Wallet login from mnemonic phrases to MPC and abstract accounts
• Advances in blockchain infrastructure reduce costs and improve performance.
• The social protocol layer determines the degree of decentralization based on the characteristics of information.
• Network expansion enhances user experience, supporting more concurrent information

Embedded social scenarios represent innovation in the industry. Open-source projects inherently possess combinability, allowing interactions to be embedded in social or social to be embedded in interactions. There have also been achievements in middleware, such as on-chain data integration, analysis, and tagging.

Infrastructure and tools are more完善, Web3 natives are increasing, and Meme tokens and NFTs are continuously educating potential users.

Social innovation still has opportunities. For example, ReelShort focuses on melodramatic short dramas and creates personal social media platforms at low cost.

dopamine, the opium of the masses, the antidote of Web3

Web3 social development deviates from the mainstream and lacks attractive content. To achieve mass adoption, it is necessary to integrate high-quality content.

We originally thought that introducing content was to airdrop to creators, but in fact, super KOLs generate most of the traffic but do not receive the rewards they deserve.

In the social sphere, whoever has traffic is the king. In the future, content creators may be at the core of a small economic cycle, freely choosing protocols and tools, while fans participate in the economic cycle through tokens.

For example, "heterosexual emotional massage therapists" operate multiple platform accounts at the same time, providing a complete set of services. Social media adds value to their labor, helping them escape platform exploitation.

Similarly, on the Zaiko platform, artists can issue NFTs and platform tokens, and a live streaming sales event can reach millions of dollars. Decentralized technology has begun to change the social landscape.

Blueprint for Web3 Social

Imagine a Web3 social blueprint:

A certain capital investment melodrama "Back to 2010: I Stir Up Waves in the Crypto Circle" adopts a decentralized media solution to airdrop content tokens to early viewers. Token holders can influence the plot, participate in voting, and gain rights to merchandise. Products from the show are sold through frames, and the main character has fan tokens and a self-built fan system. New coins are issued in the show simultaneously with real-world sales. Independent streaming media sells overflow traffic through curation tools.

Web3 user experience is greatly enhanced: earn tokens by watching shows, profit by manipulating traffic, support your favorite actors, and even participate as background actors. This sense of participation is something Web2 cannot achieve.

We need more convenient login, lower content storage costs, and technical support such as reduced latency.

The mission of Web3

Web3 is not a savior, but rather aims to provide more choices. Our mission is to return the rights taken away by centralization to everyone, without imposing ideals.

Conclusion

Web3 social is not a scam, but it is also not a child's play experiment. The current dilemma stems from immature technology and organizational issues. In the future, social media may center around content distributors, focusing on users and service providers.

How to enhance social interactivity using Web3 technology is key. Finding better ways for content and communities to interact in the new environment will determine whether Web3 can truly attract traffic and take root.