Dialogue with Phaver CEO and Co-founder: With $7 million in funding, how will Phaver achieve mass adoption in the year of social app explosion?

Interview: bayemon.eth, Kathy, ChainCatcher

Guest: Joonatan Lintala, Co-Founder and CEO of Phaver

This summer, with the overnight success of Friend.tech, the long-dormant social track has once again sparked a heated discussion in the Web3 world. However, most people still take a pessimistic view of Friend.tech's explosive growth, believing that the development of SocialFi is still an unsustainable "flash in the pan." Yet, while doubts about the sustainability of the social track persist in the community, significant financing in the social sector has frequently occurred in the primary market over the past year.

Recently, the significant financing in social applications belongs to the Web3 social application Phaver. According to the crypto data platform RootData, Phaver completed a $7 million financing round in early October, with participation from Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, dao5, Foresight Ventures, Alphanonce, f.actor, and Superhero Capital.

Phaver is a decentralized social network platform based on blockchain technology, aiming to improve issues related to privacy protection, data security, and user rights that exist in traditional social media platforms. It supports decentralized social graphs such as Lens Protocol developed by Aave and CyberConnect, as well as various on-chain assets like NFTs.

As a "Web2.5" social application that bridges the gap between Web2 and Web3, what has Phaver leveraged to secure millions in funding amidst a deep bear market? How will it truly attract traditional social media users and achieve sustainable development to establish a foothold in the Web3 world? To discuss these questions, ChainCatcher invited Phaver's co-founder and CEO Joonatan Lintala for an in-depth conversation covering aspects such as the project and team, user experience and feedback, application scenarios and commercial value, as well as future development.

Project Introduction

1. ChainCatcher: Recently, Tech has led the wave in the SocialFi field, and Phaver, as a Web3 social application, has also attracted the attention of many investors. Could you briefly introduce the main content and goals of the Phaver project?

Joonatan: The rapid growth of Friend.tech is interesting, but we are fundamentally different from it. We place much more emphasis on the social aspect rather than token economics. Although we do have Phaver tokens in terms of token economics, the main focus of Phaver is to find a new, fairer way to earn tokens and rewards. Token economics is actually a great way to incentivize creators, authors, and copyright holders on social media platforms, allowing them to gain more revenue or attention, or sell ads on the platform for profit. Therefore, Phaver has established a gamified system consisting of various components such as reputation scores, badge collections, and certificates to ensure that we are indeed real, rather than using multiple bank accounts like other social media. Additionally, we have built an incentive system to reward users who produce high-quality content. All these efforts mentioned above are aimed at preventing bots, fake users, and farming abuse as much as possible. In the long run, through these mechanisms, Phaver can establish a truly long-term sustainable system that rewards those who create value within the system. In terms of partnerships, Lens Protocol is one of the widely adopted protocols among Phaver's partners, and most of the content created on dAPPs built on it will be adopted by Phaver. We also integrate with CyberConnect, making us a multi-protocol system that allows users to connect all entities and other assets to their social graph.

2. ChainCatcher: We all know about Phaver's "Web2.5" mobile application. How does Phaver differ from other "Web3" social projects?

Joonatan: We do take a very pragmatic view of things, so we believe that the world and technology are not yet ready for large-scale adoption of blockchain. At the same time, not everything needs to be on-chain, and the complete promotion of blockchain is not necessarily a given in the future. Therefore, what we really consider is where the connection between ordinary users and blockchain is truly valuable. For example, Phaver uses conventional cloud technology to make access more convenient, even when there are whitelists and other restrictions on many protocols, ordinary users won't encounter too many difficulties when they first start using it.

We built a Web APP for Phaver, with a user experience consistent with ordinary social media applications, so much so that even my grandmother can easily join the Phaver system. Subsequently, users can connect their Lens Protocol profiles to their Phaver Web profiles. This means that every post they publish will be related to Lens, and every follow and being followed, as well as new Lens profiles, will be synchronized in Phaver. It essentially creates a backup of all social media actions on the blockchain, which also means that users can truly own their social graph, including relationships and shared content, all without Phaver's control.

To some extent, we believe this is a win-win approach, allowing users to complete a convenient one-time login and then gradually build their Web3 social graph. The more interfaces they connect, the greater their relevance to their ENS, Lens Protocol, and Phaver accounts, while also gaining more value from the Web3 layer.

3. ChainCatcher: Please briefly introduce the technology and algorithms used by Phaver.

Joonatan: From a technical perspective, Phaver is relatively simple in a sense, built on the foundational cloud technology that runs on our social graph site. Then, we integrate with many advanced protocols, such as Lens and CyberConnect, to improve the algorithms. In fact, we are still at a relatively early stage in terms of algorithms, but we have made significant progress in input and quality. Over the past year and a half, we have been using the Phaver APP for testing and have identified potential issues, such as misinformation and abusers of the system. We have eliminated these vulnerabilities one by one to make the entire system more complete. As we see on other platforms like Twitter, social platforms themselves find it difficult to prevent phenomena like bot spamming and fake interactions. The first step in algorithm optimization is to obtain the current trust level of users, which is where Phaver cred comes into play. Therefore, when we can verify that these are real users, Phaver gradually opens up staking. The next step in optimization is that we can create an effective feedback system to resist abuse, with feedback content selected by various different groups. Therefore, we believe Phaver has the capability to provide high-quality content.

Overall, Phaver currently does not have a very complete algorithm; it is just a relatively early version based on the topics you follow and subscribe to, as well as the number of people who have liked certain posts.

Behind the Team

4. ChainCatcher: We all know that Phaver has a very strong team behind it, consisting of 28 people from around the world. You have worked at Google and built and led a global sales team for io, growing it into a global market leader in paid social advertising tools. Additionally, CFO Tomi has extensive experience in many well-known traditional financial institutions, having worked at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, BCG, and other "financial giants." How can your rich experience in social applications in the Web2 field and the team's past experiences in other areas bring possibilities for Phaver's development in the Web3 field?

Joonatan: Yes, I believe our team actually has a very complementary background. We also have two co-founders who focus on technology, one of whom created his first Bitcoin exchange back in 2012. Therefore, we have long-term experience in the cryptocurrency industry. Our CTO was previously the chief developer for a large gambling company. Before that, he had a lot of knowledge about gamification. Our CFO Tomi, as a former investment banker and venture capitalist, is fully capable of monitoring token issuance, economics, and related economic matters. We need to ensure that what we build is actually sustainable for long-term growth year after year, rather than experiencing rapid growth and then losing momentum immediately. For me, I have spent 10 years in marketing and BD in social media, gaining deep insights into who is willing to pay for which features in this model. We hear a lot of voices saying that if we don't do advertising, we won't have a place in market competition. However, if you consider the issue from a pragmatic perspective, services always need to be paid for because retaining staff and all other work costs money. If we really want to create a sustainable ecosystem, either every user has to pay, or our partners and advertisers also need to pay high fees. Based on my experience, we hope to build a system that allows users to have a comfortable, free experience on the user interface while rewarding the contributions of creators. But at the same time, we won't build it in an "intrusive" way, like the applications on the current Web2 network that monitor your every move on the internet. We have many more ethical ways to obtain data, allowing people to truly engage in sharing, and users who participate in promotion can receive cashback in the form of points. Therefore, if users purchase their favorite promotions in the future, they will receive additional points rewards and convert those points into tokens. We hope that through this approach, we can truly achieve a fairer and more rewarding experience for users.

In addition, we currently have a total of 28 employees globally, which is very important for us because we have local language support in many key markets. Therefore, our team supports Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and many other languages. This ensures that we can provide assistance to users in many local markets in their native languages.

5. ChainCatcher: What initially attracted you and your team to engage in the development of Web3 social projects?

Joonatan: Personally, especially after working in this industry for 10 years, I found that there are many problems with the existing social media environment, such as creators who generate most of the value today not receiving compensation or receiving very little. You can build your career, audience, and livelihood on social media platforms, but you have no control or ownership over the value you create. We have encountered many people. When YouTube or other applications decide to delete their profiles, they lose all their work from the past 10 years. In many cases, this is a disaster for users of social applications. So as social media becomes increasingly important, we need to ensure that it is completely fair, allowing users to truly be rewarded and have some control over all the value they contribute to the entire system.

This does not happen on Web2 network applications because the platform naturally has the right to handle this data. I want to give this data to others because it can make them a lot of money. Therefore, we believe that to make social media truly fair, or even nearly fair, it must start from scratch, and a blockchain-based social graph (like Lens) is the best method we have found. We have extensively researched all different technologies, starting from Ethereum, other blockchains, and dAPPs, gradually realizing that social graphs in the blockchain space actually bring the most value.

6. ChainCatcher: How do you understand and view the Web3 social track? What developments and future does Phaver foresee?

Joonatan: We believe that 2024 may see a boom in social applications. The ecological situation we see now is that everyone has been in a building mode for the past two years. Lens Protocol has been steadily developing, and we are rapidly moving towards a more open version. CyberConnect is building a complete account abstraction and wallet system. These preparations will be ready for large-scale adoption at the same time.

Phaver may launch a public version for all users early next year. Our goal is to ensure that, from the perspective of user numbers, even if we are not the largest, we are among the largest, and we want to ensure that we are always at the forefront of growth and development, capable of building solutions that truly help users. At the same time, for us, Phaver is not just about building for current users; we want to bring hundreds of millions or more users into the social media system, allowing them to own their assets and control everything related to their social interactions. Therefore, this is not something that can be completed and quickly profited from next year; what matters is that our team continues to push forward.

User Experience and Feedback

7. ChainCatcher: So far, Phaver's application has achieved over 250,000 downloads and has a passionate community that posts over 50,000 posts daily, making it one of the most active applications in the Web3 field. What has contributed to Phaver's high popularity?

Joonatan: I think for Phaver, the most important thing is the community we are building. We have invested heavily in a community-oriented team. As I mentioned, Phaver supports multiple languages, and currently, at least 14 people are working in community operations and BD teams, establishing partnerships that benefit users within the community. I think this is particularly important during a bear market, where speculators may not necessarily make a lot of money at this point, and those purely looking for profit may have started seeking other opportunities. For those truly striving for the community and new opportunities, the goal has always been to make a significant change in the world through Web3 technology. In my view, the users who are still willing to stay in the community share similar thoughts.

In terms of social media applications, you cannot call it a true social media platform without a hundred million users, but for the entire Web3 network, Phaver is currently still a very small community. This also motivates us to continue developing new features and making adjustments to prepare for broader adoption, while continuously focusing on user feedback to create personalized products according to user preferences, allowing the entire application to scale in a more sustainable manner.

8. ChainCatcher: With the launch of Phaver's in-app loyalty program, Phaver Cred, how will you achieve fair rewards for user contributions in the future?

Joonatan: Ensuring that rewards are distributed to real users who create value, rather than farming experts, has always been a significant concern for Phaver. This is a potential huge challenge in the cryptocurrency system; ideally, project parties can reward early users through token airdrops. While this is an incentive, if most of the rewards ultimately flow to a few accounts that have been abusing the system, creating a lot of "water data" and continuously farming within the system, the airdrop distribution becomes unfair. Therefore, for us, we need to establish a mechanism that allows all users to fairly access token airdrops, which is also why Phaver has not yet released tokens. Although there is no exact timeline for token issuance, we can guarantee that once the Phaver token is launched, users will be able to redeem it through the credit system points. The monthly reset of credit points means that only active, real users can earn a certain number of points each month for token redemption. We also encourage users to hold Phaver tokens long-term, as holding can enhance account levels and earn more token airdrops in the coming months.

Application Scenarios and Commercial Value

9. ChainCatcher: What are the main application scenarios of Phaver currently? How is it positioned in the decentralized social field?

Joonatan: The application scenario is generally still social media, just using the currency and information of the cryptocurrency world. Users can customize their usernames, discuss books with other community members, share content, and subscribe to others' creative content—many things are the same as on other social media platforms.

On the basis of social platform functions, Phaver has added gamification mechanisms to reward users. On traditional social media platforms, users do not receive any feedback from the platform for likes and shares, let alone rewards. Phaver has a Gami mechanism, where users can earn points through likes, and the platform can effectively promote content that users like, allowing creators to gain higher visibility, and the rewards and points they earn can encourage them to continue creating high-quality content. Therefore, gamification is one of the key focuses of Phaver's current work. Additionally, Phaver allows users to connect multiple wallets across multiple chains without any conflicts, while Phaver itself obtains wallet data to optimize user experience.

10. ChainCatcher: How does the commercial value of the Phaver project manifest? What significant impact does it have on the industry or field?

Joonatan: In the long run, the value of social media platforms lies in their users. To achieve true commercial value, the number of users needs to grow significantly. In addition, user credibility is particularly important for social media platforms. Typically, when you want to advertise on Facebook, Twitter, or other applications, due to the anonymity of the Web2 network, advertisers do not really know who the ads are reaching and whether they are truly high-quality users. If people want to genuinely reach high-quality users, Phaver can target ads effectively. For example, we recently conducted an event to help users gain more exposure from Animoca, where our high-quality users were able to access Moca ID information earlier than others. We have also conducted many other activities for these high-quality users; if high-quality users own a large number of NFTs and are active in many places, as their influence expands, everyone in the network has the opportunity to directly provide rewards (e.g., purchasing NFTs, using the APP, etc.). Phaver can easily match those who want to provide rewards with recommended apps while also helping other projects find suitable high-quality users. If these projects can scale as a result, it will undoubtedly attract more partners and user groups.

11. ChainCatcher: For organizations or businesses considering adopting Phaver, what advantages and suggestions can you share?

Joonatan: From the data, our audience is not only real but also very active. In practical cases, the credibility score of goodwill has doubled. Therefore, overnight, prices nearly doubled as people purchased more NFTs to improve their credibility scores and earn tokens. We have seen cases where, due to partnerships, tens of thousands of tokens were minted because people wanted to link them back to credibility scores. These are great collaborative ways that show users are very engaged in community participation, and in many cases, they are also spending money, not just seeking free things.

Future Development

12. ChainCatcher: Finally, let's talk about the future development of Phaver. We know that Phaver has raised about $7 million. How will this recent financing impact Phaver's future development? What are the future directions or plans?

Joonatan: Phaver's next step is to continue developing and find the key features that will keep users engaged with Phaver and encourage more users to use Phaver long-term. We are also working hard to launch tokens, which will be the next important milestone. Phaver will begin to reward people's contributions in a more specific way, which will help bring more users into the system. Overall, we now have a very comfortable runway to identify the best options for the future, so the team does not need to rush to make decisions or release tokens too quickly. We need to ensure that tokens are released in the right way and that all hardworking individuals receive fair rewards, which aligns with everyone's interests, whether for the Phaver team or the community we value most. We need to ensure that users who create effective content long-term receive fair benefits.

13. ChainCatcher: What are your expectations for the future development of Phaver, such as specific numerical growth targets?

Joonatan: We do not have any specific numerical targets because predicting these numbers for social media platforms is very difficult. It is possible that a KOL decides to promote on Twitter, and the platform's user base could increase 50 times overnight.

Therefore, we are not really looking for a specific growth target, but in any case, our current goal is to increase the audience by 1000 times to become a truly mainstream social media platform. Our goal is to continuously improve, stay ahead of everyone else, and ensure we become a leader in the industry, adopting all the most effective partnerships and integration solutions. Therefore, we hope to grow rapidly, but we also do not want to grow too fast, as that can also bring problems. Rapid growth can lead to details starting to collapse, and the user experience may no longer be as good.

14. ChainCatcher: Can you reveal some new features or updates that are in progress or about to be launched?

Joonatan: One of the new features Phaver will release this year is the long-awaited historical messaging feature, allowing users to send messages seamlessly within Phaver and other Lens Protocol protocols. Additionally, it will be compatible with direct messaging features in wallets. We believe that the direct messaging feature in Web3 must be interoperable, rather than implemented separately in each application.

Furthermore, another significant update we are researching is the community for token holders—Phaver will launch a new system where people can join communities based on the assets they hold in their wallets. For example, users holding specific series of NFTs can join the same interest community. We will also collaborate with major event ticket providers to allow those attending the same event and holding NFT tickets to start sharing their expectations before the event and stay in touch afterward. Similarly, artists who are about to release these series of works will also have some interesting experiences and be able to interact directly with fans on Phaver. Fans can also recommend each other through these NFT-based communities.