The Blossoming of Web3 Social: A Flash in the Pan or the Next Mass Application?

1. Introduction: What is Web3 Social?

Recently, Web3 social has attracted people's attention again. From friend.tech to Bodhi, these projects are attempting to assign value to influence and content in different ways, trying to bring back the value of data. Web3 social is redefining our view of social interactions and offering a range of innovative solutions.

Looking back at the development of social products, Web2 social products like Facebook, X, Instagram, and WeChat have provided users with unprecedented convenience. However, this convenience also hides some dilemmas, such as the centralized control of user data, lack of transparency and privacy protection, and platform governance being controlled by a few centralized entities. Creator incentives are also a highly controversial aspect of Web2 social products.

Web3 social redefines social networks in a whole new way. It emphasizes decentralization, user data privacy and control, and the incentive mechanisms of cryptocurrency economics. Protocols and products such as Lens, CyberConnect, Farcaster, Phaver, Debox, and friend.tech are continuously emerging, while concepts like SocialFi integrate finance and social interaction, reshaping the landscape of social networks. Desoc focuses on establishing a decentralized social ecosystem to eliminate many of the issues present in Web2 social networks.

Although the social track has long been expected to be the next large-scale application, it has yet to be realized. Are the endless social products a flash in the pan or the next large-scale application? This article will delve into the core concepts and solutions of Web3 social, analyzing its current development status, advantages, and challenges. We will return to the essence of social interaction, examine the Web3 social domain, reveal its advantages and challenges, and explore their roles in redefining social networks.

2. Why do we need social for Web3?

1. The essence of social interaction does not change with the development of history.

Humans have had social needs since ancient times. Whether it is face-to-face communication, sending messages by carrier pigeon, or carving onto stone tablets to convey to others, the essence of human social needs has not changed significantly with the development of the times. The core needs can be summarized in the following four points:

1. Maintaining connection and a sense of belonging: Social interaction makes people feel a sense of belonging, meets emotional needs, builds intimate relationships, and provides support.

2. Information learning and exchange: Through social interactions, people can share experiences, knowledge, and information, promoting learning, development, and personal growth.

3. Cooperation and mutual assistance: Social interaction helps people collaborate, cooperate, solve problems together, and achieve common goals.

4. Social identity and self-expression: Socializing is a way for people to showcase themselves, build identity recognition, and gain acknowledgment.

2. Web2 social solutions meet the needs of "fast, good, and economical"

Web2 social products address the "speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness" needs of socializing. Facebook allows people to meet friends and share information more quickly, X enables faster access to trending news and interactive discussions, and LinkedIn transforms workplace networking from offline introductions to quick online connections. Essentially, Web2 social products address the "speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness" needs of socializing.

3. The Dilemmas of the Traditional Social Industry

However, Web2 social also brings some problems, mainly focused on data ownership and centralization.

1. Data ownership: In Web2 social products, user data belongs to the platform rather than the user, leading to the following issues:

• Privacy Leakage: User data is collected and utilized in large quantities, leading to the risk of personal privacy leakage.
• Value does not return to users: User data generates revenue for social platforms, but users cannot benefit from it.
• Unable to cross-platform: User data cannot circulate between multiple social platforms, with each platform becoming an island.

2. Centralization: In Web2 social products, the platform has unlimited rights to use the content.

• Weak resistance to censorship: Centralized platforms are influenced by political, cultural, and other factors, making it difficult to achieve freedom of speech. Users "dance" under various restrictions and constraints.

3. Product Analysis of Web3 Social Industry

In response to the issues present in Web2 social networking, Web3 products are exploring multiple aspects. From the protocol layer to the application layer, Web3 social projects are flourishing, addressing various pain points in Web2 social networking.

1. The value of data benefits users.

1) Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph protocol founded by the Aave team. Its main feature is to store user social graph data in the form of NFTs. The total number of users in the Lens ecosystem has reached 370,000, with monthly active users maintaining around 3,000.

Main features of Lens Protocol:

1. Data value is tradable: User data can be NFTized, and accounts can be freely traded in the market.
2. Data liquidity: Providing developers with modular components to achieve data interoperability between different applications.
3. High degree of decentralization: content, social interactions, and identities are all on the blockchain.

Products based on the Lens protocol, such as Lenster and Phaver, also demonstrate unique advantages.

2）friend.tech

friend.tech is a recently popular socialfi project, with a total trading volume of 12.48 million. The project tokenizes personal influence, realizing the fan economy:

• Fans can purchase the KOL's key to join a private chat group and interact with the KOL.
• KOLs earn revenue from transaction fees, incentivizing them to expand their influence.

The explosive popularity of friend.tech is due to innovative models, capital boosting, and user-friendly PWA among other factors.

3) Bodhi

Bodhi is a project that assetizes content. Unlike friend.tech, Bodhi trades individual content, expanding the transaction scale and making the trading targets more focused. The content is stored on Arweave, achieving decentralized storage.

4) Summary of Current Situation Analysis

Whether it is the protocol layer Lens Protocol or the application types friend.tech and Bodhi, they are all trying to solve the problem of data value benefiting users from different angles. These projects allow users and creators to share data and content value more fairly through value monetization mechanisms.

2. Anti-censorship

1) Farcaster

Farcaster is a decentralized social protocol founded by former CoinBase executives. Its main features:

1. Decentralized Identity: User identity information is stored on the chain.
2. Combining on-chain and off-chain to improve user experience: High-frequency data is stored in the off-chain Farcaster Hub.

Farcaster performs well in terms of user engagement, but the user base is still in the early stages.

2) Nostr

Nostr is an open-source decentralized social protocol that primarily addresses the issue of censorship resistance. Its features include:

• Unique service framework: composed of client and "repeater".
• Public and private key mechanism: ensures identity verification and information security.

Damus is a representative application based on the Nostr protocol. Although simple, it satisfies people's desire for freedom.

3) Summary of Current Situation Analysis

Although Farcaster and Nostr have not incubated continuously active applications, their exploration in anti-censorship has brought new possibilities for Web3 social.

3. The native social scenarios brought by Web3

DeBox

DeBox solves the "position chat" problem by allowing specific NFT or Token holders to enter the community. Its features include:

• Use positions as consensus to unite community members with the same views.
• Off-chain storage and logic, providing a user experience similar to Web2.

In addition to DeBox, there are many projects that approach the social field from different angles, such as Cyberconnect and Mast Network.

4. Why is Web3 social relatively quiet compared to other sectors?

1. The trade-off between decentralization and user experience

Web3 social projects face a trade-off between user experience and decentralization. Fully on-chain solutions can impose cost and speed pressures, while partial on-chain solutions may raise doubts about "Web2.5" social interactions.

2. The switching cost of social products is very high.

Users have established stable social relationships and data accumulation on existing social platforms, making migration costs high. Web3 social projects need to innovate more in terms of new experiences to meet differentiated needs.

3. The sustainability of data value feeding back to users.

Many Web3 social projects are still in the Ponzi stage, making it difficult to achieve sustainable development. Balancing financial attributes and sustainability is key.

4. The overlap between the target users of social networking and the user profile of web3 is relatively low.

Social interaction requires real users, not speculative users. Web3 users often come with speculative and wealth-seeking demands, which differ significantly from the target user profile for social interaction.

V. Business Models of Social Interaction

Evolution of the Business Model of Social Products:

1. Web1.0 stage: Mainly relies on advertising and membership fees.
2. Web 2.0 Stage: Focused on advertising display and user data collection.
3. Web3 Phase: Attempt new models such as data value feedback, token economy, and NFTization of data assets.

The business model of Web3 social projects is still in the exploratory stage, and in the future, it may focus more on the value of user data, engagement, and community governance.

6. Exploring the Future of Social: The Collision of Web3 Social and the AI Wave

AI and Web3 each have their advantages in the social domain: AI focuses on emotional companionship and support, while Web3 emphasizes returning data value to users and resisting censorship. The combination of the two may produce new sparks, as projects like Myshell and Siya.AI attempt to integrate AI with Web3 to meet diverse social needs.

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