Ever since Friendtech was launched last year, the development of social track projects has been accelerating. We firmly believe that in the coming months, we will see a number of groundbreaking social applications being released.
Amidst the excitement, we also want to introduce these projects to you. So, for those interested in the social track, do not miss today’s article.
What is SocialFi?
SocialFi connects encrypted users through social protocols, often accompanied by financial incentives and speculative behavior, hence the term “SocialFi.”
Current SocialFi projects are mainly categorized as follows:
Financial-driven
Utility-driven
Infrastructure
Financial-driven
Friendtech is a social trading protocol that allows creators to monetize content and earn fee splits. It is a key example of viral propagation achieved through GTM (Go-To-Market) strategies such as points, bond curves, and referral mechanisms, as well as user retention strategies.
Fantasy on Blast adopts a similar concept but introduces gamification elements through cards and tournaments. Both protocols have been very successful in the early stages, generating revenue that surpasses most protocols. However, these protocols also come with some trade-offs:
As user numbers increase, the barrier to entry rises rapidly.
Users focus too much on airdrops to recover initial capital.
Sustainability of incentives
Therefore, although this strategy is very beneficial for project launches, we have yet to see its sustainability in terms of growth.
Utility-driven
Utility-driven protocols typically offer stronger playability, with low user entry barriers and minimal initial investment. In addition to crypto-related use cases like paid chats and authentication, we are more excited about protocols challenging traditional platforms.
Infomon aims to decentralize algorithms through a gamified experience where users can train their own algorithms by feeding tweets to AI pets. This provides better content for each user, boosts the influence of individual creators, and reduces noise.
Combining traditional social elements with on-chain data presented in the form of social feeds, 0xppl is redefining “social” for crypto natives. 0xppl improves the readability and identifiability of on-chain operations, something previously unattainable.
Infrastructure
Social networks like Farcaster and Lens have laid the foundation for this field’s development. Farcaster’s Frames, launched in February this year, caused a storm in the crypto Twitter community, leading to enhanced use cases and builders in the ecosystem.
With the increase in social network numbers, interoperability becomes crucial. Developers can achieve this goal using Tako’s SDK, which remains neutral towards social networks and provides content curation/monetization APIs. Jamfrens is using Tako to build protocols.
In conclusion, we believe the following factors will be crucial for future social protocols:
Sustainable incentive measures
Strong utility
Interoperability
We are very excited about the future of crypto social and will continue to closely monitor and invest in this track!
