SocialFi issues & SubSocial's Potential

A look into SocialFi needs and issues & Its potential from the Subsocial’s point of view

Thus far, I’ve briefly mentioned about

⚪️Soulbound Tokens (SBT)

🔴Decentralized Identifier (DID)

🔵Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKp)

There are many areas in Web 3.0 where all these have to converge to overcome privacy and monetization-motivated problems.

One of them is;

⚫️SocialFi

Everyday, more than half of the world, spend more than 2h on social media.

We pay for these socials with our data and privacy.

Did you know, Google makes $200 from you each year?

Selling our data, Twitter makes %13 of its overall revenue while Meta does %97 from advertising?

These platforms are owned by a few people. Do you think that we choose:

• Who,

• When,

• What,

we can talk about?

By receiving our Data; They apply algorithms on us to optimize our engagements and activities.

So on the era of blockchain and cryptocurrency, what we say and do?

Let’s build a dApp, platform, ecosystem.

But things aren’t that easy as it sounds.

Our current socials are already powerful monopolies which dictate the innovation and leaving no space for competition for smaller.

These platforms provide UX and composability better than any Web 3.0 platform.

All our social network connect so strong within them, it feels like we just can’t take a leave anymore.

Because we don’t own our social graphs and data.

Without our data, we’re trapped in these socials.

Building SocialFi dapps, chains, giving back the ownership of data, decentralization, censorship resistance; these features only meet the social and financial needs of cryptonative people.

But then what to do?

I remember YungBeef from Subsocial once saying; How we can get Grandma on our social platform.

That’s the priority for me.

If I can’t experience a socialFi platform with intuitive user experience, all these web3.0 features won’t be enough unfortunately.

I don’t mean that Grandma should be targeted. It’s just an analogy for UX.

Of course, SocialFi should start from the needs of people willing to use decentralized socials and finance.

Therefore, it also requires a matured DeFi experience. Only combination of these can break monopolies.

I’m also aware that we’re at the very early phases of all these innovations, web 3.0. Trying to figure out what to do with all these decentralized products, tokens.

So instead of being over judgmental, I’m more on curious side about what all these can turn into.

For that, I m trying to experience these socialFi platforms on first hand. I post my contents on Subsocial here and share posts on Lensprotocol.

I observe their progress and lackings then usually deliver feedbacks.

What Subsocial do and what can be more by it?

Subsocial is a social networking platform built with Substrate pallets and a parachain on Dotsama.

Builders can build their social networks on top of it.

It provides open social graphs; as a creator, I do own my connections and content.

All the posts are minted as NFTs.

They try to upgrade and add features to solve the Grandma issue.

An idea of dApps paying for tx fees for users, so that they can monetize their dApps by ads and low subscription fees.

Also incentivizing users and dApps to burn Sub tokens for in-app Energy tokens.

By doing this; users don’t have to interact with the chain all the time. That also creates deflationary pressure on Sub token, itself.

We can assume that more parachains will be integrating w/ each other soon, thanks to XCM. In this sense, Oak Network can provide time-driven automated tx, payments and “subscription” services for dApps on Subsocial.

Subsocial also considers having options of both Web3 and Web2 sign-in options. What if Kilt Protocol steps in here and provides this Web2.5 email sign-in option and decentralized digital IDs.

By that users can also use their DIDs on other dApps and parachains. For more on Kilt, you can read my previous content about them by clicking on here.

Even more; utilizing Proxy accounts into Subsocial could be essential.

Being able to; sign tx on behalf of the main account and to customize the permissions of these proxy accounts.

E.g. permitting only making posts, not token transfers.

Maybe from Talisman, in near future?

Recently Subsocial announced their upcoming NFT collection, #SpacersNFT , by the artist

SKULLZ_XXX. These NFTs will provide VIP utilities for Subsocial users; such as,

•Free energy on Subsocial

•Increased visibility of posts

•Free .spacer Dotsama domain

#SpacersNFT ‘s more interesting features come with being built on RMRK‘s pioneer NFT 2.0 standards.

• Nested & Equippable -> customizing & being composable to other RMRK NFTs

• Multi-resource -> varying its output depending on the resource

By using RMRK tech, #SpacerNFT can turn into a DAO.

an NFT can be fractionalized into tokens.

a content creator can issue or sell these tokens to fans/followers. a fan can use the token on

ZeitgeistPM prediction market to bet on how many likes the next post will get.

Maybe in the future, we might see (SBT) non-transferable NFTs as equipped inside SpacerNFTs.

It can contain our reputation scores, contributions & activities. They won’t transfer even if we sell NFT they’re nested in.

By that, we can have some perks and benefits from other platform.

E.g. A Defi platform can give me better rates for my trades and stakings considering my reputation rating.

Time will tell how SocialFi will be shaped and turn into.

Subsocial‘s advantage is Polkadot ecosystem, thus being interoperable and composable with other parachains, dApps deployed on them.

So that leveraging the benefits of others without building everything from zero.

What do you think about SocialFi and Subsocial?

Do they have a chance to beat monopolies one day?