Decentralized Social Media 📣📲📰
The Infrastructure Layer for Social Web3 Takes Shape
We know at least one thing about the life cycle of all social media platforms. They rise and then they fall. Any social platform that gains a large userbase will inevitably recede as generations shift. MySpace gained dominance as Friendster receded. Right as Rupert Murdoch slashed his asking price for MySpace, an ascendant Facebook was holding a blockbuster IPO. In turn, once users started moving off Facebook, Facebook bought up emerging competitors, helping stave off otherwise certain decay.
At the moment, Web3 people mostly use Web2 services for their socializing. Yet the existing slate is dying to get disrupted by Web3 versions of each. We’re not talking about Web2 services that loosely connect with cryptocurrency. We’re looking at strongly decentralized systems. We’ll easily be able to recognize Web3 social platforms because they’ll prioritize features like native support of ENS domains, NFTs, cross-chain rollups, and strong decentralization.
By way of example, OpenSea is arguably a Web 2.5 version of Pinterest. It’s sloshing massive volumes of cash and jpegs around the blockchain. Yet when banks want to stop people making fun of them, they have a number they can call.
Continuing censorship will ultimately serve to start driving traffic to other competitors. Technologically, building an OpenSea competitor is not difficult. Off the top of my head I’m aware of Artion and NFT Key, with surely many others commenters could point out. None have yet gotten the sort of scale and traction that lends OpenSea its network effects.
As for other communication and messaging platforms, no commonly used alternatives have yet arrived to my knowledge. We’re still at Discord and Telegram for messaging. Of course, all this is asterisked by the fact that I’m not a terribly “social” person either online or offline. For all I know, there’s already a ton of decentralized social networks all the cool kids are using.
By my read of the space, we’re at the stage where the infrastructure layer needs to get built out to support truly decentralized social platforms. The exciting new projects I see emerging are starting to build the foundational layer upon which future decentralized social media platforms will be built. In other words, we’re still a bit of a distance from seeing these launch.
What do I mean by “infrastructure layer?” I can point to two examples. Gnosis Safe is the most familiar example.
Gnosis provides a wonderful interface for teams and groups to collectively organize and interact. The UI is friendly enough for non-technical user, yet they have a robust developer platform. Absent Gnosis, it would be impossible for DAOs to exist or organize in any meaningful fashion. The explosion in DAOs is just one consequence of Gnosis, and we can expect more innovations to pop up as they keep building.
Another newer example I’ve been alerted to recently is Sismo. The notion of decentralized identity is a difficult challenge. Some users may have hundreds or thousands of wallets to keep their activity organized and segregated. Some users don’t care about anonymity, others require it. How can you have a meaningful identity in such a world?
Sismo is solving this by allowing anonymized attestations. In other words, say you own a rare cryptopunk in one anonymous wallet. Say you keep your public ENS name on a different account. Now you want to access a token-gated community. Sismo provides a zero-knowledge ERC1155 attestation, basically a badge proving ownership. Your ENS name gets credit for your punk without doxxing the details. Could be big!
Other types of services to keep your eyes on are simple bots and tools that help bridge Web2 and Web3 functionality. Here I’m thinking of Collab.Land, which brings Discord into the Web2.5 world. These services are best equipped to launch their own fully Web3 platforms and already have a built in userbase and technology.
Of course, here I’m just scratching the surface. Surely dozens or hundreds of services are getting built right now that I’m not aware of.
Now, some paid alpha for builders.