How to build a killer Web3 social media platform?

Compilation of the original text: Bai Ze Research Institute

Compilation of the original text: Bai Ze Research Institute

Since the rise of Ethereum in 2016, the blockchain community has been searching for paradigms that go beyond financial use cases and have real-world impact.

Can a Web3-powered equivalent be disruptive relative to its Web2 counterpart, cross the chasm, and achieve mainstream adoption? So far, promising examples like Cryptokitties and Axie Infinity have momentarily captured the world's attention and ignited a massive crypto movement, but they themselves have not had the sustainable staying power to provide the world at large with a sustained success story.

Meanwhile, social media apps, a category that's clearly ripe for disruption via Web3, has had a lot of flak in recent years, but has similarly failed to achieve mainstream adoption. Early experimental protocols like Reddit-style communities Steemit and TikTok-style apps like Pepo haven't gained mainstream attention, while emerging social protocols like Lens, Orbis, Farcaster, and DeSohave aren't yet at the product maturity level to inspire real-world adoption. cannot convince mainstream users.

A lot of the protocols we've seen so far are trying to clone the functionality of existing social networking sites: Web3 Twitter, Web3 TikTok, Web3 Reddit, Web3 Twitch. It’s often a near-cloning but sub-par experience, having to make users pay for gas per interaction, and “vaguely” promising better creator monetization or data ownership.

But the choices of mainstream users have shown that they are unlikely to switch to the Web3 platform just because they care less about data ownership. Unless the app actually offers a better, sustainable way of monetizing and distributing creators, there's a ton of premium content to gain traction with mainstream users. Those Web3 applications that combined mainstream users with token-incentivized content often fade into irrelevance.

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Web3 Rapid Growth - Surprisingly

Let’s take a look at some uniquely disruptive concepts in the blockchain ecosystem:

• Crowdfunding and capital formation

• Permission-free access to global, digital-first financial services

• Digital ownership and verifiability

• collective, global coordination

The above list can be simplified to ICO, DeFi, NFT, DAO.

While we all try to point out how innovations in these areas can change and improve society as a whole, I don't see this as an extension of the real world, but rather as a boundary of the Web3 digital world.

DeFi protocols are far more efficient at interacting with composable on-chain assets, transactions, and digital goods than they are at securing loans for new home purchases.

NFTs representing digital assets such as in-game items, PFPs, or collectibles are far more attractive and disruptive than NFTs representing tickets or contracts, where they often create more friction and friction than they are worth. Legal expenses.

Token-coordinated DAOs themselves bring together strangers digitally through chat rooms, code repositories, and online tools far faster than any company or nonprofit can form, scale, and achieve its goals.

I took the above signals and recognized that a digital-first, Web3-centric world has emerged and exists independently through the use cases of blockchain in the above categories. But I think that's going to be especially powerful when the Web3-centric world is growing at an incredible rate.

I used the term Echo Chambers, which I think deserves a debate.

When I threw myself into the blockchain industry six years ago, my biggest fear was that it was purely an echo chamber — a bunch of optimistic forward thinkers (and a bunch of unscrupulous opportunists) talking to each other about their concerns about data. and dreams of financial sovereignty, and better economic coordination between creators, users, and platforms. Even if that fear still holds true, it's mind-boggling to see this echo chamber rapidly grow in size. Seeing more talented developers, entrepreneurs, creators, investors, social scientists so deeply captured by Web3's flaws and dedicating a lot of their time to it is the most inspiring thing I've seen while working in Web3 One of the aspects of the human heart.

In the early 2000's, New York City used to host Internet Week, and conferences like SXSW used to bring the entire Internet industry together in its own echo chamber. Before long, the Internet touched every aspect of people's lives, and the idea of ​​Internet Week became irrelevant because there was no way to gather a single community in an industry that touched almost everything and meant something different to everyone. We see something similar in blockchain, where there are many unique domains - core infrastructure, scaling solutions, gaming, NFTs, governance, Web3, metaverse, etc. - all of which rely on blockchain features and use cases, but thrive in their own domain.

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A Few Opportunities to Build a Killer App

Some of the best Web2 social applications emerge from a "come for the tool, stay for the network" approach. Instagram originally allowed users to apply filters to their phone photos and make them look great, so it's useful whether you have followers or not. You can record and share clips of you singing or lip-syncing, with short audio clips that go viral and eventually become trending on TikTok after being layered by social networks and recommendation algorithms.

Since the next disruptive Web3 social apps will not be just clones of Web2 apps, and it is difficult to recreate existing social graphs in Web3, it is likely that large Web3-centric social apps will be Be a tool to start with and solve some of the user's problems in Web3. Given the success of DAOs, NFTs, DeFi, and more, there are clear new opportunities around some themes around social and content.

• DAOs need a trusted "safe home" to organize and distribute content that aligns with Web3 values.

• Content curation and moderation services in Web3 social protocols are missing and not well incentivized.

• The discovery of high-quality content centered around Web3 remains highly fragmented.

I mentioned earlier that blockchain-based DAOs have the power to enable rapid global coordination, and they incentivize similar actions without direct communication. These DAOs communicate through digital tools, and content distribution is often in the form of videos — community meetings, core developer meetings, project demos, project overviews and reviews, token analysis and reviews, etc. These activities often don’t have a safe “home” on traditional social media platforms—they can be arbitrarily removed at the content level, or worse, account banned.

Traditional social media platforms have incredible control and can make changes at will without the consent of individual creators, which is extremely disadvantageous for individual creators. The content surrounding new permissionless financial systems is a threat to the status quo, so we need a "safe home" unencumbered by Web2.

There are still many projects and DAOs that rely on tools like Google Meet and Zoom for calls and presentations, use Youtube to record and archive their calls for playback, and very few have their own content curation sites to distribute this content outside of Youtube channels.

The Opportunity: Building a Web3 Native Zoom

Huddle01 is off to a great start. Using open standards like webRTC to support conferencing, and Livepeer to stream and record content, there is now a viable alternative to Zoom + Meet. But in order to make this Web3 platform native, it has been upgraded - with anonymous wallet login functions, NFT PFP avatars, and a token access control system around who can join and view meetings. It really embraces Web3-native thinking and is suitable as an echo chamber for the fast-growing Web3 project.

The Opportunity: Building a Web3 Native Video CMS for DAOs

After many projects hold calls, demos and meetings using conferencing and live streaming tools, the next step is usually to upload the interview directly to Youtube. However, there is a strong opportunity for this content to be organized within the project's own "home" for easy access, search, comment, discussion, education, and utilization. That said, the missing piece in the Web3 world is a video content management system (CMS) for DAOs. What are the opportunities beyond traditional video CMS platforms?

• A token access control system can determine who can access content based on on-chain logic such as NFTs or tokens held in user wallets. This is more accessible than proprietary CRM technology licensed from large technology companies and built into the browser.

• Crypto-native payments can be instantly monetized for users around the world without the need for complex credit relationships through a limited set of payment providers and banks.

• ENS and other on-chain identity support allow users to take their identity and reputation outside of this application and import existing identities into more applications - rather than using a Facebook account-based login.

• Decentralized storage, streaming, and playback mechanisms provide these applications with an independent infrastructure to ensure content persistence instead of making content subject to cloud platforms such as Amazon and Google.

These and many more opportunities address the unique needs of the crypto ecosystem, and nascent tools like StreamETH are already being used to organize conferences and archived content from the Ethereum ecosystem.

Opportunity: Build a curation/management DAO for Web3-centric content

One of the often overlooked steps in the early stages of Web3 social applications is content management. The homepage of "decentralized Youtube" simply displays the latest uploaded videos, and the disorganized content is not a good content experience for users.

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Throwing together a Web3 killer social app

Getting used and noticed by mainstream users is something that is difficult to plan perfectly ahead of time—it often requires a combination of the right timing, product vision, and a lot of luck. So, the suggestions articulated below are just my thoughts on how I would like to see a killer breakthrough app emerge.

• Start with tools. Build a content management system for the DAO and convince them to use an app like Huddle01 to host their minutes and distribute their content. Every DAO that uses it gets a page that lists all their historical videos, makes them easily navigable, discoverable, searchable, and includes access controls (or possibly a monetization mechanism for creators). This is useful for single DAOs or isolated projects.

• Enables some value-added management in all content created by users of this tool. Web3 content is often public by default—stored on a decentralized network and widely distributed. Use the aforementioned curation DAO to start curating content homepages for the highest quality Web3 information across the ecosystem, including archives and sorting by category as needed - DeFi, NFT, token analysis, etc. The model here is a video-specific reddit - the Internet's Web3 homepage.

• Identity layer around Web3 social network - based on wallet, identity, soul-bound NFT as user's reputation. Users can interact with content across DAOs and communities, i.e. across multiple platforms, so having a reputation for portability is a sticky feature for building network effects around social apps.

• Consider creators. Creators choosing Web3 social media applications will have a compelling reason - content distribution to target audiences is more valuable than uncontrollable content distribution in Web2 social, not to mention other monetization and control enabled by Web3 Advantage.

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.

risk warning:

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.