This post is taking part in the t2 x Kiwi Writing Contest.
The first use case for crypto was payments. Although there have been attempts to extend crypto's use beyond payments and investing, these efforts have not yet reached a critical scaling point. Social apps are a promising candidate for using web3, but adoption has been slow and remains primarily within web3 enthusiast circles.
Let’s dive into why adoption has been slow and which interesting use cases for web3 social might emerge in the future.
Why hasn’t web3 social taken off yet?
If there were a strong case for using web3 to build the next generation of social apps, it would have taken off by now. However, for users, the cost of switching to another social app is high, and mass adoption requires a significant network effect, making it a slow process, even if the product is well-built.
For regular users, the web3 apps don’t provide more value than their web2 counterparts and are more difficult to use. Choosing and installing a third-party browser extension and setting up secure storage for a seed phrase is beyond what most users are willing to do to sign up for a new platform.
For die-hard crypto fans, web3 social apps are an alternative, and some are gaining traction: particularly the ones built on Lens and Farcaster. These provide a native experience, while allowing users to engage with web3 concepts such as minting NFTs or tipping in crypto.
Besides the slow adoption, decentralizing social media presents with a lot of pitfalls which are difficult to solve:
Spam: How to deal with unwanted posts flooding your feed? Decentralized protocols shouldn’t rely on arbitrary decisions taken by the moderators, so effective governance is needed to combat spam, requiring a lot of effort.
Speculation: Endless speculative posts fill the crypto social sphere with low-quality content. Posts containing phrases like “to the moon”, “wen token ser” and “how to find the next 1000x gem” contribute to the low-effort content that few people, inside or outside the crypto community, want to see or interact with.
Abuse: Same as spam, it isn’t easy to moderate content that could be seen as hate speech and abuse. Where do you draw the line? When does free speech become hate speech? Different regions and communities have varying thresholds for what constitutes hate speech. Users will not set foot in a space where abuse, as they perceive it, is not punished and removed.
Privacy: A common belief is that once your stuff is out on the Internet, it’s out there forever. But in web2 there are mechanisms to systematically delete content that violates an individual’s right to privacy, supported by regulations. But removing content from web3 is much harder, as blockchains are irreversible by nature.
Monetization of a public good: Combining the permissionless aspects of web3 with a good perceived as public raises questions about monetization. How do you actually make money? Covering transaction costs is one thing, but having users pay for something that others could offer at a lower cost leads to diminishing returns. And ads - why would such a web2 specific business model work for a cutting edge, open platform?
Why would anyone build social apps on web3?
We’ve learned about why some might avoid social apps on web3, but are there compelling use cases that might tip the balance in their favour?
The promise of decentralization
In web3, decentralization is a heavily used term. What do people mean with that? When you have Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into his pet Frankenstein project, screwing users, other devs and his own employees over, you can see how devastating centralized power can have on a social project. Twitter was supposed to represent free speech, equality, where people, using their real identity or not, could engage in discourse freely. Now, users are flinching at every finger raised by Musk, fearing it might further erode the platform's neutrality.
Decentralization, on the other hand, represents the opposite of that: the voice and the power of the collective. No single entity or individual is strong enough to do a takeover of the platform and make changes solely for their benefit.
Harnessing the power of an open graph
Publishing the social network graph on the blockchain opens up for endless possibilities. Users can benefit from owning their social network and developers can create unique experiences by integrating other protocols and networks. This free exchange of information could empower the creation of many new and unique use cases, each enhancing the value that users derive from web3 apps.
Ownership of the social graph also allows people to easily migrate to different apps that provide more value, opening up for healthy competition that benefits users.
The state of web3 social right now
The initial approach in web3 was to create “clones” of successful web2 counterparts. For example Twitter has been reincarnated in web3 as Lens and Farcaster, Medium as Mirror, Substack as Paragraph, among others.
This strategy can be successful as it builds on proven use cases. Their target audience are the crypto enthusiasts, who are likely to be the first adopters. There may also be incentives to start using these apps, such as exclusive airdrops or access to niche audiences.
In addition to these “clones”, there are apps exploring more novel ideas:
t2.world is a publishing network that is mishmashing different ideas together, such as a publishing platform for long-format posts, rewarding readers and writers, and creating communities around different ideas and topics.
Kiwi News carries more similarity to Hacker News, with its simple interface and main goal to curate the best web3 news and articles by using an upvote mechanism. The community is token-gated, ensuring higher quality curation compared to other free-for-all platforms.
Universal Page and Universal Profiles are concepts that turn collecting and trading digital assets in a social activity that can be followed by anyone. They provide value to their users by offering more transparency into trends that otherwise permeate web2 and web3 social platforms. While speculation is a significant part of the content, it's interesting to see who adopts these platforms.
The tech powering these innovations
The tech behind web3 is unique and enables innovations at the application level. Let’s explore some of the protocols behind the most popular apps and the new tech that could power the next generation social media apps.
Looking far through the lens
Lens and Farcaster are the protocols powering apps like Hey, Orb and Warpcast. These apps are sometimes referred to by the protocol names, as they are extensions of the protocols, providing great UX and a familiar web2 interface.
Lens is versatile, allowing for the creation of various types of apps, such as a YouTube clone (Tape), or an app focused on publications and articles (t2.world).
There are also innovations within these platforms: both Hey and Warpcast have introduced a concept that is called portals and frames respectively, which let developers and users introduce their own mini-apps, unlocking interesting use cases.
The zero to hero path of zero knowledge
Zero knowledge, or short, ZK, is a term that you have probably heard of. In a nutshell, it’s a method to prove that something is known without revealing the information itself.
ZK is exciting for web3 social because it can enable unique use cases that are impossible in web2, such as decentralized identity and full privacy. This means that apps can verify human users based on real-world credentials while preserving privacy. And the ability to prove various facts about the user might lead to novel ideas and mechanics. It also helps combat speculation by ensuring truthful disclosure of specific facts and making it easier to weed out manipulative actors.
A protocol taking advantage of ZK is Rarimo, aiming to build a privacy-first social protocol. One of the first interesting use cases they have launched is a self-custody identity wallet, RariMe, allowing users to create proofs of their age and citizenship, with their data never leaving their device.
Decentralized storage with Arweave
Arweave is a prevalent solution for scaling many web3 social protocols, providing fast, responsive, and permanent storage of social media content.
Profiles at the center of an entire chain with Lukso
Lukso aims to innovate on top of EVM by placing social profiles at the center of their Layer 1 chain solution. Using native account abstractions, they facilitate the building of apps where individuals and entities can manage their social presence on the blockchain.
Bringing web3 into the web2 world
Alternatively, instead of creating native web3 applications, developers can add web3 features to web2 apps, connecting with audiences already using established social platforms. Here are a few examples:
Blink and you miss it - Solana Actions and Blinks on X: By using the installed desktop extension, Phantom and other Solana wallets found a way to shortcut having to require permission from X. They are introducing web3 previews and actions, allowing them to make transactions straight from their X feed.
There's a TON of fun out there - Telegram is taking a bet on web3 through TON by integrating a whole web3 ecosystem into their social app. It's no secret that the major players in the market aim to integrate payments in their communication tools, but Telegram has taken this to a whole new level.
What web3 social needs to succeed
Building the next generation of social apps on web3 presents unique challenges. Here are the key success factors to increase the chances of success:
- Easy onboarding for real users: Simplify the sign-up process, such as allowing users to register with an email if they don't have a browser wallet.
- Dealing with spam: Develop efficient, non-opinionated spam filters. Alternatively, use decentralized identity providers to distinguish bots from real humans.
- Openness to developers and third-party integrations
- Identify scalable niches: Focus on what is unique to web3 and scale those aspects. Identify features that web3 can offer that web2 cannot compete with, such as true decentralization, enhanced privacy, and ownership of data.
Experimentation with web3 social will never stop, with new tech emerging daily, new use cases being discovered, and existing experiences being refined. It's not a matter of “if” but “when” web3 social will take off.