Why Hasn’t Onchain Social Apps Taken Off Yet?
Crypto natives always relate good UX with account abstraction or web2 login
That's not enough, there are three types of UX that is broken
1. Interaction UX. This is mostly already fixed with Wallet-as-a-Service like Privy and Coinbase Smart Wallet. Although sometimes the 0x... address is seeable. Another underrated component is localization. We often forgot that at least 80% of the world does not use english as first language. Humans want familiarity of localization.
2. Financial UX. Look at Zora (insta alt) and Sound (spotify alt). Both use pricing in ETH and offer 'free' colllection, despite require users to pay some gas fees. Imagine you're a new fan of a creator, welcomed with a 'free' illusion, then you have to pay gas with alien currency. So far Warpcast is leading on financial UX after integration with Apple pay.
3. Content UX. Most of decentralized social apps today are full of crypto contents, it could be market related, web3 developers, private investors, etc. Just take a look at Console (alt discord), Tape (alt youtube), Warpcast and Phaver (alt twitter)
DeSoc today is still built for the crypto natives. If we want billions of people to go onchain, we have to think in their perspective, make them truly feel like in Web2.
A good example of good UX is Polymarket. This is not a social app but a prediction market that has web2 login, support apple google pay cash app credit card wire transfer, mainly use USDC, and offer diverse topic on politics, sports, business, and science.
What doesn't Work (in the long run)
Bitclout, cent, friendtech, pumpfun, memes, these are speculative social apps
It could work for a year, two year, but almost none of them sustain for 5 years and beyond
If onchain social want to meet 1 billion user, speculation shall not be the main course
Exponential bonding curve, useless social tokens, denial of memecoins to be good, builders should really open their eyes and play the long game.
Re-Reasoning: Why Decentralized Social?
Decentralization has these features, it's up to builders which one will they use
Permissionless, verifiability, immutability, composability, censorship resistant, etc
These are the most popular reasoning on decentralization, not only social but also gaming, finance, or any other crypto consumer apps.
At the end of the day, decentralized social is all about; 1) to have lower take rate by removing the intermediary, 2) digital property ownership by going onchain
The features mentioned earlier should be a byproduct from cutting the middleman or going onchain. Otherwise decentralized social apps would not have appetizing competitive advantage over centralized social apps.
After all, new users who try to use decentralized social are present not because of 'decentralization' but either words of mouth or sound of money.
A Request for Variety of Onchain Social Apps
Here's a dozen of twitter alternative: Phaver, Orb, Buttrfly, Firefly, Warpcast, Farquest, Hey, U3, 0xPPL, Lenspeer, Kaira Surreal, Nostr. I'm sure there's more.
They're competing for the same thing, to replace twitter. Meanwhile there's a good chance Twitter will adopt Farcaster since Elon subscribed to farcaster founder.
Why don't builders at least, mimic other social apps?
There are only 2% of Creators on patreon are making money for a living
These creators don't have to pay a lot of fees to the traditional financial rails, I'm talking about paypal hidden fees.
These creators could have cheap remittance with stablecoins and p2p offramp, many creators are coming from the Philippines, Thailand, Argentina, Jamaica, and other developing countries. They could've connected to fans from the UK, EU, and USA.
We should have more distinctive social apps that only available onchain, not a bunch of mimics playing around with eachother trying to flip incumbents.
It's possible to have onchain patreon by combining Lit to encrypt the content, zkP2P to onramp users, Ceramic to manage user data, and any cheap L2 as financial rail.
So why can't we have A decentralized Patreon? (I haven't seen any, DM if you find one pls)
Best Non-Speculative Social-ish Apps Today
Blackbird is a loyalty points program for restaurants, currently only available in the US
All you need is US phone number and physically breathing around NY or LA
$FLY is only tradable for perks and not available in the secondary market
Courtyard is a marketplace for tokenized collectibles (mainly cards for now), disrupting an 8 Billion USD industry. Pokemon, NBA, DC, Star Wars, UFC, Dragon Ball, anything.
Alpha: some card nfts are trading below market price of physical cards (up to 50% disc.)
XP is a resale exchange for tickets, tackling the problem of Ticketmaster, guaranteeing upfront fees and verifiable NFT preventing fake or scam tickets, and minimize spam done by scalpers.
MBL, NHL, NBA, NFL, Taylor Swift, Metallica, Aerosmith, anything.
Upcoming Challenges
1. Privacy
Sometimes we forget that everything onchain is transparent and immutable. I'm sure privacy on most of social use cases are personal preference. However, I don't want anyone to know which creator I subscribed to. As for the creators, I don't think they want their earnings being publicly available, especially americans and their IRS issues.
Even if some people tolerant to not have privacy, sooner or later builders have to comply with GDPR if they want to expand and reach users in the EU.
Privacy should be a default option like HTTPS, privacy should not be a marketing word.
2. Goverment
The politicians always late to make a rule that make sense for new tech. Encryption that we use everyday in whatsapp and insta was about to banned in Crypto-graphy Wars (70s-90s). Having crypto tokens with utility (memecoins are legal) especially in the US is the same as inviting SEC to the court.
As long as the rule has not established, builders shall see the local government as a risk. These are six popular countries to launch a token.
3. Retention
Web3 is known for the hyperfinancialization and volatility of user behavior. Remember Steemit? It's one of the early generation of decentralized social. At the peak, it had 1 million daily transactions and 60,000 DAU. Now it's pretty much gone.
Given the opportunistic nature of crypto, builders shall design an incentive system that attract average joe while at the same time limit farmers and sybils.
My favorite is Drakula where users can earn BLOOD points by uploading videos. These points are not tradeable for now, and I hope it won't be. Points that converted into an airdrop often end up to be down ownly, both in price and activity.
End Note
Decentralized social has been developing around for years but most of them are imitation from centralized social and there hasn't any true innovation breakthrough.
DeSoc gained attraction mainly from the growth of Farcaster and Lens, reaching around 60,000 DAU each. Builders must be cautious to not twist KPI with how users actually feel. A reminder that MySpace and Friendster had around 100 million users at the peak and today they're gone.
I believe the goal of any social apps is essentially strengthening social AND financial connection between users. It is very abstract, and that's the point. It could be a global (true) super apps (that doesn't claim to be one). It could be a social apps with full integration with AI Agents. It could be a news aggregator with native community notes.
or maybe it's another plain tiktok/twitter/youtube/snapchat alternative (but seriously?)
or maybe all socials are dead wrong since my gen would rather chat with AI over humans
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