Social media reimagined our entire concept of friends and what it means to connect. Across a growing digital frontier of growing social networks, phrases like “friend me,” “follow me,” “like this,” and “share that” became parts of our everyday vernacular. As a result, they disrupted the way we share, create, debate, and earn via our online identity and content.
What could go wrong?
Like many once-novel sectors of technology, social media’s potential to enable long-lasting connections that empower users via their online identities — versus suffering manipulation because of it — has dwindled and outright failed. Among many other use cases that improve traditional systems (art, finance, real estate, etc.), web3’s token-powered protocols and decentralized social media’s growing landscape offer a drastically different approach to the conventional “social graph” — a representation of traditional social networks and how we connect online.
The Problem with Centralized Social Media
The current social network (and user data) landscape is dominated by a limited number of profit-driven, centralized corporations (Meta, Twitter, TikTok), whose primary focus is their own financial interests. As a result, these platforms often exploit user data, abruptly adjust revenue-sharing splits, and manipulate our content and online connections, on a massive scale to maximize revenue.
“Not that creators ever had much stability where revenue share deals are concerned: rates change quite frequently, depending on the wider macroeconomic environment at play,” wrote Digiday in a 2022 article on how much platforms pay creators. “The business model for platforms doesn’t necessarily allow creators to monetize the communities they built,” they continued.
While global social media use has grown yearly, with reports finding that over 4.62 billion people now use social media worldwide, creators still see disproportionate returns — $5.5 billion in 2022, according to certain reports — to the industry’s estimated $231.1 billion market value.
As social platforms’ value grows annually at an estimated rate of 19.4%, we must ask ourselves who benefits most when people spend more time scrolling on their smartphones.
Is it content creators, where a select few — 50, according to Forbes — in aggregate made over $570 million in 2021?
What about users who have become accustomed to "doom scrolling," shadowy algorithms, moderation, and sudden feature changes?
Let's not forget developers, who, at the center of tech's social media-driven wave of layoffs, are subject to mercurial CEOs whose arbitrary policies hinder innovation and the ability to create social products that users actually want.
From whatever angle you dissect the trends and data, it's clear that fundamental changes to how we architect and, later, utilize social networks are urgently needed.
The Power of Token-Powered Protocols
Blockchain technology and token-powered protocols provide countless innovations for improving social applications and the architecture of their networks. While traditional social products are typically monopolized and monetized to the specific framework of a given platform and its parent company (i.e. Meta's Instagram and Facebook), decentralized social allows users to own their digital identity and every social interaction that comes from it.
Decentralized social graphs offer self-sovereignty to users who can now own their data and content and build value into their connections through programmable, tokenized features. This content and social data, which is the backbone of our online identities, has historically been guarded by centralized platforms and their closed systems and arbitrary rules.
Due to the immutable and user-owned nature of token-powered social tools and identity standards, users have many more freedoms and protections across their online interactions. A major improvement powered by decentralized social is that users aren't locked into a single platform like in traditional social media; they can seamlessly travel across different networks with their social data, which can't be tampered with. This level of freedom to bring your audience and content with you across the internet is packed with value and opportunity.
At the same time, token-powered social protocols allow developers to easily configure customized executing logic for our many online social actions. This level of customization makes it possible for users to perform tailor-made on-chain actions to strengthen and build value with whom they interact daily online.
This level of opportunity has already led to a diverse, rapidly growing ecosystem of decentralized social platforms and use cases aligned with a collective vision: token-powered, decentralized social applications are more sustainable and valuable because they put the user and ecosystem first — not the platform.
CyberConnect’s Vision for Decentralized Social
As web3’s earliest and biggest decentralized social network, we’ve been growing our community and product ecosystem by utilizing the full potential of web3 technology and what it means for the future of friends, content, and community. We are proud to be the biggest platform for developers to build decentralized social networks where users can get the most out of their identities, content, connections, and monetization channels.
There are already over 50 web3 products aligned with our vision for the future of social, who are leveraging the power of our open network across various use cases.
Our current user numbers speak to the power of the growing decentralized social industry: as of May 2023, over 900,000 web3 users have minted a CyberProfile, our self-sovereign on-chain identity standard, completing over 10.2M transactions cumulatively across several blockchains.
Over 300,000 users actively use decentralized applications (dApps) built on our protocol every month, with our web3-native social network platform, Link3, at the top in user engagement.
Just a few of our 50+ ecosystem dApps building on CyberConnect
Following the public sale for our native token ($CYBER), which sold out in less than an hour, we want to share our most updated vision and purpose; a set of ideals and beliefs that will help drive the future of our network and help strengthen the collective mission of decentralized social as an industry and community.
- CyberConnect creates long-lasting on-chain connections through the power of its network. The power of web3 technology makes it possible to create a decentralized social network that truly belongs to users.
- CyberConnect enables developers to build innovative social applications where users own their identities and data while creators can grow their audiences in a fairer, more direct, and decentralized environment.
- CyberConnect envisions a world where we have ultimate control over our digital lives, and meaningful, long-lasting connections aren’t decided by centralized or biased tech.
- CyberConnect believes everyone should be able to take their identity wherever they go on the web. Attaching your identity to a web3 wallet or profile can establish a permanent record of your online presence, building trust and credibility across platforms.
- CyberConnect believes that verification on web2 has failed. Communities and dApps need to create their own verification and governance models that allow data to be composable, enabling users to discover and experience new trusted connections in a self-sovereign manner.
The result of our vision and our network’s north star?
CyberConnect is building a new future for social media and the internet, where on-chain friends last forever.
What’s Coming up at CyberConnect
In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll be sharing lots of fresh content and releasing some new products and updated features to further educate and engage the growing decentralized social community — from users to inspired dApp developers.
For more insight into what we’re building in decentralized social, read the recently published CyberConnect litepaper, a deep dive into the opportunities of decentralized social, our social graph and core components, tokenomics, and lots more.
It’s an incredibly exciting time to build products and pioneering new technologies across the growing decentralized social landscape — and the future is looking bright. We look forward to you being here with us for the journey as we help create more on-chain forever friends. See you soon.
— Team CyberConnect
About CyberConnect
CyberConnect is web3’s earliest and biggest decentralized social network that enables developers to create social applications empowering users to own their digital identity, content, connections, and monetization channels. Messari, 1inch, BNB Chain, along with over 2,000 projects, and 900k creators and users are building long-lasting connections through apps built on CyberConnect.