Web3.0 social track: Rich infrastructure and scarce models

Since Elon Musk announced the acquisition of Twitter, discussions about decentralized social applications have never stopped. Some people even speculate that Musk’s move is to bring goods to encrypted assets and NFT through Twitter in the future. Twitter is very It may become the entrance of Web3.0 social application under the transformation of this "Iron Man".

The strongest feature endowed by Web3.0 social applications is "decentralization". It operates on the basis of the blockchain network, and the data ownership belongs to the users, and will build a new business model with the help of the economic system of encrypted assets.

Corresponding to it is the Web2.0 social application, which is expressed in the form of WeChat, Twitter, Weibo, Douyin and other applications supported by the current mobile Internet. They are created by users, operators formulate rules, and the data is stored in the operator's own network. In the centralized server, the customized advertisement targeted by the algorithm to the traffic is the source of income for these applications, while the content producers only get a small part of the income from it, or even no income. Risk of being lost forever.

The core difference between the two social applications supported by the underlying network lies in the ownership of data. Creator content and consumer data in Web3.0 applications will be stored in a decentralized database, and users have control. In real-world use cases, some creators have minted content as NFT and sold it to complete the realization of content; some decentralized social applications also provide token incentives for ordinary content creation or consumption users.

At present, social products with Web3.0 characteristics have appeared, but there are fewer explosive models, and they are still mainly concentrated in infrastructure such as public chains and application development tools. NFT is an important medium. This issue of DeFi Honeycomb will take stock of representative products on the decentralized social track.

Introduction

Lens Protocol (Lens Protocol) is a composable and open decentralized social media underlying construction protocol, which belongs to the infrastructure of Web3.0 social media applications, and is mainly used to help developers build decentralized social media platforms.

Lens Protocol is built on the Polygon public chain and launched by the team of DeFi application Aave in February this year. It provides basic component tools for building a decentralized social platform. Developers can freely use these tools to create blockchains that meet their own needs social or media applications.

Operating mechanism

The users of Lens Protocol are mainly divided into three categories: content creators, application developers and ordinary users, and targeted tools are provided for these three categories of users.

• for content creators

Lens Protocol's tools can help creators realize ownership tokenization of original content and conduct community-based governance for content consumers. These two functions are completed through NFTs that can record data.

How to use Lens Protocol to have a decentralized creative field?

By linking the wallet address to Lens Protocol, the user can create a personal homepage (Lens Profile), and this homepage will be minted as "Profile NFT" (homepage NFT), which means that the wallet address holding the NFT owns this homepage. This "home page NFT" can also be updated in time like Weibo and Twitter accounts, including the latest dynamic records of published content, comments, reposts, etc.

In particular, only users who hold the "homepage NFT" have the right to create, publish, comment on, and repost content, which is different from current Web2.0 products where everyone can publish or comment on other people's content, and there is no " Homepage NFT" users can only follow the homepage, or collect the content published by the creator's homepage.

The content created and published by the owner of the homepage is displayed in the form of NFT, which can be purchased or collected by followers. Lens Protocol will also provide the owner of the homepage with the permission to set browsing or commenting. For example, a certain fee is required for browsing, similar to the built-in author-side function of "reading the full text requires payment" in the WeChat official account.

• For ordinary users

It can be seen that creators have a high degree of control over whether or not they want traffic and which traffic they want, which is conducive to the formation of community-based governance for content creators and consumers. This is the "Follow NFT" (Follow NFT) designed by Lens Protocol for creators and their users. Fan NFT) tool has laid the groundwork.

If you don't have the ability to create content, you may also be rewarded for being a fan.

Content creators can issue "Fan NFT" and distribute it to followers of the homepage. "Fan NFT" records the order and quantity of users' attention, which is beneficial for creators to conduct traffic analysis. Of course, creators still have control over how to distribute fan NFT, and can set access thresholds, such as payment or completion of certain tasks to obtain, similar to the membership mechanism of some social platforms.

Among the creator's fans, users who collect content can get "CollectNFT" (collection NFT), which can record which fans have collected or purchased which content. The holders of this kind of NFT are often fans who are willing to pay for the content. The more NFT collections they have, the more content the user buys and the greater the support for the creator. They can be called "iron fans". When creators decide to give benefits to fans, "hard fans" are likely to be the priority rewards.

Through homepage NFT, fan NFT, and collection NFT, creators can precisely manage traffic, distribute rewards (benefits) or eliminate "zombie fans" or even "black fans".

• for developers

Lens Protocol provides module components such as "home page NFT, content NFT, fan NFT, collection NFT". These components provide developers with a complete chain from creators to content to consumers. These elements are the social media platform Foundation. Developers can use these basic components arbitrarily to build social products.

Based on the social platform developed by Lens Protocol, the resources of Lens ecology will be shared in the future. For example, all decentralized social platforms developed based on Lens support users to use a wallet address to access, platform-to-platform interaction, product built-in NFT asset interoperability, and so on.

Lens Protocol developers provide a customized and composable decentralized social application construction background to simplify the development process, and any application built on this protocol can expand the social graph and support developers to develop new tools , thus benefiting all applications in the ecosystem.

Introduction

DeSo is the abbreviation of The Decentralized Social Network (decentralized social network), which is an open source blockchain network dedicated to the deployment of decentralized social applications, providing developers with a customized underlying infrastructure.

The architecture of DeSo is similar to that of the Bitcoin network, but it has a greater performance improvement and can process large-scale transactions faster to better support the complex data storage and interaction of social media applications.

DESO is the native Token of the DeSo blockchain. Everyone who wants to use the DeSo blockchain or build applications must hold DESO. It is also a ticket for users to use the DeSo ecosystem, such as creating personal profiles, posting, Buy NFTs and more.

representative application

The DeSo blockchain may not be well-known, but its on-chain application BitClout is well-known. In March 2021, BitClout went live. It became popular because of its direct issuance of social tokens for Twitter KOLs and celebrities, and successfully attracted the attention of the outside world.

BitClout operates on the DeSo blockchain and proposes the concept of "social tokenization". It advocates that all social behaviors of users can be recorded on the blockchain. These social behaviors are valuable and can be directly cashed out with tokens.

Twitter Celebrity Token issued on BitClout

On BitClout, each user can issue social tokens based on the information of the social network, also known as "creator tokens", which can be bought and sold by anyone after issuance, and the price of the tokens is determined by the influence of the issuer. Take Justin Bieber, for example, whose Creator Token would theoretically increase in value after his new album hits.

It can be seen that from BitClout's point of view, "creator token" is an asset related to personal reputation, not the actual company or commodity value. This idea is similar to a concept often mentioned in the "fan economy" - the realization of influence. The difference is that the realization of influence in Internet social networking is either by advertising or by bringing goods, and traffic needs to be paid through an actual value carrier.

BitClout is trying to provide "honorary coins" for celebrities, Internet celebrities, and KOLs, and then for ordinary users to trade in the secondary market, intervening in the financial market, which is a big step. After all, the reputation of famous people is linked to their behavior, which is a very unstable factor. Once the reputation is ruined and the currency price plummets, no one will pay for consumers. Although BitClout has been popular for a while, it is also accompanied by huge controversy.

Operating mechanism

Significantly, the emergence of BitClout proves the availability of its underlying infrastructure DeSo network, indicating that the network can support the operation of social applications.

DeSo itself supports users to create any content, such as posting or leaving messages on the chain. BitClout uses this network to introduce the economic element of "creator tokens", through which content creators can realize cash.

The data on the DeSo chain is stored in public decentralized nodes, which means that using applications built on the DeSo chain, users do not need to worry about data or content being deleted by the platform. Each node has the ability to customize information review and display strategies, which means that anyone can run a node to publish content. For example, a sports program producer can operate a node on DeSo to provide users with high-quality sports content.

Due to the openness of DeSo data, based on the existing data on the chain, other developers can build new social or media applications at any time, and the application and user data sharing in the ecosystem refuses monopoly. Life or death depends on the ability, which is beneficial Activate competition within the ecosystem.

Introduction

Audius (AUDIO) is a music streaming platform based on Ethereum . It has been migrated to the Solana chain and is specially built for musicians. Taking advantage of the decentralization feature of the blockchain, Audius comes to solve the centralization and opacity of service providers in the music distribution process, removes the "middleman" and returns the control of the work to the creator.

Specifically, what Audius removes is the intermediate link of music distribution services and its additional costs, which solves the problem of publishers earning high fees in the traditional music industry and the issue of copyright confirmation, which makes music creators a direct beneficiary. people.

On the Audius platform, there are no intermediaries such as record companies that provide distribution services. The entire experience design hopes to pass music directly from creators to listeners. It facilitates direct transactions between listeners and creators, allowing everyone They can freely publish music, and even tokenize music content.

Operating mechanism

The Audius platform is mainly composed of three roles: music creators, fans and node operators.

• Music creators can release songs and albums for free on the platform, music works can be played on the website, and creators can track the performance indicators of their works on the platform.

• Fans can listen to music for free, create playlists, subscribe and follow music creators, and share content with others.

• Node operators are responsible for ensuring the normal operation of the platform and data security. Music creators, fans, or any encryption enthusiasts can become node operators by holding and staking Audius’ native asset AUDIO.

The basic information of Audius users is stored on the Ethereum or Solana chain, and music and picture data are stored on a distributed storage network based on the IPFS protocol. Therefore, Audius user information and content data are decentralized and cannot be tampered with.

AUDIO is an important economic system "blood" of the Audius platform. It has multiple functions.

Creators can get AUDIO rewards for publishing music; ordinary users can use AUDIO to purchase VIP services; AUDIO holders can get block rewards by establishing nodes or voting for nodes. Of course, AUDIO is also a voting tool for community governance (adjusting the operating strategy of the platform, etc.). In addition, AUDIO is also the driving force to motivate users to upload high-quality content-if the tracks or playlists uploaded by users become popular, they will have the opportunity to get AUDIO rewards, and the top 5 tracks and playlists every week can get 100 AUDIO respectively.

Introduction

Highlight is a tool to help content creators and artists build member communities on the blockchain. This tool provides them with code-free modules, helps creators design and mint NFT, and allows them to customize their brands in Web3.0 And form a member community to realize the connection and interaction between creators and fans.

On May 11, Highlight announced the completion of an $11 million seed round of financing, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from 1kx, A_Capital, Coinbase Ventures and other institutions. The layout of the capital has allowed the product to gain attention from the outside world.

Operating mechanism

We can understand Highlight as a code-free toolkit through which anyone can design and mint NFTs, creators or artists can sell these NFTs to obtain income, and the consumer (collectors) community utilizes these NFTs Gain access to content and exclusive benefits. This is a bit like the "Knowledge Planet" app. Users with content creation capabilities open accounts on "Planet" and build a member community through knowledge payment.

Highligh positions itself as a Web3.0 community building platform rather than a marketing platform. It helps creators increase community engagement and revenue, not traffic. Each creator can manage the member community according to his own preferences, and Highligh provides relevant building tools and service support for this purpose.

(Disclaimer: Readers are requested to strictly abide by local laws and regulations, this article does not represent any investment advice)