This has been a series of trending storylines across major social media outlets lately. When it comes to crypto news and discussion, all eyes are on social. Announcements are often made via social channels like Twitter, project community building — whether it’s DeFi or NFTs, or anywhere in between — often happens on social channels like Discord or Telegram, and crypto protocols and projects often leverage other platforms to engage with the public, now more than ever.

As social media takes the spotlight, the door may be open for new players to enter the space; indeed, aside from TikTok, no single social platform has really made a splash in recent years. Many have tried, few have succeeded, and the latest entrant into the space is the decentralized social media protocol.

Current Climate: Pulse Check

The social media conversation really has to start with Twitter: it has become the cultural hub of cryptocurrency, often the source of the first news and the center for some of the biggest names in the space to speak out around current events. The infamous Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao have engaged in heated back-and-forth conversations on the platform; it’s easy to say Twitter is the de facto hub of the broader crypto community.

However, the fallout surrounding Twitter, which has been subject to mixed reviews and comments recently under Elon Musk’s brief stewardship, is huge and far-reaching. Yes, even the impact on Dogecoin is controversial. Beyond Twitter, opinions vary on the extent to which social media is a “public square,” battling against the ideals expected of publicly (and in this case, even privately owned) platforms.

While we’ve seen Facebook dabble in exploratory blockchain-related projects over the past few days with limited success, Reddit is another oft-cited social media platform integrating its crypto roots. Reddit has joined Polygon for white-label NFT avatars and has historically used Ethereum as a channel reward point in the r/cryptocurrency sub-Reddit.

Meanwhile, other traditional social platforms in general are generally doing business as usual — after FTX, there have been no major changes in the blockchain space for social companies. However, there are increasingly decentralized social media protocols. Is the post-“tokenize everything” era about…decentralizing everything?

Ethereum (ETH) powers the long-standing blockchain social media network Minds. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

Decentralized players join the fray

The discussion around the current social media landscape has opened the door for a number of “decentralized social media platforms” to join the fray. These include companies like Mastodon and Console, which have established themselves as early movers and shakers, and perhaps attempts at a “new wave” of social media.

Mastodon has largely become one of the more frequently mentioned players, but reviews are generally mixed, with complaints focusing on the platform’s UI and UX. The decentralized aspect in this case is particularly unique to Mastodon, as it does not involve a blockchain, but rather a self-hosted network of independently run nodes.

Among the blockchain-related finalists, Minds is a platform created many years ago. With its ERC-20 reward token and over 6 million members, it largely holds the title of the most famous blockchain-built decentralized social media platform. However, it seems to be Mastodon that has captured the lion’s share of new users during Twitter’s recent bumpy ride, with a nearly 10x increase in users over the past 90 days.

Meanwhile, new competitors aren’t shying away from getting involved; the aforementioned Console is a newer decentralized social media channel created by David Leiberman, co-founder and former CEO of Triller, and Chris Castig, a Columbia Web3 professor. Console recently launched a beta version of the platform, focusing on a “group chat”-first approach, with plans to release a mobile app in early 2023.

However, when it comes to decentralized social, not everyone is as enthusiastic about where things are headed. In a 2017 Wired Op-Ed article, three members of the MIT Media Lab speculated that decentralizing social media would face huge resistance and would “never work.” The article cited a variety of reasoning, some of which were broader, such as high barriers to entry from network effects (a reasonable argument, though not limited to blockchain-related social networks, but just new social media platforms as a whole — certainly not insurmountable), and some of which were more precise (such as the difficulty of managing private keys, an area with major growth potential in the space).

There is no way around it, we are still in an ongoing cycle of social experimentation as we learn what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to all things social.