Is Web3 social networking the next trend or a false proposition?

Author: NingNing, independent researcher

Source: X, @0xNing0x

Web3 social networking has always been regarded as one of the most likely breakthroughs for the large-scale adoption of web3. This is because social networking is a large market covering billions of people and has penetrated into every aspect of modern people’s daily lives.

The social graph owned by an individual is not only an important asset of the individual, but also an integral part of the individual self to some extent.

But the paradox is that under the rules of traditional social networks, social network platforms own individual social assets and part of themselves.

This unlimited expansion of the power boundaries of social networks has aroused the vigilance and counterattack of some right-wing intellectuals and conscientious politicians.

But to really change this situation, we cannot rely on papers published in academic journals and proposals in parliament, but must rely on a technological paradigm revolution.

The Web3 social protocol carries the mission of returning the sovereignty of individual social assets and ensuring the integrity of personal freedom.

Although in the Web2 era, there are social platforms such as Mastodon trying to use distributed architecture to do the same thing, but without the value confirmation, permissionless, censorship resistance, and blockchain support of encrypted assets and blockchain, Features such as the free transfer of social assets and social graphs are impossible to talk about.

But to this day, neither the ancient Steemit nor the recent Farcaster, Lens Protocol, Cyber ​​Connect, Nostr and other Web3 social protocols have yet found PMF (product market fit), and only serve A niche long-tail social user group mainly composed of crypto asset players.

There are two main reasons for this phenomenon:

--The powerful network effect of Web2 social giants makes it twice as difficult to acquire Web3 social customers, even if it is popular for a short period of time. Soon there was silence, like Damus.

--One fact that needs to be acknowledged is that the whole life cycle value of DeFi users > Web3 game users > Web3 social users. Under the same customer acquisition cost, capital and developers prefer to invest resources in the full life cycle of high users. Lifetime value track.

But after a long period of silence, as we enter a new innovation cycle in 24 years, the Web3 social track "Jingjisido" began to sprout some new gadgets and cool things, giving the Web3 social protocol some New possibilities and design spaces.

For example, Farcaster's web3 applet Frame.

What’s even cooler is that the Web3 protocol naturally supports giving AI Agents independent property rights and independent social graphs, which will open up a larger space for imagination than the current LLM (large language model) such as Chatgpt and Copilot.

Mask Network, which is deeply involved in the Web3 social track, has chosen to raise the second phase of its Web3 social investment fund Bonfire Union at this time to provide resources and capital support for the Web3 social protocol to swallow up the Web2 social platform in the future. , it can be said to be just the right time.

As for Mask Network itself, after going through the plug-in period and investment period, it is now entering the Firefly period. Firefly is an aggregation on-chain social product created by Mask Network.

Mask Network attempts to copy Tencent's successful path and build a multi-level, richly granular Web3 social ecosystem by investing in high-quality protocols/products + aggregation functional products in the Web3 track.

In short, although Web3 social networking is in a period of time where "no one cares" in both the primary market and the secondary market, new technological revolutions such as AI, quantum computing, and nuclear fusion will bring great benefits to Web3 social networking. New possibilities.

Productivity determines production relations, which is a verifiable scientific law.