Original Author: Tang Yuan
Original Author: Tang Yuan
From July to August, amid the ups and downs of the encryption market, DeFi applications fell silent, the floor prices of NFT projects plunged one after another, and the public chain track was deserted. Under such circumstances, two tens of millions of financing came from the decentralized social track.
On August 11, Satellite IM, a decentralized communication protocol, completed a $10.5 million seed round of financing, led by Multicoin and Framework Ventures, with participation from Solana Ventures, Hashed and other institutions. On July 13, Farcaster, a decentralized social underlying network, completed a financing of US$30 million, led by a16z, a well-known crypto venture capital firm, with participation from Standard Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
Neither Satellite IM nor Farcaster has currently launched a working application, and the agreement was still in the development stage at the time of financing. Satellite IM will launch a mobile native application called UpLink in the fall, and Farcaster's official Twitter only has a few screenshots of product usage, and users have not yet seen the full picture of the product.
Why did these two projects receive support from top-tier capital before the products even appeared?
For a long time, decentralized social products have revolved around NFT assets, such as building various member communities or clubs with NFT. But as the NFT market cooled, these social products centered on NFT assets died down. However, if you want to make Web3 version of Twitter, Discord, Telegram and other types of social or communication applications, you are always limited by the plight of resources and underlying facilities, and it is difficult to compete with Web2-style software experience. At most, you can only tell the old story of "login with wallet address" .
The emergence of Satellite IM and Farcaster may break the deadlock.
Satellite IM is a communication tool, and it is also an underlying protocol for users on the chain to communicate based on wallet addresses. Farcaster, as the underlying infrastructure of social applications, not only provides tools and components for developers, but also claims to be one of the social applications built on this platform. Interaction is possible.
Satellite IM and Farcaster have brought a new trend in the decentralized social track. This issue of Web3 Honeycomb will take you through the ins and outs of this trend.
On-chain applications require integrated communication tools
The emergence of DeFi, NFT, and GameFi has finally demonstrated the value of the blockchain as the bottom layer of the new generation of the Internet. Those programs built on the chain are called decentralized applications "DApps". The way users use these applications is also similar to that of the Web2 world. The App in DApp is different - DApp does not require anyone's permission or registration, as long as you use the wallet address on the chain, you can connect to the application and use the functions it provides.
At present, mainstream blockchain applications are all focused on financial attributes, such as decentralized encrypted asset trading platforms and lending platforms in the DeFi field; although games on the chain have achieved a certain degree of playability, the chain games out of the circle are all prominent The attribute of "playing and earning" and earning encrypted assets is the main purpose of chain game players; although NFT can carry pictures and videos, people buy NFT more for its asset attributes.
Most of the applications and scenarios in the current Web2 era have not been able to develop on the chain. For example, the most frequently used social software, let alone e-commerce, video platforms, travel and other applications that are more and more closely related to daily life . Compared with non-financial offline scenarios, online scenarios are easier to realize on the chain. This is likely to be the first direction to be broken through during the transition from Web2 to Web3, and social networking has become an important breakthrough.
In the Web2 world, social products can be roughly divided into two categories. One is communication products. This type of product is mainly used to realize information transmission between users, and can send text, files, sounds and images to each other. Such as QQ, WeChat, DingTalk, email, etc. This type of communication application is also called IM (Instant Messaging) instant messaging tool; the other type belongs to social media platforms, such as Weibo, Twitter, etc. Interactive.
IM is not limited to communication tools, it can be integrated in various Apps to realize communication between users and platforms. It has long been no problem for you to communicate with merchants on Taobao. However, decentralized applications cannot currently interact with service providers.
The vast majority of DApps based on wallet address login have not yet integrated communication tools on the blockchain, let alone communication between users, even communication between users and the platform cannot be realized. When you encounter problems when using Uniswap to trade encrypted assets, you either have to find the answer in the user guide, or leave a message under Uniswap’s official accounts on Twitter and Discord, or you can only seek help from experienced users on Telegram .
Transaction is Web3, and communication depends on Web2, let alone social interaction.
Developers have been exploring the communication tools used on the chain for a long time. From last year to this year, some prototypes of wallet-based communication applications have gradually appeared in the market, the most famous of which is BlockscanChat developed by the Etherscan team in January this year. It is a An instant messaging product based on Ethereum wallet address pairs, currently in testing mode. When using it, the user first logs in with the Ethereum wallet address, and then searches for the other party's Ethereum address or ENS domain name to communicate for free.
Earlier in November 2021, the NFT trading platform Rarible announced the launch of a message service tool, Rarible Messenger, which is integrated into the trading platform and supports platform users to communicate through wallet addresses without jumping to other Web2 applications such as Discord and Twitter. middle. The emergence of Rarible Messenger allows potential NFT buyers and sellers to directly connect, not only to communicate information, but also to realize peer-to-peer transaction needs without going through the platform. Rarible said that this function will be derived as an independent Web3 communication tool.
Besides Blockscan Chat and Rarible Messenger, there are a few messaging apps that deserve attention.
Cross-platform communication application SwapChat
Currently, SwapChat is available as a plug-in for users. To use it, you need to add this plug-in to the browser (such as Google), and then connect the wallet address to use it as an instant messaging tool in different DApp applications.
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How to use SwapChat on Twitter
SwapChat supports users to send messages across platforms, including decentralized applications and centralized social platforms. It links users' wallet addresses with information on centralized social platforms, and realizes the function of sending messages to wallet addresses on different platforms.
Currently, the plug-in supports social platforms such as Twitter and Discard. As long as the plug-in is installed in the user's browser, a chat page can be created on the user's homepage of these platforms to transmit information with others.
For encrypted asset trading applications, SwapChat can be integrated into NFT trading platforms OpenSea and SudoSwap. After installing the plug-in, users only need to create a SwapChat page to send information to NFT holders. Holders who also installed the plug-in to receive the information. In other words, the interaction between OpenSea users requires both parties to install SwapChat. Users can also click on the homepage of the NFT project collection, click to join "NFT Room (NFT Room)", view and reply to people's group chat content about an NFT project.
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Use SwapChat to create a chat page or enter the NFT project group in Opensea
SwapChat solves the pain point of users in the lack of communication tools in NFT trading markets such as OpenSea, and has the opportunity to become "Ali Wangwang" in NFT trading platforms. SwapChat does not rule out that it can be embedded in other DApp scenarios and used directly as an instant messaging tool.
One thing that needs special attention is that when communicating on SwapChat, it is necessary to do a good job of reviewing user addresses to prevent being deceived.
The reason why SwapChat can achieve cross-platform communication is mainly because of the underlying support of Web3MQ. However, it can be seen from its integration on OpenSea that it cannot really run integrated with the blockchain, and it is not completely decentralized. It can be seen that social applications on the chain need the underlying support of distributed on-chain communication, and some developers have already made efforts in this field.
Decentralized communication underlying protocol Satellite IM
In 2020, developers Christopher Hogan and Thomas McArdle created SatelliteIM, which is both a decentralized communications platform that enables peer-to-peer private messaging and an infrastructure that attempts to leverage decentralization and encryption to provide a way to build scalable applications The platform of the program. It provides developers with custom modules and basic components for building decentralized social products, and developers can build products according to their own needs.
Satellite IM disclosed that it will launch a mobile application called UpLink in the fall.
The official product of Satellite IM is not yet online, and there is only a test version at present. From the screenshot of the official product, it can be seen that the Satellite IM page is very similar to the PC version of WeChat familiar to Chinese users. Users can send text, audio, video and files, and create groups.
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SatelliteIM page
In addition, Satellite IM claims that its underlying protocol is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which means that developers can build social applications on the protocol that can be integrated with the Layer1 network, and interact with multiple Layer1 blockchain networks to become a chain. on communication tools.
Platform-based operation promotes composability among social applications
Reproducing the application scenarios of Web2 on Web3 is the direction that Web3 social applications can advance. If the blockchain smart contract is used to realize the interaction between applications and break the barriers of non-communication between Web2 social applications, then Web3 social applications will achieve a breakthrough.
The interactivity of smart contracts has been demonstrated in the DeFi track. For example, the encrypted asset liquidity reward model in the decentralized exchange application (DEX) has given birth to the smart pool application. The smart pool can provide assets for users who are willing to provide liquidity in Look for high returns among multiple DEXs. This parasitic or combination method is called "DeFi Lego" in the industry, breaking the barriers to the liquidity of financial assets.
If this composability is placed in an online social scene, it will solve the problem of data barriers on different platforms. In Web2 social products, information and data between different platforms cannot communicate with each other. The Taobao link cannot be directly opened on WeChat, which has been complained by many users; the original videos of Kuaishou celebrities cannot be uploaded to Douyin again, which limits the traffic accumulation of content creators.
In the social age of Web2, there are monopoly everywhere. Centralized social platforms divide users and take the content created by users as their own. Some people hope that Web3 can solve these problems, enable interaction between different products, and allow users' social data to migrate freely.
Many developers are already building decentralized social applications, and some developers are trying to provide other developers with the underlying foundation and structure social projects through a common social graph or data model.
Among them, the most famous representative product is the Lens Protocol developed by the Aave team. It is a composable and open decentralized social media underlying protocol, which belongs to the infrastructure of Web3 social media applications. It is mainly used to help developers build go Centralized social media platform.
Based on NFT assets, Lens Protocol provides a complete set of "personal homepage NFT, content NFT, fan NFT, collection NFT" and other module components. These components provide developers with a complete set of content from creators to content to consumers. business operation chain. Developers can use these basic components to build social products. Social applications developed based on the Lens Protocol will share the resources of the Lens ecosystem. 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.
In addition, CyberConnect and Farcaster are also worth mentioning.
Decentralized social roster Farcaster
Farcaster is still under development. Founder Dan Romero released some product page images. From the disclosed information, the function of the application is similar to Twitter. Users can post content, comment, and get information notifications.
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DanRomero's product map revealed on Twitter
Farcaster is similar to Twitter on the product page, but we can expect essential differences - on Farcaster, users can freely migrate social graphs and identities between applications, users always have connections with followers, and Not limited by applications. Fans of Twitter users cannot be directly migrated to Facebook. However, in the application A built on the Farcaster protocol, if the user has 100 fans, when he goes to the application B of the protocol, the 100 fans and social resources will be migrated accordingly. .
Farcaster officially stated that after users connect to the wallet address and verify it, they can send messages, read messages, and display NFTs in the wallet address, such as avatars. As a decentralized social network, Farcaster not only cares about what users express, but also what users can prove on the chain.
In the official introduction of Farcaster, the product mainly uses On-Chain Registry and Off-Chain Hosts to complete the storage and reading of user information.
The on-chain registry is a smart contract database that stores user names, including user names, wallet addresses, and social data links (URLs of off-chain hosts). It is a tool to prove the uniqueness of user names; off-chain hosts refer to storing user social The database of data and other information can be used when retrieving user historical social data.
Farcaster is like a bottom layer built with a social roster, and any developer can use this roster to build social products. The core of the protocol is the name registration system established on Ethereum—users can register a unique user name with an Ethereum address and associate it with a content hosting website. Only with the private key of the address can the content hosting address be updated. This is the mystery of the user's mastery of content association rights.
At present, some developers have deployed some native projects on the Farcaster protocol, such as Instacaster, an image uploading and publishing tool, and Searchcaster, a post retrieval tool.
Decentralized social graph protocol CyberConnect
CyberConnect is a decentralized social graph protocol that aims to return data ownership and utility rights to users, and provide Web3 developers with an underlying infrastructure for building applications or integrating data. It has been integrated on the Ethereum and Solana chains . In May of this year, CyberConnect completed a $15 million Series A round of financing.
CyberConnect explained that the so-called "social graph" is a graph that uses "social relationships between people" as clues. The people that users know and establish contacts through various channels, as well as the things they follow and track will form clues. In the online world of the Internet, such clues are mostly gathered on well-known social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, forming an online social relationship graph.
CyberConnect itself is not a complete Web3 social product, but a set of infrastructure services, whose core service objects are developers. It standardizes user portraits by analyzing user interaction trajectories and behaviors in different applications, and creates data standards, data storage infrastructure, and recommendation index systems. These data can be accessed by anyone, and can provide better content recommendation and social discovery. Suggestions to provide a common social data layer for decentralized applications (such as DeFi, GameFi, NFT, DAO, etc.) in the Web3 world.
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The role played by CyberConnect
Products developed based on CyberConnect allow users to own the data generated when using the product. These data can be migrated with the identity, and everyone's social graph can become a part of Web3 identity, and can be freely switched between different applications.
After connecting the wallet address on CyberConnect, ordinary users can follow other addresses, or search for the wallet address of the person they want to follow, click on these addresses to enter other people's homepage, and view his NFT, Mirror articles and other Web3-style content.
On July 19th, CyberConnect announced the launch of Link3, a native social application, an identity aggregator in Web3 social networks.
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