The Current Status and Future of Web3.0 Social Products: Opportunities and Challenges Coexist

robot
Abstract generation in progress

Exploring the Current Status and Future of Web3.0 Social Products from the Essence of Social Interaction

With the rise of Web3.0 social products, the number of users continues to grow. However, after the airdrop ends, the daily active users often drop significantly. How can the vitality of the project be maintained? Whether tokenization can truly incentivize user participation remains uncertain. Coupled with the decline in token prices, how can Web3.0 native applications establish themselves, and how to balance content moderation with decentralized social networking?

These are the questions that entrepreneurs in the Web3.0 social field need to consider. This article will explore multiple perspectives, including the essence of social interaction, the significance of Web3.0 social products, their classification characteristics, existing problems, and optimization directions, to help readers understand the current status and prospects of Web3.0 social products, and provide some ideas for alleviating social fatigue.

The essence of social interaction is the relationships and interactions between people, which can be divided into acquaintances' interactions and interest-based interactions. However, with a limited user base in Web3.0, products focusing on acquaintances' interactions may be premature. Interest-based interactions need to create new relationships in new scenarios; simply replicating and migrating social relationships is not feasible.

Starting from the essence of social interaction, deeply exploring the current state and future of Web3.0 social products

1. Reasons Why Web3.0 Social Products Are Gaining Attention

By 2027, the number of global social media users is expected to reach nearly 6 billion. Currently, the average internet user spends 144 minutes per day on social media and instant messaging apps. Despite the large user base of traditional centralized social platforms, they also face issues such as data breaches, content censorship, and algorithmic bias.

As a result, more and more people are paying attention to Web3.0 social products. These products are based on blockchain technology, achieving a decentralized social experience that protects user data privacy and security. At the same time, they can eliminate the censorship and algorithmic bias of centralized platforms, giving original content creators more autonomy. Web3.0 social products are expected to become one of the important trends in the future development of social media.

Currently, Facebook remains the dominant player in the social media space, with over 2.9 billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four major social platforms, each with over 1 billion monthly active users: Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. These large centralized players monopolize the entire industry. However, the emergence of SocialFi may disrupt this pattern.

SocialFi aims to address the shortcomings of traditional social platforms. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey once summarized three principles that social media should follow:

  1. Social media should be resilient against control by businesses and governments.
  2. Only the original author can delete their own created content.
  3. It is best to implement the review through algorithm selection.

Based on the principles of fairness and decentralization, blockchain social media applications flourished at the end of 2022. This is evident from the surge in the total number of active wallet addresses for social DApps smart contracts. Currently, the number of social DApps smart contracts is rapidly increasing, and the new trend of SocialFi could fundamentally change the landscape of the social media industry.

Starting from the essence of social interaction, deeply exploring the current status and future of Web3.0 social products

2. Main Categories and Characteristics of Web3.0 Social Products

Currently popular social and DID projects mainly include infrastructure, middleware, applications, and tools. Among them, the SocialFi sector is growing, with many projects based on social tokens, integrating DeFi elements, continuously upgrading technology, and developing into SocialFi projects.

According to the issuance projects of Social tokens, they can be divided into the following categories:

  1. Personal Tokens: Token holders can access early fan groups, enjoy discounts or participate in events ahead of time, and receive merchandise, NFTs, etc. They symbolize status or engagement, and early creators or entrepreneurs can gain economic returns. Typical projects include RAC, ROLL, MeTokens, MintGate, and ALEX.

  2. Community tokens: Mainly issued and controlled by the community, usually governed by a DAO. Used to incentivize community members' contributions, such as granting access to the community, enjoying special information, etc. Typical examples include WHALE, Mirror, FWB, Cent, Yup, Matataki, SWAGG, KarmaDAO, Ark, Seed Club, Forefront, Flamingo, and Aavegotchi.

  3. Minting and distributing platform tokens: representing control over the platform, making it easier for creators to issue and manage tokenized communities. Typical projects include Chilliz, RALLY, BitClout, Zora, CircleUBI, Loopss, Fyooz, Bluesky, Audius, Mastodon, Nafter, Coinvise, and Calaxy.

In addition, there are some projects worth noting, such as Mask Network. It connects Web2.0 and Web3.0 in a "plug-in" manner, allowing users to seamlessly send encrypted messages, cryptocurrencies, and even DAPPs on existing social networks, using distributed system technology to enhance data security and privacy.

Starting from the essence of social interaction, deeply exploring the current status and future of Web3.0 social products

3. The Current Challenges Faced by Web3.0 Social Platforms

The Web3.0 social platform faces some issues during its development, mainly including:

  1. High data storage costs: The decentralized storage of user data on the blockchain requires more computing resources and storage space, leading to higher costs. Methods to address scalability challenges include increasing block size or shard parallel processing, as well as storing some data off-chain in servers like Farcaster.

  2. Insufficient network effects: The user scale and activity level are low, and the network effects are weaker than traditional platforms, making it difficult for users to find suitable social circles and communication partners. Attracting a large number of Web2.0 users is not easy and requires more time and resources for mass education. Some projects propose creating middleware tools to help users familiarize themselves with SocialFi, but native SocialFi applications still face huge challenges.

  3. Cross-platform interaction difficulties: There is a lack of standardized data formats and APIs between different platforms, leading to difficulties in data transmission and sharing. Although solutions for data synchronization are provided by protocols like Nostr and projects like Lens, differences and barriers between various DeSoc protocols still exist. User inertia may lead to fragmentation of social networks, and achieving large-scale SocialFi socialization will still take time.

  4. Sustainable Economic Model: Currently, SocialFi primarily gains value through social behavior rewards and content creation incentives. However, most content providers are team-based, leading to homogenization and quality control issues. The lack of high-quality content creation incentive mechanisms and an objective and完善 auditing mechanism has become a bottleneck for development.

  5. Intense competition in business expansion: Leading influencers have become the targets that SocialFi projects are vying to attract, and business expansion has entered a heated stage. SocialFi aims to tokenize social influence to create a self-consistent economic system, helping users with different levels of influence to obtain corresponding rewards.

Starting from the essence of social interaction, a deep exploration of the current status and future of Web3.0 social products

IV. Optimize the Development Direction of Social Products

In 2023, SocialFi remains one of the hotspots for the next cycle, and its development potential is worth paying attention to. Middleware and protocols continue to innovate, improving the stability, security, speed, and scalability of social applications.

At the protocol level, technologies such as storage, communication, content distribution, and reputation/credential are continuously innovating. Decentralized social media protocols and middleware are gaining attention, such as Nostr, Farcaster, and LensProtocol.

Privacy protection will become an important area of innovation. zk technology can be used to enhance the security and privacy of transactions on SocialFi platforms, but it is necessary to balance the conflict between anonymity and establishing social status.

In the future, Web3.0 social products need to explore more innovative interaction methods and social scenarios to attract more users. At the same time, issues such as user experience, scalability, and privacy protection also need to be addressed. With technological advancements, Web3.0 social products are expected to become more mature and widespread.

Starting from the essence of social interaction, deeply exploring the current status and future of Web3.0 social products

View Original
This page may contain third-party content, which is provided for information purposes only (not representations/warranties) and should not be considered as an endorsement of its views by Gate, nor as financial or professional advice. See Disclaimer for details.
  • Reward
  • 4
  • Share
Comment
0/400
BottomMisservip
· 16h ago
Suckers are all chasing after sugar.
View OriginalReply0
SellTheBouncevip
· 16h ago
suckers play people for suckers one after another Airdrop ends and then it hits bottom
View OriginalReply0
DarkPoolWatchervip
· 16h ago
The hype relies entirely on Airdrop pump
View OriginalReply0
GasFeeSobbervip
· 16h ago
Airdrop enthusiasts find the entire Token meaningless.
View OriginalReply0
Trade Crypto Anywhere Anytime
qrCode
Scan to download Gate app
Community
English
  • 简体中文
  • English
  • Tiếng Việt
  • 繁體中文
  • Español
  • Русский
  • Français (Afrique)
  • Português (Portugal)
  • Bahasa Indonesia
  • 日本語
  • بالعربية
  • Українська
  • Português (Brasil)