Airdrop expectations accelerate the growth of decentralized social graph CyberConnect, while the flagship product Link3 faces challenges

Author: Xiyou, ChainCatcher

Recently, the surge in on-chain data from the centralized social graph protocol CyberConnect has attracted significant attention. Why has this project, which was launched back in 2021, seen a spike in interest during March and April of this year?

In fact, the growth in CyberConnect's data is closely linked to its flagship social product, Link3, with the ccProfile (profile) NFT representing user identity being a major contributor to this data increase.

A closer look reveals that the surge in CyberConnect's data is driven by two main factors: on one hand, the lowered participation threshold for users to mint ccProfile NFTs; on the other hand, the anticipation of potential airdrops has stimulated participation from users looking to take advantage of these opportunities.

For community users, beyond the impressive on-chain data performance, they are more concerned about the progress of CyberConnect's products and ecosystem. As Link3 is the application scenario product officially built by CyberConnect, it naturally becomes the main platform for user interaction. However, with the increase in users, Link3 is facing unprecedented challenges, and feedback regarding its user experience is becoming more frequent. Some users are amazed by its innovation and high level of user engagement, while others complain about the abundance of project advertisements on the platform and its lack of playability.

Lowered Participation Threshold and Airdrop Anticipation Stimulate Surge in On-Chain Data

According to Dune user @ryanli27, in March, the number of monthly active wallet addresses (UAW) on CyberConnect reached 730,000, setting a new historical high. Among them, the minted ccProfile NFTs amounted to 594,000 in March, accounting for about 72% of the total minting, also a historical high. As of April 20, the total number of ccProfile NFTs minted reached 874,000, with 850,000 holding addresses.

From the trend of daily active user data, the relevant data for CyberConnect applications began to accelerate growth from March 8, peaking on March 18 with approximately 210,000 active addresses, maintaining rapid growth until around March 20. Currently, the number of daily active addresses is about 40,000.

Why was CyberConnect's data performance so outstanding in March?

In fact, looking at the daily data changes, the daily active data on CyberConnect began to rise from February 7.

It was found that during this period, CyberConnect lowered the minting threshold for ccProfiles, not only opening minting on the BNB Chain but also supporting users to register usernames (Handles) longer than 12 characters for free during the hackathon from February 7 to March 13, while eliminating the invitation-only registration model. Prior to this, CyberConnect only supported users to mint ccProfiles on Ethereum, requiring a payment of 0.1 ETH and an invitation code. This indicates that CyberConnect not only simplified the user registration process but also reduced minting gas fees.

Currently, when users want to mint a ccProfile NFT on CyberConnect, they still only need to pay the gas fee on the BNB Chain for usernames longer than 12 characters, which is about $0.4.

In addition to lowering the minting threshold, another major reason stimulating data growth is the potential airdrop anticipation from CyberConnect. On March 16, Arbitrum announced an airdrop of ARB tokens, with each address receiving tokens worth about $10,000 on average. This wealth effect ignited community users' enthusiasm, prompting them to actively seek out other potential airdrop projects. Naturally, the unlaunched CyberConnect was chosen by users.

In fact, in late March, not only did CyberConnect's on-chain data rise, but other unlaunched projects such as Zkysnc, Starknet, and LayerZero also saw increases in on-chain interaction data. Among them, the floor price of Lens's Profile NFT, a project in the same track, also surged sharply, reaching as high as 0.15 ETH, while previously it often maintained around 0.06 ETH. However, since users need to hold a Profile NFT to enter the Lens ecosystem, the Profile NFT registration has been suspended, and users can only purchase it on the secondary market OpenSea, where the floor price is around 0.01 ETH, valued at $200. For users looking to take advantage of airdrops, this interaction cost is somewhat too high.

Compared to Lens, CyberConnect has a lower participation threshold, where users can even obtain a ccProfile NFT by only paying the gas fee, allowing them to participate in the CyberConnect ecosystem. The cost is negligible, making it a high-quality project in the eyes of users looking to take advantage of opportunities, thus stimulating the surge in on-chain data. This also reasonably explains why CyberConnect's daily active data peaked on March 18.

CyberConnect Focuses on Social Data Layer, Building Real Application Scenarios with Link3

The surge in on-chain user data has also prompted users to reassess CyberConnect and its related ecosystem products.

CyberConnect is primarily used to build a decentralized social graph based on blockchain addresses, first created in September 2021. The product aims to return the ownership and usage rights of social data to users, endowing the social graph with autonomy, portability, and composability; it also provides Web3 developers with a foundational infrastructure for building applications or integrating data, allowing developers to easily integrate or insert social graph modules into their applications through simple code, or create new products based on it.

Current social networks like WeChat, Twitter, Douyin, and Facebook store users' personal profiles, friend information, and published content on centralized servers owned by operators. Most of the content on these platforms is created by users, but the rules are set by the operators. Creators' content and accounts may be penalized for violations, facing risks of account bans and loss. Furthermore, users' data on these platforms is independent and fragmented, making migration impossible. For example, followers and content on Douyin cannot be transferred to Bilibili.

CyberConnect builds a publicly accessible and distributed decentralized social protocol. Data ownership and utility belong to the users, allowing them to truly own and control their social identity and relationships, content, and monetization methods within the social network, and seamlessly migrate them across different DApps built on the CyberConnect protocol. Developers can build the necessary Web3 application products based on the social data and component tools provided by CyberConnect to achieve underlying data interoperability.

For instance, if a DeFi application based on CyberConnect is used by user A, and they post a user experience on a social platform based on the CyberConnect protocol, receiving many comments and likes from fans, other DeFi applications connected to the CyberConnect database can access user A's social graph information and recommend similar applications to these interacting users.

According to RootData, CyberConnect completed a $10 million seed round of financing in November 2021 in the form of equity and future token agreements, led by Multicoin Capital and Sky9 Capital. In May 2022, it completed a $15 million Series A round led by Animoca Brands and Sky9 Capital. The total public financing has reached $25 million. At that time, CyberConnect was indeed one of the hottest projects. However, after the collapse of Terra in May 2022, the crypto market began to turn bearish, and the decentralized social track became increasingly quiet, leading to a gradual cooling of CyberConnect's popularity.

However, CyberConnect did not stop there. In July 2022, CyberConnect announced the launch of its first Web3 native social information product, Link3, based on the protocol, to build real application scenarios.

In terms of product form, Link3 resembles an information and link aggregation service platform based on on-chain addresses, similar to Linktree in Web2 (a tool that integrates multiple links such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts onto one page).

Link3 aggregates users' on-chain and off-chain data through the cc Profile NFT. Users can link their wallet addresses on the CyberConnect platform to mint a cc Profile NFT. By setting up their cc Profile, they can aggregate relevant on-chain and off-chain data, such as linking off-chain social platform identities like Twitter and WeChat, personal profile data, and on-chain proofs like held NFTs and POAPs onto one page, creating their own on-chain account system. This Profile NFT serves as the user's on-chain identification, representing their overall identity in the Web3 world, similar to a LinkedIn profile.

Initially, only whitelisted addresses or those with invitation codes could mint cc Profiles. Currently, users can mint cc Profiles for free by paying gas fees on the BNB Chain for usernames longer than 12 characters. If users want usernames shorter than 12 characters, they need to pay different fees based on the character length, ranging from 0.0333 to 33.3333 BNB, with shorter usernames incurring higher costs.

In addition to cc Profiles, the Link3 platform also integrates features such as Posts, Events, and Fan Clubs. Posts allow users to NFT their content for collection and monetization; Events aggregate various online and offline activity information organized by project parties. The Fan Club is a community loyalty club where users can earn points by completing simple tasks. Additionally, CyberConnect has launched a soulbound token SBT—W3ST (Web3 Status Token) to record users' on-chain interaction behaviors and digital reputation, and project parties can set relevant tasks using W3ST in Event activities to incentivize user participation.

Currently, individual users can create content posts on Link3, and high-quality content can be NFTed, allowing users to receive tips and subscriptions, thus achieving content monetization; for project parties, Link3 provides an Event Planner toolkit to track the latest dynamics in Discord and Twitter communities, and helps project parties simplify the process of organizing events, such as providing lottery tools and analyzing user data.

Thus, Link3 has evolved from merely an information aggregation tool for on-chain addresses into a Web3 community platform. According to official data from Link3, as of April 17, there are 1,822 verified organizational accounts, 5.93 million W3ST issued, and 6,392 events published.

In addition to the native Link3, CyberConnect is also actively collaborating with external applications to co-build ecosystem development, including the metaverse social platform Oasis and the Web3 content aggregation platform ReadON, both of which have integrated the CyberConnect protocol to support users in binding cc Profile NFTs.

CyberConnect VS Lens: Ecosystem and Playability Remain Core to Social Products

In the decentralized social graph track, Lens is often regarded as the leading product, with CyberConnect typically in second place. Both have Profile NFTs representing user identity and are frequently compared by users.

Lens is an open, composable decentralized social graph infrastructure building platform, built on the Polygon public chain, primarily designed to help developers build decentralized social applications. The concept of Profile NFTs was first proposed by it, modularized for developers' use.

Lens governance modularizes the main functional components on social platforms and supports the addition of new sections or content, while also providing developers with a series of basic component tools such as "Profile NFTs, Follow NFTs, Content NFTs, Collect NFTs," which offer a complete chain from creators to content to consumers, allowing developers to freely use these tools to create their desired social products and simplify the development process.

From a product philosophy perspective, Lens aims to provide a convenient development environment for developers and creators through a series of modular tools, encouraging builders to create new applications based on Lens standards to achieve co-construction, co-creation, and joint ecosystem development; CyberConnect, on the other hand, focuses on building a complete and authentic social graph for users, providing developers or project parties with access and creating application scenarios like Link3.

Thus, Lens serves as a foundational infrastructure encouraging ecosystem co-construction; CyberConnect is more like a tool product, focusing more on application scenarios, allowing developers to integrate with it, such as enabling developers to map all off-chain and on-chain credentials and assets to ccProfiles, whether they are NFTs, SBTs, Twitter usernames, or DIDs.

In terms of product design, Lens adopts an all-on-chain data approach, ensuring sufficient decentralization. However, this also means that every interaction or engagement between users and applications involves on-chain behavior and requires interaction with smart contracts. For example, actions like following, posting content, commenting, etc., require wallet address authorization signatures or gas fee payments, increasing usage complexity and costs; CyberConnect, however, selects valuable data to be put on-chain, allowing common, high-frequency, non-rare data such as likes and comments to be performed without interacting with smart contracts or wallet authorization, simplifying user operations and saving on gas fees.

From an ecosystem development strategy perspective, Lens aims to allow developers to easily call APIs to obtain data and build applications, with most ecosystem projects being native projects. Any DApp developed on this platform will share resources from the Lens ecosystem. For example, DApps developed based on Lens can achieve application interaction and recombination similar to DeFi Legos, with built-in NFT assets being interoperable. CyberConnect, on the other hand, provides social data tools for other applications and encourages external DApps to join in co-building the ecosystem.

Therefore, from the perspective of ecosystem construction, Lens is creating a garden, providing relevant tools and development soil, allowing developers to build within this garden, enabling recombination between applications, and being more open; in contrast, CyberConnect is more like seeking similar applications, not emphasizing the native nature of applications, allowing any application with real demand scenarios to connect.

Currently, there are over 140 native applications on Lens, covering content, social, and music fields, with major representative products including the official LensFrens—able to recommend Profiles based on users' Web3 footprints; and Lenster, similar to Twitter—supporting users to publish content dynamics and NFT them, etc. There are over 30 ecosystem applications connected to the CyberConnect protocol, such as restaurant review platform Plato, and the Share-to-Earn social application Phaver within the Lens ecosystem.

In terms of data performance, as of April 18, Lens has paused Profile minting, with a total of 116,000 Profiles, 3.39 million posts published, and 18,000 active users in the last 30 days, completing 19.42 million transactions. CyberConnect has minted a total of 869,000 ccProfiles, with 36,700 being paid registrations; it has issued 5.98 million content NFTs, with 7.16 million interactions involving gas fee payments. From the perspective of user participation data, CyberConnect currently outperforms Lens.

From the perspectives of product, ecosystem, and user participation, the two seem evenly matched.

However, in terms of user experience feedback, Lens appears to have an advantage, with many community users expressing that CyberConnect lacks playability compared to Lens.

This is mainly because the flagship Link3 product promoted by CyberConnect has somewhat complex content, aggregating various information such as content and event information, making it difficult for users to grasp the focus during use. Compared to previous social platforms, it is neither a purely content community platform nor an event participation platform. Some users even suggest that Link3 resembles an advertising and marketing platform built for project parties. Additionally, many users complain that most of the tasks and activities released by project parties on Link3 are complex and lack substance, resembling the "data mining" practices seen in the crypto space a few years ago, which are time-consuming and labor-intensive, mostly consisting of blatant advertisements from project parties. If it weren't for the potential airdrops or rewards, users would not participate at all.

In contrast, the Lens ecosystem has applications like Lenster, which is simple and pure, built solely for social interaction and aligns better with users' previous social habits, allowing users to post their dynamics at any time, interact with others, and leave comments, thus exhibiting stronger social attributes and playability. However, some argue that Link3 still holds value for B-end project parties, as it can at least generate its own activity buzz.

For users, whether it is Lens or CyberConnect, the usage threshold remains too high, requiring not only a wallet but also gas fee payments. Even actions like liking or posting require gas fees, which poses a significant barrier for users who are not accustomed to paying for social products. In this process, project parties need to spend a lot of time and effort educating users about Web3, wallet usage, etc.

Moreover, as a social platform, product innovation is just one aspect; having quality content and social relationship accumulation is key to attracting users. Although Web2 applications like Twitter and Weibo are widely criticized, they retain users due to the presence of content and social relationships.

In contrast, despite innovations in product philosophy and functionality, Web3 social applications often lack quality content to attract users and fail to create stickiness in social relationships, leading them to become fleeting products, such as the recently touted Twitter killer, the Web3 social application Damus, which saw its popularity wane in less than a week.

Currently, the decentralized social track remains a niche product, still in its early exploratory phase. There is a long way to go to break into the mainstream or compete with Web2 giants for users.