Recently, Web3 social has become a hot topic, and many projects have launched the concept of decentralized social. But is there really a demand and foundation for decentralized social? If we examine successful social products, the three most critical elements - high-quality content, a large number of active users, and effective long-term incentive mechanisms - are difficult to achieve in current Web3 social projects.
Where are the high-quality and rich content producers?#
In terms of content richness, platforms like Twitter generate 500 million tweets daily, which Web3 projects are far behind. Magic Eden on Solana has only 12,000 users, and Farcaster has only about 1,000 posts per day. The user base is also a weak point for Web3 social, with almost all projects having active users below 100,000, far less than Web2 social products.
Where are the large number of active and interactive users?#
Currently, the largest Web3 social platform, Steem, has been hovering around 10,000 daily active users for the past three years, and its content production and quality are also difficult to compare with centralized social products. Minds is another well-known decentralized social network, which reached 500,000 registered users at the end of 2018, but the number of daily active users is below 10,000, and the frequency of user interaction and content sharing is far less than Twitter, etc.
Where is the long-term incentive, not just a short-term drive?#
Long-term incentive is also a key issue. Most Web3 social projects incentivize users to create and interact through tokens, but this short-term behavior-driven approach is difficult to form long-term social habits. Recast has a daily post activity of only 0.3%, and Farcast is even lower at 0.03%, indicating that token incentives are difficult to be long-lasting. More importantly, the incentive mechanisms of these projects, such as rewarding and token incentives for users to produce high-quality content and frequent interaction, are not ideal. This is because token prices are volatile, and users value platform attention and influence rather than short-term small token earnings.
Reality vs. Ideal#
In summary, Web3 social is still an area where the concept is greater than the practice. It lacks content richness, a large-scale user base, and long-term incentive mechanisms, which are the three cornerstones of social. If Web3 social wants to truly land, it needs to find its own positioning - to meet the real needs of users rather than hype concepts. Content producers, user scale, and incentive mechanisms are still the three elements that it needs to address, which requires deep innovation in decentralized technology in social scenarios. Currently, it still has a long way to go. Overall, the concept of Web3 social seems to be greater than reality, and it needs more practice and exploration to become mainstream.