Post-Twitter Open Source Era: Rebuilding Federated Information Distribution Mechanisms, Public Goods Development Challenge Fund
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Post-Twitter Open Source Era: Rebuilding Federated Information Distribution Mechanisms, Public Goods Development Challenge Fund
Open source, open access, yet simultaneously "lossless"—can these be achieved together?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsTL;DR
Application link: https://tally.so/r/meMVZk
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Total grant budget: $50K. The Main Grant is sponsored by Web3MQ, with a maximum of $15K per project in the first round;
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This round's development theme focuses on open-source information distribution mechanisms (Main Grant);
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Relation, Dataverse, and MoveFuns DAO have each set up individual Grants for this round—developers may apply to multiple Grants simultaneously.
Programming for Centralized Interests: Information Distribution on Twitter
On the last day of March, Musk fulfilled his promise and publicly released parts of Twitter’s algorithm. Just as many Web3 companies claim to be “gradually decentralizing,” Twitter’s move represents a form of “gradual open-sourcing.” This initial release is limited to the "For You" feed—the recommendation algorithm that determines which content appears in users’ timelines—while search algorithms remain closed. Twitter claims, “Openness is part of our DNA,” but as a centralized giant only partially opening its code, this early release inevitably offers yet another case study in centralization. Within the disclosed recommendation algorithm, observers have identified clear traces of non-neutral bias—evidence of “programming for centralized interests” driven by political and personal agendas.
Twitter’s recommendation system consists of three components:
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Candidate sourcing: selecting the best tweets from various sources for recommendations;
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Ranking: using machine learning models to rank each tweet;
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Downranking: filtering out 1) tweets from blocked accounts, 2) NSFW content, and 3) tweets already seen by the user.
Once the rules are revealed, it becomes easy to see how different actors are weighted within this system: NPCs; Admins; power users and regular users. But this world does not exist independently from reality—it also mirrors real-world political affiliations. Such content distribution mechanisms are no secret; Twitter is simply the first to be honest about it. The free internet has never been fully free.
Federated Information Distribution: Seeing Is Freedom
Attempts to deconstruct Twitter’s dominance have never truly ceased. Mastodon and its underlying protocol ActivityPub represent one such effort. However, due to the high barriers in information distribution and content recommendation algorithms, Mastodon has failed to develop a resilient, self-regulating distribution mechanism. Instead, it relies mostly on a single dimension—chronology—to deliver content uniformly and equally. While Mastodon’s federated model has somewhat alleviated the pressure imposed by centralized behemoths on online social interaction, the growing number of instances brings increasing interaction burdens, network performance strain, and server costs to individual nodes—eventually creating a centripetal resistance against decentralization. Mastodon and similar platforms are sometimes jokingly called “refugee shelters for Twitter exiles,” a nickname that also hints at their incompleteness and imperfection—a compromised, lossy version of Twitter resulting from trade-offs between centralization and distribution mechanisms.
Can we achieve openness, true openness, without compromise? With Twitter’s recent algorithm release, the barrier for Web3 communities to build genuinely federated social services has dropped significantly. Seeing is freedom—every developer and reader is naturally a participant in the federated information distribution network. Every act of distribution is a value judgment. Only when the information distribution mechanism itself is just can Web3 become a true value-based internet. The closed nature of ChatGPT is dangerous—once the AI distribution black box closes, it may never reopen. In contrast, Twitter’s effort to open its recommendation algorithm has reignited our confidence in building deeper public goods flywheels.
Public Goods Development Grant: Centered on Reach Networks
We issue this call: center your work around open, usable public-layer products, and in this development challenge, help build a truly user-owned, federated information distribution system.
Since Web3’s inception, DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and other on-chain and off-chain applications have showcased numerous use cases. Yet its strong financial orientation means this ecosystem remains largely controlled by speculative and capital-driven developers and operators. We talk about open source, decentralization, and equal value—but just as the internet is truly used by people, not code, only real users can ultimately benefit from these new concepts. Social interaction, long overlooked and dismissed as a pseudo-problem, is in fact the scenario where users spend the most time and engage most closely with their daily lives. Viewing Web3 social through an “asset-centric” lens will indeed reveal contradictions; but through a value-driven (and fundamentally user-driven) lens, we see a wealth of unresolved challenges waiting to be addressed. If Web3 positions itself as the “next-generation internet,” it cannot bypass people and users themselves. At this bottleneck stage during a prolonged bear market, we hope this initiative—starting with content distribution—will catalyze a shift from asset-centric to user-centric Web3, i.e., a Web3 centered on “reach networks,” enabling authentic, value-driven engagement with real users.
As an open-source, Web3-native communication infrastructure, Web3MQ is an essential component of Web3’s three public layers—decentralized computing, communication, and storage. Throughout the transition from asset-centric to user-centric models, Web3MQ has consistently aimed to deliver tangible value to end users. Web3MQ is preparing to launch its incentivized testnet, encouraging everyone to operate nodes, enhance the decentralization of the communication network, and earn corresponding rewards (Node Application Form).
Web3MQ, together with Relation, Dataverse, MoveFuns DAO, BuidlerDAO, Moonshot Commons, Mask Network, Social Layer, 706 Community, LXDAO, PermaDAO, bfrenz, SoCity DAO, and WhaleDAO, has established a Public Goods Developer Challenge Fund. The fund will organize multiple themed Grant rounds. This round focuses on information distribution mechanisms and is not limited to Web3-specific products. Against the backdrop of Twitter’s open-sourcing, the following development themes are proposed:
1) Build new information distribution mechanisms based on Twitter’s open-sourced recommendation algorithm;
2) Explore novel content distribution or curation approaches powered by AI;
3) Develop new open-source push notification mechanisms as alternative user reach networks.
In addition to developers, content creators, researchers, and practitioners interested in DeSoc and public goods discussions are welcome to join the Social-Infra-Insights Notion page.
Application Deadline: May 17
Application Link: https://tally.so/r/meMVZk
Application Interest Group:
*If QR code expires, please add staff WeChat iAzr2017 to request group access.
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