The Development History and Future Prospects of Web3 Social

Although the Web3 social industry has not yet achieved a decisive breakthrough, it has accumulated valuable experience after years of exploration. This article will outline the development history of Web3 social, analyze the current challenges faced, and explore future opportunities and development directions.

The Underlying Needs of Web3 Social

Social interaction is one of the basic needs of humans. The main motivations for internet socializing include self-presentation, emotional venting, and seeking recognition. In the Web3 environment, token holding has become a new way of social connection, and open verifiable data expands the dimensions of social information. This creates unique advantages for Web3 socializing.

However, Web3 social is still facing the challenge of economies of scale. Compared to the millions of concurrent users on Web2 social platforms, the user base of Web3 social remains relatively small. How to create scale effects in specific scenarios is a key issue that Web3 social projects need to address.

Two Development Paths of Web3 Social

The development of Web3 social mainly unfolds along two paths:

1. Exploration of Decentralized Social Technology Standards
2. Establishing Token Consensus through Social Media

In the field of decentralized social technology, various projects have made innovations in communication protocols, data storage, and application layers. Representative projects include Bluesky, Nostr, Lens, and Farcaster. These projects seek a balance between user experience and technical feasibility with varying degrees of decentralization.

In terms of token consensus, the project team tries to quickly expand the user base through token incentives. However, this approach also faces challenges such as effectiveness and Sybil attacks.

Limitations of Token Incentives

The application of token incentives in Web3 social encounters two major dilemmas:

1. The subjective value of social content is difficult to quantify, affecting the effectiveness of incentives.
2. Token incentives are susceptible to witch attacks.

Taking STEEM as an example, its token staking and voting mechanism was relatively effective in the early stages of the project. However, as the project developed and consensus collapsed, issues such as malicious voting gradually emerged. This reflects that relying solely on token incentives is difficult to maintain the healthy development of the social ecosystem in the long term.

Exploration of Content Autonomy

Multiple projects attempt to achieve user autonomy over content by putting it on the blockchain. However, practice shows that without a sufficient user base, the demand for user autonomy over content is not strong. Projects like Mirror have achieved content rights confirmation, but user attrition remains difficult to avoid.

Another challenge faced by content assetization is the lack of scarcity of content in the era of the internet, where information is easily spread. This limits the potential for value growth of content assets.

A New Direction for Attention Sovereignty

With the development of intelligent algorithms, simple token-weighted sorting has become difficult to compete with. The new generation of projects is beginning to explore how to combine on-chain data with recommendation algorithms to provide users with personalized content recommendations.

The "Subscription Stream Generator" concept proposed by BlueSky allows users to freely choose recommendation algorithms. This approach is expected to provide a better user experience while protecting user sovereignty.

Tokenization of Social Relationships

Tokenizing social relationships is another important direction. DAO projects quantify the authority and relationships within the organization through tokens. Projects like Friend.tech focus on the tokenization of small social circles.

These attempts reflect that compared to macro social networks, Web3 may be more suitable for serving small-scale, high-frequency interactive social scenarios.

Breakthrough in Liquidity Issues

The introduction of bonding curves has solved liquidity issues for small-scale projects. The steep bonding curve adopted by Friend.tech significantly reduces the cost of providing liquidity for individual tokens. This innovation opens up new possibilities for the development of social tokens.

Opportunities and Challenges of Web3 Social

After years of development, Web3 social has made progress in technical infrastructure, user experience, middleware, and other aspects. Improvements such as reduced wallet login thresholds, increased transaction speeds, and multimedia support have created conditions for the large-scale application of Web3 social.

However, Web3 social still faces the challenge of insufficient content appeal. Compared to mainstream short video platforms filled with stimulating content, the content on Web3 social platforms often lacks attractiveness. How to bring traffic-valued content into the Web3 ecosystem is a key issue facing the industry.

Future Development Direction

The future Web3 social interactions may present the following characteristics:

1. Centered around content creators, not technology platforms.
2. Integrate the advantages of Web2 and Web3 to provide an immersive social experience.
3. Enhance user engagement and interactivity through token design.
4. Utilize decentralized technology to achieve a new model for content monetization.

The mission of Web3 social is to return power to the people and provide users with more choices. Through technological innovation and breakthroughs in business models, Web3 social is expected to create a brand new social paradigm in the future.