Web3 Social: Opportunities and Mission

Recently, the discourse around Web3 has been filled with hostility, as if Web3 is just a large field of speculators. However, Ponzi is actually neutral; it is a financing technique that reduces project operation costs and serves as a means to support project success. Whether in DeFi, social networks, or other sectors, there are persistent builders striving for progress. The Web3 revolution has not yet failed, and we still look forward to a decentralized future.

This article will outline the achievements in the Web3 social field over the past 8 years from a developmental perspective,整理经验教训, and explore potential opportunities. Although Web3 social is not yet mature, the results are noteworthy. As technology continues to advance and barriers decrease, the emergence of real products may be just around the corner.

The Underlying Demand Theory of Web3 Social

Any successful product is built on solid demand. Humans are social animals with social needs. This conclusion has been repeatedly demonstrated by social products. People need to connect with others, perceive the emotions and attitudes of others, and obtain feedback. This is a demand engraved in our genes by the history of evolution.

Holding tokens is a brand new way to connect. An open and verifiable database expands the dimensions of information obtained from connections. The new information environment will foster new social relationships and interaction methods.

The psychological motivations behind online social behavior mainly include: self-presentation, emotional venting, and seeking recognition. Compared to traditional offline socializing, the internet has created more social scenarios. From forums and BBS to blogs, instant messaging, and social media, different scenarios have given rise to a number of successful projects.

Economies of scale are a significant feature of internet social interactions. Social projects that cannot establish economies of scale within specific populations struggle to survive. The scale of Web3 social interactions is far less than that of Web2 giants, making it a major challenge to overcome this scale disadvantage.

The unique advantage of Web3 lies in the underlying information support across databases and organizations, as well as the modular and pluggable social interfaces. Tokens are a characteristic of Web3, where social support is used for token issuance, and quantifying rights interactions with tokens is a unique scenario of Web3 social.

The Development Context of Web3 Social

Web3 social presents two development trends:

1. Develop decentralized social technology standards
2. Establish token consensus through social interaction

Competition of Decentralized Social Technology Standards

Losing control over social information sovereignty means losing cognitive and choice freedom. Therefore, decentralized social technology solutions are a necessity. New generation projects such as Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, Farcaster, etc., have all presented their own decentralized social protocols. By relinquishing some decentralized attributes of data, these protocols have made significant progress.

However, how to break through the scale disadvantage is a challenge faced by all projects. Token incentives have become the direct means for most projects.

The token incentive revolution faces two major dilemmas:

1. The subjective value of social content is difficult to assess, and the effectiveness of token incentives is questionable.

2. Token incentives face witch attacks.

STEEM is a pioneer of Web3 social, and many of its concepts and designs are still referenced today. STEEM initially innovated across multiple dimensions, such as token incentives for content and data availability layers. However, after the founding team fell apart, the project fell into difficulties.

Subsequent projects such as Torum and BBS have adopted token incentives to expand their scale. However, these incentives contradict the "non-monetary reward" element of social interaction, instead reducing social efficiency.

Degen on Farcaster sends out some tokens through tips, introducing the financial attributes of crypto socializing and creating a wealth effect. This operation has brought ecological prosperity and generated various innovative tools.

The autonomous revolution of content has also encountered setbacks. Projects like Mirror attempt to put content "on-chain," but what cannot be changed is that while content can be verified, the information it carries can easily be transferred. In the current flood of AIGC, content is not scarce; what is scarce is attention.

The new journey of attention sovereignty is mainly reflected in the development of content recommendation systems. From STEEM's token staking weighted voting, to plugin-based recommendations like Yup and Wormhole3, and then to recommendation middleware like Phavor that utilizes Web3 data, content recommendation systems have been continuously evolving.

Overall, the current status of decentralized social development is:

1. The token incentive scale strategy is not going well, and an independent user group that can highlight scale advantages has not yet been found.

2. Users do not care about content on the chain and self-managed social assets in the absence of scale.

3. The content recommendation system continues to develop and has shown promise after multiple iterations. If we can create better social products that serve users on the blockchain, it will be the first step towards realizing decentralized social networking.

Social Asset Tokenization

Another evolutionary route is to issue tokens through social means. For project parties, it is a financing method, and for users, it may be a financial product. The difficulty lies in how to establish consensus on token value and liquidity.

Three main methods:

1. Attention Tokenization: Create Meme Coins and establish consensus through content, KOLs, communities, and the wealth effect.

2. Tokenization of social relationships: Injecting the value of social relationships into tokens, such as attempts by DAO and Friend.tech.

3. Content Tokenization: Emphasizes the relationship between tokens and content ownership, but currently lacks application.

Bonding curves solve the liquidity cost problem for small-scale projects. The steep bonding curve of Friend.tech significantly reduces the cost of providing liquidity for individual tokens.

Opportunities and Mission of Web3 Social

Web3 social has faced many difficulties, 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 accounting costs and accelerate transaction speeds.
• The social protocol layer is making efforts to achieve decentralized social usability.
• Network expansion enhances user experience, supporting more media formats.
• Embedded social scenarios have become a point of innovation.

There have also been achievements in middleware, such as on-chain data integration and analysis, and token behavior management based on game theory.

Compared to the previous cycle, infrastructure and tools are more完善, the number of Web3 natives is continuously increasing, and Meme tokens and NFTs are educating potential users.

The blueprint for the future may be: to center around content issuers, building a social ecosystem around users and related service providers. Enhance interactivity and improve user experience through decentralized technology. Finding better ways for content and communities to interact in the new environment will determine whether Web3 can truly take root.

The mission of Web3 is to return the rights taken away by centralization to everyone and provide more choices. Although Web3 social is still immature, it is continuously advancing through exploration. In the future, social media may be centered around content issuers, building around users and related service providers. How to leverage Web3 technology to enhance interactivity and improve user experience will be key.