Web3 Social Track Review: Which Early Projects Are Worth Noticing?

Author: Gu Yu, Chain Catcher

Today, Musk announced the acquisition of the famous social network Twitter, stating that Twitter is a digital town square for debating issues that are crucial to the future of humanity. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also tweeted that Twitter should become a protocol-level public good.

As the largest acquisition in the social network field in recent years, this event reflects the enormous challenges facing social media, where the conflict between its public attributes and profit motives, as well as the opaque review mechanisms and open transparency, is becoming increasingly evident. As pointed out in the article, as social networks begin to succumb to commercial interests and political pressures, their efficiency as public service providers is declining.

Therefore, after Musk's acquisition of Twitter, a series of transformations to the existing operational model are expected to better align with the needs of the public interest. Meanwhile, many Web3 native projects are also exploring transformations of the social network model, establishing new Web3 social networks based on open social graphs, NFTs, or token economic models.

In this article, Chain Catcher will briefly introduce 9 representative early projects, including Lens Protocol, Bluesky, DeSo, Mem Protocol, Cyberconnect, Atem Network, BBS Network, 5Degrees, and NFTychat.

1. Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is a Web3 social graph protocol based on Polygon, developed by the Aave team. The project aims to enable creators to own their connections with the community, forming a fully composable, user-owned social graph. One of the main important features of the protocol is its composability and modularity, allowing developers to build their own social apps or add new features, meaning any application can integrate the protocol while ensuring that the content and social relationships owned by users are immutable.

The protocol argues that Web2 networks read data from their unique centralized databases, lacking portability, with users' profiles, friends, and content locked into specific networks and owned by network operators. This leads to a zero-sum game among networks for users' attention.

In Lens Protocol, since users own their data, they can take it to any application built on the protocol. As the true owners of their content, creators no longer need to worry about losing their content, audience, and livelihood due to the whims of algorithms and policies based on a single platform. Furthermore, every application using Lens Protocol benefits the entire ecosystem, turning the zero-sum game into a collaborative game. Developers can design meaningful social experiences without relying on feedback mechanisms to lock in users' attention.

Specifically, Lens mints users' homepages as "Profile NFTs," containing the history of all user-generated posts, mirrors, comments, and other content. Ownership of this NFT allows users to control their content. Only users who own a "Profile NFT" can post content, comment, and retweet, while other users can follow a homepage and receive a "Follow NFT." Additionally, users can collect content published by creators, obtaining corresponding "Collect NFTs."

Official website: https://lens.dev/

Related reading: 《Lens Protocol: Web3 Social Media Backed by the Aave Team》

2. Bluesky

Bluesky was initiated by Twitter and established as an independent entity in February this year, aiming to create a decentralized open-source social media protocol that provides an open and decentralized standard for social media development, giving developers more opportunities for building and innovation, while users have more choices and control over the services and experiences they use. Recommendation algorithms, content review mechanisms, etc., will be in the hands of users rather than private platform giants.

Although Bluesky has not yet determined whether to incorporate blockchain or cryptocurrency, it has clearly stated that the development and adoption of decentralized protocols are pathways to establishing a strong technological foundation, independent of any single blockchain. "Decentralization is a structural change that alone is insufficient to create a healthy social media ecosystem. However, by creating an environment where developers can build freely, communities can self-govern, and users can easily switch services, decentralization can catalyze the innovations needed to improve public discourse," said Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.

In terms of review mechanisms, the project will actively build transparent, opt-in, and multi-layered reputation and review system tools, creating a framework for others to build such tools.

In terms of specific architecture, Bluesky combines the portability of "self-certifying protocols" with a user-friendly experience under a delegated hosting mechanism, allowing users not to run their own infrastructure while developers can build high-performance applications.

Bluesky has not yet disclosed more specific framework designs and stated that the current focus is on building and releasing a prototype to illustrate its architecture.

Official website: https://blueskyweb.org/

Related reading: 《The Concept and Architecture of Twitter's Decentralized Social Media Protocol Bluesky》

3. DeSo

DeSo is a Layer 1 blockchain customized for scaling decentralized social applications, built on the underlying technology of BitClout, aiming to create a decentralized version of Twitter. Compared to other blockchains, DeSo has greater scale and throughput, with extensive custom storage and indexing logic, better supporting complex social media data such as posting, user profiles, followers, predictions, etc. All code is open-source.

In DeSo, each user's profile is stored on-chain, fully controlled by the user's private key, making user identity (profiles, posts, replies, etc.) portable across all applications within the DeSo ecosystem. Supported features also include social tokens, social NFTs, and social tipping.

NFTs minted on DeSo are associated with the artist's profile and can be displayed in the buyer's profile, enhancing provenance while giving them inherent sociality and more valuable characteristics.

Last year, the project raised $200 million in funding, with notable investors including a16z, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and Pantera Capital.

Official website: https://www.deso.org/

Related articles: 《DeSo: The Decentralized Social Network》

4. Mem Protocol

Mem Protocol aims to create a Web 3.0 version of "Zhihu," allowing users to earn rewards by sharing knowledge. Through smart contracts, Mem users can verify their identities on the blockchain and establish their own verifiable reputation systems. The protocol also builds an interface to browse on-chain data from wallets and designs an open protocol to record interactions and relationships generated by wallets and tokens.

Mem stores the information of network participants—including social media history, on-chain activities, and professional experiences—in an encrypted vault. This data is owned and controlled by users, and when users permit, it can serve as "social credit scores" or "social graphs."

By using reputation systems and smart contracts, Mem users can perform actions on the blockchain that correspond to actions in the real world, such as asking questions, raising funds for bounties, and establishing their own verifiable, context-specific reputation systems.

Mem hopes to use social tokens and smart contracts to facilitate the establishment of applications and communities based on the protocol, covering a wide range of applications such as product reviews, social media, and job seeking.

In November last year, the project secured $3.1 million in funding led by a16z, with other investors including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Olaf Carlson-Wee and Charlie Cheever from Polychain.

Official website: https://mem.co/

Related reading: 《A16z Partner Discusses Why They Led the Investment in Mem Protocol and What This Web3.0 Social Building Tool Can Bring》

5. Cyberconnect

CyberConnect is a decentralized social graph protocol serving Web3.0 social networks and the metaverse. Its mission is to return the ownership and utility of social graph data to users while providing all Web3.0 developers with an infrastructure for integration.

The project's social graph module and recommendation indexer provide a universal data layer for the next generation of decentralized applications—GameFi, NFTs, DAOs—allowing for the insertion of meaningful and context-specific social features. DApps can access CyberConnect's social graph data after embedding CyberConnect's code, but whether to authorize applications to read this data is also determined by the users themselves.

Currently, the project supports users connecting to the DApp via their wallets, linking to Opensea, Twitter, Mirror, and a series of accounts, as well as performing actions like following and commenting. CyberConnect also plans to launch an instant messaging social software called CyberChat to demonstrate how to utilize social graph data.

In November last year, CyberConnect completed a $10 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital and Sky9 Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, DraperDragon, Hashed, Zoo Capital, Smrti Lab, and Mask Network.

Official website: https://cyberconnect.me/

*Related reading: 《Social Graph Protocol Cyberconnect: Dismantling the Berlin Wall Between Platforms, Individuals, and Communities》

6. Atem Network

Atem is a web3 social platform that is building a user-owned group space based on tokens and NFTs, where users can chat, trade, and manage P2P group spaces. The project plans to construct a decentralized social graph within the web3 chat box, encompassing graphs from different platforms such as social media, games, and even DApps, with the long-term mission of establishing personal and group social graphs, integrating with different DApps, and becoming a one-stop solution for web3 social infrastructure.

In Atem, group spaces are formed based on jointly owned tokens or NFTs, with only holders having the right to join and speak in the community. All spaces and channels will be governed by DAO, meaning users collectively decide the community rules. Data is stored in a decentralized manner, end-to-end encrypted, ensuring complete anonymity, allowing users to control their data, identity, and governance.

At the same time, Atem users can not only chat with each other like in traditional chat rooms but also send tokens and NFTs. Atem's one-stop solution allows users to seamlessly trade tokens and NFTs in one place without leaving the chat room and logging into another trading platform to execute transactions. Atem can also automatically group users into communities based on the tokens or NFTs they own.

In February this year, Atem Network announced the completion of a $3 million seed round, led by INCE Capital, with participation from GSR Ventures, Mask Network, Mirana Ventures, A&T Capital, Atlas Capital, Foresight Ventures, Zonff Partners, and Zhihu co-founder Michael Zhang.

Official website: https://www.atemnet.com/

Related reading: 《What is Atem》

7. BBS Network

BBS Network is a decentralized social network similar to Reddit or Tieba, where users can create forums to post, comment, and share ideas while generating income from their content. Any user can create a BBS on the platform, and each BBS can operate on its unique domain while still linking to all other BBSs, where creators, curators, and stakeholders receive native token rewards for the project in an automatic and transparent manner.

Every post published on BBS is essentially an NFT, which users can buy, sell, or even rent, while collecting advertising revenue generated from any posts they own. On BBS, the influence of posts is determined by actual market forces, with the value created shared among the post's creator, current owner, and board administrator, incentivizing everyone to make BBS as attractive to audiences and stakeholders as possible.

Each BBS owner can set their community's review rules and content policies, allowing users to freely choose which boards to access and participate in to meet their needs. BBS can be customized and enhanced using plugin modules, promoting user choice and diversity.

In December 2021, BBS Network secured $1.5 million in seed funding from Binance Labs.

Official website: https://www.bbsnetwork.io/

8. 5Degrees

5Degrees is a Web3 social network protocol incubated by TokenPocket wallet, aiming to establish user relationship graphs and socialize all DApps.

5Degrees is built using the ERC-1155 standard, assetizing users' core data (such as the list of followed addresses) to generate NFTs, thus forming a vast relational network infrastructure. Any project supporting the ERC-1155 standard can integrate this protocol.

For users, 5Degrees allows them to grasp and "carry" their social relationships on-chain; at the same time, project developers no longer need to worry about the issue of inaccessible user relationships, as they can utilize the permissionless 5Degrees user relationship network to implement social functions. For example, a social module can be added to Uniswap, allowing all users to intuitively access detailed data on transactions made by the people they follow.

Currently, 5Degrees has launched products including the personal homepage product Fans3.0, Uniswap and PancakeSwap with added social modules, and the Web3.0 Social Bridge. Among them, Fans3 supports displaying personal information such as held tokens, NFTs, POAP (Proof of Attendance) badges, DeFi application usage (interacted DeFi applications and corresponding transaction volumes), as well as domain identities like ENS, DAS, and RNS.

Official website: https://www.5degrees.io/#/

Related reading: 《Web3.0 Social Track Explodes, Detailed Explanation of the 5Degrees Solution and Development Prospects Incubated by TP Wallet》

9. NFTychat

NFTychat is a Web3 chat social software aimed at creating a "Web3 version of Discord," where users can start chatting simply by connecting their wallet addresses, without charging users and keeping them away from bots and spam.

Currently, the project can be used via desktop browsers and only supports users using their held NFTs as avatars and using ENS usernames. Users can view any other users' held NFTs, POAPs, and information from Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, etc., with a total of about 4,800 users so far.

In March this year, NFTychat announced the completion of $1 million in funding, led by Archetypevc, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kaiynne, Hjmomtazi, Nanexcool, Fcmartinelli, RyanSAdams, Sassal0x, TimBeiko, and Skeeeeto.

Official website: https://nftychat.xyz/

In addition to the above projects, other noteworthy Web3 social projects include the Solana ecosystem social network Taki, the Web3 native community Mysterious, the social middleware protocol Relation, the NFT social network Hyype, and the NFT social subscription platform ShowMe, all of which have good investment backgrounds and social concepts. Chain Catcher will continue to monitor this track.