Missed the opportunity to invest in traditional social media? Here's a guide to understanding the rising Web3 social landscape
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Missed the opportunity to invest in traditional social media? Here's a guide to understanding the rising Web3 social landscape
The Web3 social sector is beginning to rise, attracting major venture capital investments and could become the catalyst for cryptocurrency reaching 1 billion users globally!
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights
Author: Corbin Page
Translated by: TechFlow intern
The Web3 social space is beginning to rise, attracting major venture capital investments and could become the catalyst for cryptocurrency reaching 1 billion users globally! Let's dive in.
Traditional social media (TradSo) is more vulnerable than ever due to slowing growth, censorship and deplatforming controversies, Apple’s attacks on ad businesses, commoditization of user experience/technology, and declining trust in feed algorithms.
Web3 Social offers an alternative:
-
Better user privacy;
-
Data portability;
-
User-owned content and monetization;
-
Fun Web3 experiences (NFTs / DeFi);
-
Neutrality—anyone can publish on it;
-
BYO-algorithm (Bring Your Own Algorithm);
There are over 30 projects exploring these Twitter/WhatsApp/Discord killers built on blockchain, NFTs, DeFi, and decentralized storage. Top protocols include Farcaster, Lens, XMTP, Ceramic, and Deso.
Social and messaging apps are the most widely used applications in the world, so progress in this area will solidify crypto’s role as the financial and property rights layer of the internet—akin to http or tcp/ip.
Among them, my two favorite projects are Farcaster and Lens. Of all the Web3 products I’ve seen, Farcaster strikes the best balance between product, community, and protocol. Lens is different—it’s a composable on-chain social graph built by experienced founders and a passionate community.
But it’s still early. It’s unclear which Web3 features truly offer mainstream users a better experience than TradSo, wallet UX remains poor, and accessing different blockchains still involves significant complexity and risk.
Facebook, Discord, and others still enjoy strong network effects and highly mature products, while Web3 alternatives have yet to make meaningful strides in these areas.
As a Web3 community, we need to figure out better wallet user experiences (possibly hybrid or semi-custodial models), and even determine which blockchains are best suited for these use cases! L2s, Rollups, newer chains like Solana/Aptos, Filecoin vs Arweave, and more. Let’s all give them a try!
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
