Web3.0 Social Network Is Coming

Original Author: https://twitter.com/chendatony31

“What will the Web 3.0 social network look like? let’s discuss it”

What is Web3.0?

Before talking about Web3.0 social networks, we must reach a consensus first, that is, what is Web3.0?

This comparison chart some time ago demonstrated the core features of Web 3.0 more clearly: decentralization.

To be precise, the above picture represents the change of the login method from Web1.0 to Web3.0. With the help of zero-knowledge proof, we only need to use the private key to sign a string to prove that I am the owner of this address for the Web3.0 application. It is no longer necessary to perform cumbersome registration, password setting, login verification and other processes for each application. The decentralization of account login means that my account information no longer belongs to some companies, but only to me.

In addition to account login, the cooler thing about Web3.0 is that more and more assets are starting to be decentralized. The NFT world has been especially crazy in the past year. Big Internet companies, traditional enterprises, and celebrities from all walks of life at home and abroad are all involved. The decentralization of assets will bring huge changes to many industries. At present, the integration is relatively deep in finance, games, art industries, and so on. It can be said that the entire Web3.0 industry currently revolves around assets. I believe this will be the case in the next few decades, and I won’t go into details here.

02

What will the social network for Web 3.0 look like?

To make Web3.0 + social clear, we have to talk about the current social pain points: from Qzone, Renren to Weibo, WeChat and Twitter. We lose a lot of old friend connections and great memories of those years each time we go through an iteration of a social product. The crux of the matter is that our data and information disappear as the product goes offline. Therefore, the problem to be solved by Web3.0 social network is actually the problem of data and information ownership, that is, decentralization (stick to the point).

In this way, the social prototype of Web3.0 is very clear with blockchain technology: it is a social product in which personal information, friend relationships and even most content are stored in a decentralized ledger. The applications based on Web3.0 can easily access this information. For example, you can see your friends on WeChat in World of Warcraft, and you can also know whose music NFT Jay Chou bought recently. Another example is, in the movie “Ready Player One”, the male protagonist and their friends can keep friendship in different scenes. So Web3.0 social network will also be a social network in the future Metaverse :), maybe you think this information is so public that there is no privacy at all? There is also a very good solution in Web3.0, that is multiple accounts, and different accounts can have different circles and identities. This is very painful in the era of Web2.0 and may require switching identities in multiple mobile phone numbers and mailboxes, but in Web3.0, it is just a matter of double-clicking the web3 wallet.

So far, the social product for Web3.0 has actually been spoken clearly.

Below is some more in-depth content, including a comparison of some existing Web3 social products and some of my more detailed predictions for the future of Web3 social network.

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Simple comparison of existing Web3.0 social products

We have discussed what the Web3.0 social network would do, and what remains to be solved is how and where the data is stored. We first divide these data into three categories: personal information (Profile), friend relationship (Network) and Content. See how these products deal with them.

Personal information: Mainly includes avatar, nickname and other related information. ENS, DAS, 5Degrees, RSS, Debank and other Web3.0 social products all involve such information.

I. In terms of product form, the IDs of ENS, DAS, Lens, RSS and Debank are uniquely associated with addresses in the entire network, similar to domain names. 5Degrees is more like setting a nickname for an address that can be modified at any time.

II. As for storage methods, ENS is on the Ethereum chain, DAS is based on the CKB chain, Lens is on Polygon, RSS and Debank currently are relatively centralized, but it is expected to have its own public chain/side chain in the future, and 5Degrees is on multiple chains. In any case, I think everyone’s idea is to choose on-chain, because this part of data will not be very large.

B. Friend relationship: Currently 5Degrees, RSS3, Lens, Debank, Cyberconnect, Monaco, and other products have friend relationships. Among them, only 5Degrees and Lens are fully on-chain for now. The overall design of Lens is relatively flexible and can be upgraded to choose different follow logics. 5Degrees is relatively simple. Through the ERC1155 protocol, following an address is equivalent to minting a token with this address as ID. To find whom the user has followed, it only needs to index the NFT of which IDs he holds under the 5Degrees contract.

C. The content can also be divided into several parts: one is the on-chain content generated by the user’s behavior on the chain, another is content stored on IPFS, such as the articles in Mirror, and the other is to aggregate Web2 content by connecting existing social products. In this part, RSS3 pays more attention to integrating information from various sources. Lens associates the content on chains through NFT. Monaco may be more like a Web2.0 product, but add some NFT content through address login.

Of course, the social products for Web3.0 are far more than these, but I have only used them. The direction, implementation and focus of each product maybe different, but everyone has the same goal.

04

Some mind-blowing little predictions about social network

1. Due to the openness of data, social giant products like WeChat, Facebook, and Twitter may not appear, but there may appear a widely adopted protocol. You can pay attention to 5Degrees, lol.

2. Social behavior and content will be more decentralized and more focused. Small products can easily add social elements, and aggregated products can also collect information from many sources.

3. Big data knows you better! At that time, it would be very convenient for blind dating and finding job.

https://5degrees.io/ focuses on on-chain identity and social relationships. If you want to know more, you can leave a message and I will write it separately later.