Original title: "Will Twitter move towards Web3? An overview of decentralized social media in the Polkadot ecosystem" "An overview of Polkadot's decentralized social projects (2): ComingChat, Relation, Litentry, PNS and Cogency"
Source: PolkaWorld
Social interaction is an important area that Web3 may improve, and blockchain technology may help the Internet return to its original purpose.
Musk recently completed the acquisition of Twitter and tweeted that he would set Twitter, the "little bird," free. In a chat with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Musk clearly expressed his intention to use blockchain technology for Twitter. All of this seems to imply that Twitter, a social media giant with more than 200 million daily active users, may become more decentralized in the future.
Decentralized social media is not a new concept. As early as 2019, Twitter announced that it would fund the development of decentralized social media standards, and the project later ran independently as Bluesky. Bluesky launched a social protocol called "AT Protocol", and the decentralized social application Bluesky App based on this protocol will be launched soon.
Why do we need to decentralize social media?
Disadvantages of centralized social media
Today’s social platforms are far from the original intention of the Internet.
The 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace reads: “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere can express their beliefs, no matter how strange, without fear of being silenced or forced into conformity… We will create a civilization of the mind on the Internet. Hopefully, it will be more humane and more just than the world your governments have created.”
However, today's cyberspace is disappointing - a few centralized giants have almost monopolized social networks, and platforms have become data islands; platforms unilaterally control traffic and recommendation algorithms, and make profits by accurately pushing advertisements to users; user data is stored in centralized clouds, and data leaks continue to occur...
The vision of decentralized social media
Decentralized social networking is also an important part of the Web3 movement. If BTC brings monetary freedom, DeFi brings financial freedom, and NFT brings artistic and cultural freedom, then decentralized social platforms may bring us freedom to communicate, discuss, and express ourselves.
Decentralized social networks are user-centric rather than platform-centric. Users should be able to control their own content and data and be free to choose service providers.
Decentralized social media should be a protocol, not a company. For example, Email is a protocol. You can use Gmail and your friend uses QQ. Although you use different user interfaces, you can still easily send messages to each other.
Similarly, decentralized social networks are built on the blockchain, and the shared social graphs of users can be stored in decentralized storage systems such as Filecoin and Arwave. On top of these common infrastructures, many different user interfaces or apps can be built, and different apps can communicate with each other, just like email.
Project Liberty, a decentralized social network in the Dostama ecosystem
In May of this year, Project Liberty announced that it would work with Parity to develop a Layer 1 parachain as the first large-scale implementation of its decentralized social network protocol "DSNP".
Project Liberty is a comprehensive project that aims to promote decentralized social networking and create a fairer Internet. It includes technology, governance, and activities such as the media and cultural organization "Unfinished" and the Decentralized Social Network Protocol (DSNP). DSNP is an open source protocol that will build a shared social graph so that social networks no longer rely on a certain application or centralized platform.
Every social media relies on the social graph, which is essential for communications such as likes, comments, reposts, private messages, etc. In traditional social media, the social graph is controlled by each platform and is the core asset that the platform relies on to monetize through advertising.
Project Liberty believes that a public social graph that is completely free from financial incentives is an important infrastructure for decentralized social networks, and DSNP is working towards this goal. DSNP is built on TCP/IP and HTTPS to promote a secure, open source, universally accessible social graph that is independent of any financial incentives, decoupling financial incentives from the core protocol.
As an open source public protocol, DSNP hopes to focus its functions as much as possible and only implement the most core functions for liberating social graphs. Other functions, such as content review, management, and display, are best solved outside the protocol, such as through services and applications at a higher position in the technology stack, and most of these activities should be carried out off-chain.
On September 20, the social network "MeWe" announced the integration of DSNP as the infrastructure of its decentralized social network. MeWe has 20 million users worldwide and 600,000 user-driven interest groups. MeWe has always emphasized user privacy and is committed to allowing users to control their own data and social experience, rather than the platform to manipulate or exaggerate content. MeWe plans to allow its users to transition to a decentralized system starting in 2023, and integrating DSNP is a step towards this goal.
Subsocial
Subsocial is a decentralized social network protocol built on Polkadot and IPFS. Earlier this year, Subsocial successfully won the 16th slot auction of Kusama and became a Kusama parachain.
The Subsocial protocol is a set of Substrate modules and a website front-end that users can use to create their own decentralized, censorship-resistant social networks (spaces). Therefore, Subsocial itself is not a social media like Twitter, but a platform for creating social media, and multiple different social networks can run on Subsocial.
As mentioned earlier, advertising is the most common way to monetize on centralized social platforms. The platform grabs most of the profits and only shares a small portion of the profits with the creators. Subsocial uses blockchain technology to achieve social finance "SoFi", providing content creators with a variety of monetization methods with "Web3 characteristics".
Rewards: Posts, spaces and comments can all be rewarded. The reward amount will go directly into the creator's account, and there is no need to share the profits with the platform.
Subscription: Paid subscription
Sell/rent content: Creators own the content and can sell or rent the content they create as NFT to other spaces
Social token: Each space can have its own social token, allowing fans to jointly own the space and participate in the governance of the space
In Web2 social platforms, users do not own the platforms. In Subsocial, space creators can own their own spaces. Each space is like a DAO and can also have its own treasury. Users who own social tokens can decide the development direction of the space and share the advertising revenue of the space.
Subsocial also gives each space the power to review content. Subsocial does not review or block content at the chain level, but each space can specify its own content rules and review content according to its needs. The community can elect reviewers to delete certain content involving fraud and harmful information, or jointly decide how to block content that the community does not welcome.
Currently, apps built on the Subsocial protocol include the eponymous Subsocial social network app, decentralized identity SubID, and.
Sumi
Sumi is a wallet-to-wallet communication system based on Substrate, a bit like the Web3 version of Email, which means it will be more secure and decentralized.
Sumi allows communication between any two blockchain digital wallets. The initial version will support wallets in the Dotsama ecosystem, and will soon support wallet address types in the Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana ecosystems.
Decentralized social project ComingChat
ComingChat is a Web3 portal application based on SocialFi, and has DeFi and GameFi functions. The social part includes CID as an account system, a full-chain wallet as a payment tool, and social functions such as encrypted communication.
ComingChat CID and wallet support multiple assets in the Dotsama ecosystem. ComingChat's underlying chain OmniBTC is created based on Substrate and plans to bid for the Polkadot parachain.
Decentralized Identity CID
CID is short for ComingChat ID, which is a verifiable identity in Web3.0. CID consists of 1 to 12 digits, which is easy to read and remember compared to ordinary long blockchain addresses. CID is decentralized, its creation process does not require permission, and does not disclose any personal information.
CID can be used as a chat account and a token payment account. You can transfer money directly to friends in the chat interface. CID can also be used as a login credential. Each CID account is associated with at least one pair of public and private keys. Other dApps can sign login operations with the private key associated with CID. CID also aggregates the past behavior of user addresses in multiple ecosystems to evaluate the user's full-chain reputation.
Full chain wallet
ComingChat's full-chain wallet supports multiple ecosystems, such as EVM chains such as Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon; BTC-like chains such as BTC and Dogecoin; Substrate chains such as Polkadot, Kusama, and ChainX; Move public chains such as Aptos/Sui; and Cosmos ecosystem and Solana ecosystem.
For BTC/Dogecoin, ComingChat also launched the Taproot threshold wallet, which is more secure than general multi-signature wallets.
Social Module
ComingChat provides secure encrypted instant messaging. Chats are divided into private chats, encrypted group chats, and non-encrypted group chats. Both private chats and encrypted group chats use the Signal encrypted communication protocol, and no third party, including the server, can view the content of the communication.
Users can send Web3 red envelopes to group members in ComingChat group chats, which supports the issuance and collection of full-chain tokens, and no gas fees are required to receive red envelopes.
Users can also establish NFT DAO in ComingChat, and multiple people can form a team to purchase NFTs. Members will receive corresponding NFT fragments according to their contribution ratio.
Relation
Relation is a decentralized social graph. A social graph database is deployed on Substrate Pallet, which supports identity binding on Polkadot, Ethereum, BSC, and Dfinity chains.
A social graph is a graph that shows the relationships between people and things. It reflects the people that users know and connect with through various channels, as well as the things they follow and track. It is a map that connects people to different things. In Web2, several social media giants monopolize users' social graphs and monetize them through advertising. Decentralized social graphs are committed to allowing users to control their own social graph data.
Relation’s social application product Relation One can manage personal homepages and personal social relationship data, obtain friend matches, interest recommendations, and automatically join the on-chain NFT Club.
When users add multi-chain addresses on Relation One through MetaMask, Polkadot wallet, etc., they will quickly locate their exclusive Web3 personality tags. The system will accurately match users with on-chain friends and enthusiasts with similar interests to form a visual Web3 social graph centered on individuals and build a Web3 friend relationship network.
Users can also use Relation One for social functions such as profile management, on-chain identity management, P2P chat, group chat, DAO, NFT avatar display, friend invitations, and private game rankings.
Polkadot Name Service
Polkadot Name Service (PNS for short) is the Polkadot ecosystem domain name service and a decentralized identity (DID) infrastructure.
The addresses in the blockchain are composed of multiple randomly combined characters, which literally do not mean anything. PNS provides universal domain names with the suffix ".dot" to replace long addresses that are difficult to read and remember, thereby establishing a unique digital identity for Web3 users and improving the interactive experience in social, gaming, DAO, governance, etc.
For example, when using dApp, you can use a more readable and memorable PNS domain name instead of a long address to interact. You can also show your own Web3 business card, which includes your activities in the multi-chain ecosystem and off-chain, so that others can know who you are and what you have done.
PNS can also aggregate multi-chain identities, present fragmented on-chain identities in the same place, and integrate on-chain and off-chain information to connect Web2 and Web3.
Litentry
Litentry is a decentralized cross-chain identity aggregation protocol for the Polkadot ecosystem and one of the Polkadot parachains.
Litentry supports linking user identities across multiple networks. Users can manage their identities through the security tools it provides, and Dapps can obtain real-time DID data of identity owners across different blockchains. Litentry will also build a reputation computing infrastructure, aggregate data from multiple data platforms, and calculate credit scores based on custom weighted algorithms.
IdentityHub, a product based on Litentry, provides automated blockchain and social media account authentication, allowing users to connect their Web2 and Web3 accounts and wallet addresses and manage them in one place.
Cogency
Cogency aims to explore the use of Web3 technology to help media organizations and content producers build trust and create new sources of revenue. Congency is funded by the Web3 Foundation. For the future of media, decentralization, interoperability, and openness will allow third parties to more easily integrate themselves into the evolving metaverse, which will allow more companies to access and create new business models.
Cogency unites a broad and diverse range of publishers, technology experts and content creators, from local newspapers to international news, current affairs and lifestyle brands. The Cogency Alliance includes world-renowned media companies and organizations such as Reuters, Condé Nast (owner of brands such as Vogue and The New Yorker), and the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Postscript
The decentralized social ecosystem in Polkadot has begun to take shape, with important components ranging from decentralized social protocols, social graph protocols, decentralized identities, to applications such as communication tools and social products.
As more parachains and applications are launched, through the cross-chain composability provided by XCM, social products can make full use of the advantages of other projects in the ecosystem, such as decentralized storage, NFT, privacy, DeFi, etc., and quickly implement newer applications.