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From the analysis of Lens, Mirror and other application practices, why is NFT suitable for SocialFi?

22-11-01 17:05

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Original title: "Why NFT is suitable for SocialFi"

Original author: stefan, DeBox Institute

Today's SocialFi, DAO, and NFT provide room for imagination for use scenarios. Whether it is issuing your own NFT to attract users, using PASS to unlock corresponding permissions, etc., all NFT and SocialFi's embodiment of a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. The entire SocialFi and NFT interactive experience will change in the future. When NFT, DAO, and DeFi fully function and integrate into the SocialFi system, this new mix product will most likely become SocialFi Summer after DeFi and NFT!

1. What is SocialFi and why you should pay attention to it

SocialFi is a compound word of Social and Finance, social finance, but I personally think that strictly speaking, NFT should be added, social + NFT + DeFi together constitute the Socialfi ecosystem. Simply put, it is a social group economy formed in the form of DeFi by linking social and financial together through community Token or community NFT. Now the term SocialFi is also used in general, and it can also refer to almost all Web3 social projects in a broad sense.

The earliest SocialFi project appeared in 2017, Bihu, Voice, MeSign, Bixin and other projects have not been implemented. The main reason is that the blockchain technology is not perfect, and the necessary consensus has not been reached. For example, there was no concept of DeFi as support at that time, there was no NFT project to hype, and various dApps were not so mature. A user base of one million is also difficult to support the development of SocialFi, so it did not play its due value at that time. However, with the explosion of DeFi and NFT in 21 years, various dApps have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. With the support of the application layer, the value of Web3.0 and the concept of decentralization is gradually being tapped. SocialFi has built a complete and self-consistent economic system for users, and everyone can gain benefits by demonstrating their own value. For example, concepts related to decentralized social networks include creator economy, owner economy, fan economy, etc.

SocialFi platform can also reflect value through content distribution, such as using social platform Token to reward content For producers, this kind of reward is just like the short video at this stage, and rewards are distributed by means of likes, reposts, and publications that can attract the attention of others.

WeChat is valued at US$83.6 billion, almost half of Tencent's market value. At the same time, Tencent’s previous performance report showed that as of the end of September 2021, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat reached 1.26 billion. Fox Wallet currently has only 30 million monthly active users, so with the development of Web3, the blue ocean effect of the social track in the future is self-evident.

Second. Web2 social problems & Web2 social substitution possibility (SocialFi out of the circle Direction)

The big slogan of Web3 social is actually dissatisfaction with Web2 social. We don't care if he is a cx slogan, but at least these disadvantages are real in Web2.

1. Data ownership issues:

User data, accounts and creative content, all data on the platform are owned by the centralized company. If you say you are blocked, you will be blocked, so that users have no ability to resist the company's supervision. For example, if Weibo, Zhihu, and Twitter want to ban your account, you will not only lose the creative content and fans on it, but it is very likely that the appeal will be invalid. After all, people can say that you are a risk account by just making up a reason.

2. Data privacy issues:

My online data is in the company's database (what have you watched, chat records, preferences, etc.). Now those Web2 platforms, such as certain treasures, certain books, etc., must require your data to recommend various algorithms, and the trading of data between platforms is no longer a secret.

3. Interest attribution:

Strictly speaking, ordinary users are both content users and benefit generators. However, this part of the profits is taken away by the platform, and only a small part of the advertisers' investment goes to the creators, and most of them are eaten by the platform.

4. Usability and applicability issues:

DC was originally a platform for game unions, and it became an NFT base camp by accident, but for most Web2 users, the experience is really bad . If you don’t buy nitro, you can only have 100 channels, and as the number of projects increases, you will gradually overwhelm the value sharing channels you originally paid attention to. In a sense, DC is not a suitable social platform.

So at this time, will people tend to have no supervision, or say "can rest assured" What about platforms using their own data? Although these problems do exist, if users directly turn to a Web3 social product that claims to solve these pain points, they will eventually find that either the functions are not complete, or there are few users, or that the retention effect of this product on users is not good. Coupled with the fact that the public already has a certain threshold of awareness and use of Web3, it is even more difficult to retain a certain number of users for a long time.

So in the social relationship of Web2, communication (such as WeChat, QQ, etc.), friendship (Momo, etc.), social media (Twitter, Facebook, Xiaohongshu, etc.) are already controlled by giants. Because of the current public awareness and usage threshold of Web3 itself, I personally feel that it is not suitable to launch corresponding products at the moment.

When the monthly activity reaches 100 million, I personally think that is the moment when the social track will explode.

Currently, the alternative of Web2 social networking should start from niche tracks, such as fans Economy or pay for knowledge.

The fan economy takes CHZ, which is chasing the hot spot of the World Cup, as an example. Chiliz is a decentralized digital currency that runs on the blockchain network of the Socios.com fan engagement platform, under the Socios.com, fans can use CHZ to purchase brand fan tokens. These teams include big names like Juventus, FC Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid, CAI and UFC.

Token holders have unique ownership of voting rights. Although they can't interfere with the team's operation and management, they can vote on the song, jersey logo position and armbands, cover pictorials, etc., which further narrows the distance between fans and the team. And in this process, you can also use Token arbitrage.

Knowledge payment is an example of Debox, which is currently popular in the circle. Debox is a Web3 social tool. The idea is that creators can build paid or free communities on the platform. All community autonomy does not have the distress of Web2 titles and information leakage. When more and more KOLs or knowledge disseminators have payment needs, there is indeed a lack of a useful on-chain management tool.

In this cycle, the exporters of high-quality content get all the benefits, and the high-quality content they continue to produce attracts users to continue to retain.

At the same time, there is also a debox and an automatic capital verification function, which can only be entered by holding the corresponding NFT or Token The corresponding groups, starting from value sharing, form a perfect closed loop. At the same time, due to the automatic capital verification function, it is guaranteed that the groups in the NFT group are all real holders, so everyone's discussions will have trust endorsements instead of random messages from non-holders in any WeChat group or DC group. market.

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Third. The relationship between NFT and SocialFi

Now I probably understand After the origin, characteristics and direction of SocialFi, let’s look at the relationship between NFT and SocialFi.

It is easier to form a "community consensus" among NFT holders. From a sociological point of view, human beings gather, communicate, and finally generate group consciousness. This is the birth of "culture" in a narrow sense. The community culture generated by this gathering will become a powerful cultural competitiveness of social media, and NFT is more like a symbol of community culture and a member's logo. And the tradable attributes of NFT can also attract more people to become members of the community as the community grows. NFT images themselves have certain social attributes. For example, Cryptopunk users and monkey users will form their own circles. Of course, there is also a lot of showing off. But it is undeniable that this is the basic feature beyond NFT aesthetics.

Current Web2 various social media use various means to attract users, and then use users The total amount and the number of active users are used to attract advertisers to make money. In this regard, Web3 and web2 are also very similar. One of the more common methods at present is that the community issues its own PASS card to attract project parties and community groups to settle in. Holding a PASS card can unlock different functions.

For example, community Token mining, access rights of certain groups, etc. Such benefits can enable social media to quickly build their own NFT ecosystem in the Web3 field, not only gaining users of other projects, but also expanding the rights and interests of their own users, improving the retention rate and activity of users, and making it easier to form community consensus. In addition, DeFi and NFT are in urgent need of a new breakthrough after the successive explosions, so rather than being separated, the two or three are more of an interdependent relationship.

4. Example of the application of NFT in SocialFi

4.1.Torum

Overview: Torum is a SocialFi Metaverse ecosystem designed to connect Global cryptocurrency users. At its core, the Web 3.0 ecosystem is built on a social media platform, plus a farming hub for DeFi players, an NFT marketplace for crypto artists, and Avatar NFTs for Metaverse enthusiasts. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts can perform various social networking activities on the platform, such as posting, introducing, following, etc. In addition, the platform has a built-in cryptocurrency wallet function, and users can obtain the platform currency - XTM as a reward by completing the tasks distributed by the gamified task system.

Torum Avatar NFT (the world's first socially integrated PFP NFT) the whole series consists of 21 sets Unique, themed avatar compositions, each with 6 NFT components. In other words, there are a total of 126 different NFT components. Building a complete avatar requires 6 NFT components, which don't have to belong to the same specific theme. As such, players are free to collect NFT pieces from different themes to build their own custom avatars and personalize their unique Metaverse identities. Users can quickly share NFT to their social platform accounts with one click, so that users' NFT can get more exposure. NFT is equivalent to a user's personal show, similar to the QQ show. At the same time, NFT can also be pledged in the secondary LP pool to obtain additional rewards.

Pros: Thanks to the integrated NFT marketplace, artists can use their profiles as showrooms , to showcase their premium collection to the community. Additionally, NFTs can be shared on social media for greater exposure.

Disadvantages: NFT empowerment is insufficient, and the entire platform is more inclined to XTM Tokenized rewards and gifts gift.

4.2.CyberConnect

Overview: CyberConnect is the world's first decentralized social graph protocol. Just connect the wallet address with CyberConnect, and users will be able to access all DApps built on CyberConnect without barriers (rather than needing to re-establish their own identity on each platform like now).

The pain point is that the information and data between platforms are not interoperable. For example, I am a BAYC holder but at the same time I am an active member of a certain DAO. The two seem to have nothing to do with each other, but my friend and I met in the BAYC circle. Through CyberConnect, we can find out that everyone is actually They are all in that DAO, which breaks through the information barriers between users, which is equivalent to establishing a user's social graph and marking the social network. From this point of view, CyberConnect's Nft is more like a user's "label", using NFT as a medium to build a Web3.0 social map. To put it simply, others can see your NFT on the social graph to establish a relationship, similar to BMW's offline car owner meeting.

Advantages: Breaking the cross-platform information monopoly, users can place themselves in different interest circles , different fields, and social relationships on different platforms are aggregated into one social network. This also means that users, friends, fans, content, and value can be shared between platforms without worrying about loss caused by migration.

Disadvantages: Whether the map information brought by the algorithm will be too messy and for users with privacy requirements Not very friendly. A large number of users cannot enter the current invitation code mechanism.

4.3. Lens Protocol

Overview: Lens is an open source, composable decentralized social media underlying protocol built on Polygon. Belonging to the infrastructure of Web3 social media, users can develop freely and own the content they create by holding the corresponding NFT. At the same time, developers can also build Web3 native social media on it, which is equivalent to relying on the big tree of Lens to derive a social protocol ecosystem layer and benefit from each other.

Simply put, Lens is a decentralized competitor to Twitter and Facebook. According to official disclosures, there are more than 50 applications in the Lens ecosystem, including Lenster, Lens Booster, SpamDAO, GoldenCircle, PeerStream, Swapify, Social Link, etc. The user's homepage will be Mint as a Profile NFT, which is exclusive to the user and can also be bought and sold. The created content can also be additionally issued NFT for sale to fans. The role of NFT here is more like a display, such as who I followed or what I accomplished.

Advantages: open source protocol, for developers, modular components can easily build their own social applications.

Disadvantages: It is not clear what the point is, there are too many applications and messy. Either make a back end for developers to use to build social applications, or make a Web3 social experience that focuses on users at the front end. Now it seems that it is typical to want everything but not to be good at it.

4.4. rally

Overview: It is a side chain deployed on Ethereum (rally) Creator Token distribution platform. More like a peer-to-peer platform between KOL and fans. Creators can create their own communities and quickly issue their own Tokens to achieve effective communication between creators and fans, which is somewhat similar to debox content payment. At the same time, the NFT on rally is more like an "identity NFT" created by an artist or community for their own community, and the holder can use the image of NFT to mark their own community. Compared with holding Token, it is more concrete, similar to the logo series of a gang.

Advantages: It is convenient to issue coins and there are creators' exclusive NFTs available for purchase.

Disadvantages: The creators are too messy, there are few high-quality creators and most of them are leeks. After the creator issues his own Token, he has to convert it to rally, and then bridge to his own Ethereum wallet, which is too complicated. Creators can also issue NFT by themselves, but lack of empowerment, and it becomes a gathering place for a bunch of messy small pictures, and the content is too complicated.

4.5.Mirror

Overview: Mirror is first and foremost a decentralized content publishing platform. A project initiated by former partners of A16Z. The content published by users on Mirror (which can be released for free) can also be minted into NFT and stored on the ARWAVE chain, and readers can collect it. The main thing is to migrate the creators of Web2 to Web3, so that the community can socialize, and at the same time, the creators can also have the ownership of their own works. For example, the daily assignments released by some communities or DAOs are published on Mirror, so as to attract subscriptions from corresponding fan groups.

Advantages: Token issuance tools are provided for creators to crowdfund, and the content monetization method is also Promote the production of more high-quality content.

Disadvantages: The article lacks search, like and forward functions, and the content collection of creators is done well not too good. At the same time, very few fans currently pay for the creator's NFT, mostly subscriptions. The form of publishing articles to do social networking lacks a certain degree of activity.

Five. Summary

2020 is the DeFi summer, 2021 is the first year of NFT, the NFT market will reach a peak transaction volume of 4.8 billion US dollars in early 2022, and a cliff will appear in June 22 down.

OpenSea's monthly transaction volume is only 690 million US dollars. Both NFT players and analysts have said that the winter of NFT is coming.

Of course, it’s not just NFT projects that need to seek new narrative gameplay and expand users when they are cold. The entire encryption market is looking for new concepts in the bear market to detonate the next wave of bull market. At the same time socialfi is also facing its own dilemma. Compared with NFT, GameFi, DeFi, etc., socialfi has always been criticized for its poor money-making effect. The failure of the first generation of socialfi does not mean that the socialfi product track is not good, but is subject to the development of dApp at that time and the consensus degree of Web3 and the user base.

Different from before, not only are various ecology flourishing today, but also the traditional Social media has also entered the stock market, and for these traditional manufacturers, the Web3 blockchain is more like a breakthrough for them. Binding interests with Web3 through NFT (such as Bilibili, Yingke, etc.) can help them Win more Web3 user groups. At the same time, due to the money-making effect of NFT, it will also attract more Web2 groups, and at the same time achieve the mutual attraction and migration of the remaining groups of Web2 and Web3.

Today's SocialFi, DAO, and NFT provide room for imagination, whether it is to issue your own NFT to attract users, or use PASS to unlock Corresponding permissions and so on are the embodiment of a mutualistic symbiotic relationship between nft and socialfi. As CZ said in the Indian magazine, "SocialFi will explode in the next 5 years, with 300 million to 1 billion users growing, and the entire SocialFi and NFT interactive experience in the future will change." When NFT, DAO, and deif are fully functional and integrated into the SocialFi system, this new mix product will most likely become SocialFi Summer after DeFi and NFT!