Web3MQ: A Permanently Open Digital Public Square

Author: Web3MQ

Reboot: Infrastructure and Future Social

In the classical internet era, the digital space where people gathered, communicated, and coexisted was relatively niche. The spirit of open source, freedom, and interconnectivity served as the initial driving force, giving birth to the first generation of social products such as email, blogs, and BBS. This space was initially filled with idealism, geek culture, and a friendly desire for communication.

However, the rapid advancement of internet infrastructure soon led to the flourishing of this digital space: numerous social software emerged like buildings rising from the ground, and after completing content construction and attracting the last batch of major users or residents, they all closed their doors. The "World-wide-web" gradually became segmented into different software, with each social software representing an independent relational space within different scopes, while all-in-one became an ideal that top products inside the doors pursued unidirectionally and reluctantly.

The new generation of communication protocols represented by Web3MQ is reopening all the doors.

Web3MQ, XMTP, Dialect, EPNS, and Satellite are the main players in the Web3 social communication protocol arena. In every digital revolution, "social" has always been one of the most important battlegrounds, especially in the Web3 era. Before a massive influx of users, the robustness of early infrastructure directly determines the user experience that will be exponentially amplified later.

Supported by technologies such as decentralized computing, storage, and privacy protection, these Web3-native communication protocols are striving to create a brand new social generation:

1) Data is returned to users by the platform, allowing users to decide how to utilize and whether to destroy the data they generate, from renting to owning;

2) Encryption algorithms ensure information security, with end-to-end encryption eliminating any third party's right to view users' personal messages;

3) Letting artificially obstructed social relationships and data flow again: all fans, messages, and interactions in Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook will be categorized into homogeneous information streams, crossing platforms, from "person" to "person," rather than from platform to platform.

Developed by S3 Labs, Web3MQ has first accomplished this mission and officially launched in September. Web3MQ has excelled in various metrics, with test results leading in concurrency performance, response time, scalability, and more. This also means that Web3 communication protocols have officially entered a brand new stage:

▲ Extremely fast response speed, low latency, and high concurrency can still perform excellently when the number of Web3 users reaches a new level, while providing a decentralized experience that Web2 communication protocols (Matrix) do not possess.

A New Experience for Developers

With the foundation of Web3MQ laid, the first beneficiaries are the developers of social applications. As a messaging middleware, protocols like Web3MQ connect the underlying social infrastructure (such as Lit Protocol, livepeer, Ceramic, TABLELAND, etc.) with the application layer, enabling developers to easily utilize existing protocols and user networks to build their own social applications, creating new Lego products. On the other hand, with a dual commitment to open source and ownership, the protocol itself evolves and improves continuously alongside applications, iterating through new ideas and suggestions. The latter means that Web3MQ will be completely community-driven in the mid to late stages. Developers can check the Web3MQ Doc here.

The composability, open source, and ownership of Web3MQ present a future social landscape based on this protocol: developers with new ideas can develop products using Web3MQ in the developing social stack and quickly validate their market fit. Different social software competes on the same protocol's user network, using their unique (often more vertical) features and user experiences as leverage to attract users, and incentivizing high network-value users based on protocol data.

Users on various applications built on the protocol will experience smooth usage with friction costs close to zero; data on a specific application will no longer be locked or require migration: they are transparent, secure, and always owned by the users themselves, with the platform retreating to the background as an invisible bridge, road, and square (Αγορά).

Towards Open Spaces: Defining the Civic Square

Digital space also has spatial characteristics. The childhood of the internet flashed by, leading everyone at the time to mistakenly believe that "the earth is flat"; but the reality is that among the hundreds of EB of data generated daily, the internet presents a multitude of micro-topographies: each digital individual often lives within these micro-topographies, surrounded by peripheral data that is far smaller than the total data.

Among them, every social platform, regardless of its user scale, signifies more of a "wall" than a "road": within the platform's internal loop, the meaning and value of connection are lost, and connection is no longer an infinitely extendable topological structure, but will always break off at some point. In the realm of social relationships, there has never been a sufficiently good or useful internal loop; only the external loop, after breaking walls and breaking through, can generate sufficient ecological value.

The "square" (Αγορά) originally referred to the central public space of ancient Greek city-states, where numerous political and commercial activities occurred, and it was also the beginning and origin of the "city-state." The Αγορά of Athens witnessed countless speeches, dramas, and games, as well as numerous discussions between citizens of all sizes. The essence of the square is anti-authoritarian: as a public space spontaneously transformed based on the intrinsic needs of the crowd, it is more bottom-up than top-down. It often exists outside of centralized regulation and planning, distinguishing itself from the control mechanisms of orthodox power, residing in a kind of "gap."

It is this gap that constitutes the fluid space. This space is multi-layered: it belongs to merchants, politicians, sages, students, and the displaced; thus, it is thoroughly social. This society is not an abstract existence in various systems and institutions, but a true collection of people. Here, the property rights of each piece of land are clearly defined, and most people will become owners rather than tenants.

In this public space, everyone has the right to be present, most people have the right to speak, some record, some vote, some make decisions, and all processes are subject to public supervision. From the perspective of the requirements of this domain, it is easy to think that in such a large modern society, only digital space can fulfill such functions; and the two points of public supervision and immutability may only be realized after the emergence of blockchain and related technologies.

Web3 has its own exchanges, banks, and lending centers, but it still does not have its own "Αγορά."

What Web3MQ ultimately aims to build is such an "infinitely square kilometer square." Here, the pseudo-public spaces of the past internet will be integrated, data barriers will no longer exist, and a highly autonomous environment will not rely on the authority of centralized institutions.

When you open your browser again, jumping from one webpage to another; or open your phone again, switching from one application to another, the frequent and homogeneous account logins of the past will disappear. The browsing experience that was once rented out will officially become a nostalgic memory of the Web2 internet, and "browsing" will return to its original state, becoming unprecedentedly smooth and clean. You will no longer be defined superficially by multiple social accounts ending with different suffixes; as all data converges, everyone will become complete again in the digital dimension.

Thus, when people need to talk or gather, there will always be places to discuss and congregate, and no one will close their doors at nine o'clock on any given night: here, your time will never stop from the very beginning, belonging solely to you.

And the first version of such a future is loading for the first time before our eyes.

Web3MQ has just landed on Gitcoin, as a true public good of the Web3 era, and is accepting donations. As a trusted, long-term communication infrastructure, the value that Web3MQ can provide for all Web3 citizens will profoundly change the future of communication. We welcome everyone to go to Gitcoin to contribute to Web3MQ and shape the new generation of future communications with us.