Original title: "Is decentralized social networking back? Quickly experience the social protocol Towns led by a16z with a $25 million investment"

Original author: TechFlow

Recently, the founder of a16z funded AI Bot with $50,000, and the subsequent fact that this Bot created a popular Goat token became a hot topic.

But don't forget that a16z's original intention was not to invest in Meme. The projects invested by this top VC have more success in various tracks.

Yesterday, the decentralized social protocol Towns, which a16z once led with a $25 million investment, was officially launched, but because the Meme super cycle was too hot, the serious projects were ignored in the limited attention.

In line with the attitude of "better to be wrong than to ignore one", new crypto products always need to be researched before they are launched. What if there are opportunities when no one is interested?

We quickly registered and experienced this product that looks more like decentralized Discord. With the arrest of the founder of Telegram, the abandonment of FriendTech and the lukewarm Farcaster, is decentralized social networking coming back this time?

Functional experience: more like decentralized Discord

First of all, don't get me wrong, a16z's lead investment of 25 million US dollars was not announced recently.

In February 2023, Towns raised $25.5 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Benchmark and Framework Ventures.

After nearly two years of development and polishing, the Towns product was recently officially announced to be launched.

In the crypto world where there is a new trick every day, the pace of creating an application product in two years is relatively slow; but moving forward step by step and launching it after it is done also gives people a feeling that they may be making a product seriously.

So, what are the product functions of this Towns?

1. Login: No encrypted wallet login option, blockchain logic is encapsulated

Currently, Towns provides a web version and an IOS application. After visiting https://www.towns.com/ and entering the login option, you can see that there is no design for logging in with any wallet, but directly provides mainstream methods such as third-party account login and mobile phone login.

After registering and entering the personal details page, you will find that the system has automatically associated and created a built-in wallet. It is likely that the MPC wallet design without a private key is also adopted. The user's logic for the blockchain is encapsulated when logging in, which is also a common processing method for most consumer-grade encryption products.

2. Create a group: similar to Discord, but with commercial space for paid membership

After the account is registered, Towns provides two options --- join a group or create a group yourself.

In fact, the logic of this group is basically similar to Discord. Different people find different interest groups according to their interests, and then start different types of topics and functional partitions in the group.

When creating a group, Towns comes with membership payment and commercialization functions by using the on-chain economy and token/NFT permission control.

As shown in the figure below, you can customize the first 100 people to join the group for free; those who join later can choose to join the group at the same price, or they can follow the model of cheaper first and more expensive later to create FOMO emotions.

At the same time, because it is a completely end-to-end decentralized application, the creation of the group and the joining of members are all on-chain behaviors, and gas fees will be charged accordingly. The group creator can have the option of "prepaying gas" to advance gas for the joining members; of course, you can also get this money back from their membership fees.

In addition, you can also specify conditions, such as holding certain tokens or certain NFTs to join the group.

3. Join the group: Joining means Mint, mastering information control

If you want to join the group, after clicking the button, you will find that the system will automatically help you mint the NFT of the group identity to confirm that first, it is indeed your own operation, and second, you have indeed joined the group.

Then this action is confirmed on the chain, and then all the information flows in the group are synchronized. At the same time, due to the decentralized design of the chain, your message flow and information are not actually controlled by a single centralized entity; but the front-end experience is a normal Discord.

Technology behind: Application chain supported by River

So, how did Towns become a completely on-chain social protocol? The answer lies in the River behind it --- a Layer 2 expansion solution designed specifically for decentralized social applications.

The River protocol provides Towns with a three-layer technical framework that enables it to achieve high-performance, decentralized social functions.

1. EVM-compatible L2 chain

Towns runs on River's Layer 2 (L2) chain.

In the application scenario of Towns, this means that users' social interactions (such as posting, commenting, liking, etc.) can be completed quickly and cheaply on the chain without being affected by the congestion of the Ethereum mainnet.

2. Decentralized off-chain stream nodes

To handle real-time communication needs, Towns utilizes River's decentralized off-chain stream node network. Working through an efficient peer-to-peer communication protocol, it is able to provide messaging performance close to that of a centralized system while maintaining decentralized characteristics.

This enables Towns to support real-time chat and notification functions similar to traditional social platforms.

3. Smart contracts deployed on Base

The core business logic of Towns is controlled by smart contracts deployed on Base. These smart contracts define the basic rules of the Towns social protocol, including user identity management, community creation, permission control, etc.

Based on these three components, each community group in Towns is actually an independent, programmable on-chain asset, which is called "Space". Each Space is a unique NFT that represents the ownership and management rights of the community.

More importantly, in order to protect user privacy, Towns implements end-to-end encryption. This means that all communications between users are encrypted, and only the two communicating parties can decrypt the content. This function is directly integrated into the protocol layer of Towns, ensuring that privacy protection does not rely on any centralized server.

Towns VS Warpcast

Both are projects invested by a16z. What are the similarities and differences between Towns and its predecessor Warpcast?

We made a table to help you quickly understand:

Finally, in the crypto world where attention economy is king, if Towns wants to develop, it must answer a key question:

Do users really have the motivation to abandon Telegram, Discord, or even Farcaster for the so-called complete decentralization?

User habits cannot be reversed in one day. Sometimes, getting used to it is more convincing than switching to another application because of fear of the sky falling.

Towns' resistance obviously comes from the above-mentioned existing applications, so the Go To Market strategy is more important. For example, Towns is also actively approaching popular crypto communities and NFT holders, and actively creating a community for them to attract them to join, such as Azuki, Doodles and penguins in the figure below.

And the premise for these to work is still profitable. Only when it is profitable, people who create groups are willing to create groups (such as sharing Alpha), and people who join groups are willing to pay the entrance fee.

In addition, the big crypto market is also a point that cannot be ignored.

After all, who is willing to join a group to chat after losing money? There is still a long way to go for encrypted social applications.

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