Looking at Web3 social from Farcaster, Lens, Friend.tech and Focus

Author: Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital; Translation: 0xjs@金财经

Introduction

Pantera has always been excited about how web3 can unlock new methods for social platforms. Enables users to connect and interact with creators, KOLs and other users.

Decentralized social protocol Farcaster surged in popularity last month after launching Frames, a feature that allows developers to create interactive, embeddable posts for their audiences. Soon, users were minting NFTs, earning rewards for completing surveys, playing Doom, and even purchasing Girl Scout cookies directly through Farcaster’s flagship client, Warpcast.  

This seamless in-app experience has not been possible before through traditional web2 social media platforms. Identity, ownership, tokens and payments – these are the capabilities of blockchain that enable Frames to create new social functions.

In this article, we will look at different social protocols and platforms, focusing on how they use the building blocks of web3 to build new experiences.  

Farcaster and Lens

In web2, data is isolated and controlled by the platform itself. This means developers cannot create alternative platforms that present content in new ways. X (formerly Twitter) limits users to its platform and fails to provide flexibility for an interface that uses different algorithms. Additionally, users do not own their own accounts - if they are banned, they lose audience reach and the ability to post to that account.

Farcaster and Lens are two popular social protocols with unique approaches: they expose data and let users control their accounts. Farcaster stores its publishing data on a decentralized storage network called Hubs, so it is accessible to everyone. Additionally, Farcaster profiles are linked to users’ Ethereum accounts on the Optimism platform, ensuring users truly own their digital identity.

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Lens is an on-chain social graph and developer tool that enables users to own their own content. Interactions on Lens can be published on-chain or to Momoka, the data availability and verification layer. Creating a profile on Lens grants the user a unique, sequentially numbered NFT. The NFT serves as an access point to the protocol, where users can perform actions such as following, posting, and commenting. Since users own their own NFT, they own their own profile.

Developers are leveraging these open protocols to build a variety of engaging clients and features. Users publish content at the protocol level, and the same content can be accessed by multiple clients. While Warpcast is Farcaster's flagship social media client, offering an X-like user experience, and Phaver and Orb offer popular experiences on Lens, there are many others. Supercast, a client for more serious and active Farcaster users; Sealcaster, which allows you to publish anonymous Farcaster posts using zk-proofs; and Tape, a client specifically for media sharing on Lens.

The innovations spurred by these open protocols are not limited to client applications. What differentiates protocols like Farcaster and Lens from web2 is that they have features such as on-chain identity, payments, tokenization, and composability that combine to enable novel innovations. On Farcaster, for example, new experiments are emerging like DEGEN, a tradable token that users can use to tip others by commenting on posts. In addition, there has been a significant expansion of tools and services. Bountycaster is compatible with any Farcaster client, allowing users to create and complete tasks to earn USDC rewards. The Lens open actions feature embeds custom on-chain actions into publications, enabling new functionality in social feeds such as payments (charges, tips), NFT minting, token issuance, and more. Whether it's tokenized games embedded directly into applications, prediction markets that keep score by updating on-chain social reputation, or tools to more easily aggregate Farcaster and Lens data, there are countless experiments, applications, infrastructure, and infrastructure waiting to be created. Tool of.

Friend.Tech

Last September, web3 social application Friend.Tech took the crypto community by storm. Within a few months, more than 100,000 accounts were created on the platform. The app introduces a novel feature that allows users to purchase an influencer’s “key,” unlocking exclusive perks such as direct messaging access and access to gated chats. Gaming influencers such as FaZe Banks and NBA star Grayson Allen have joined the platform to share their thoughts on gaming, cryptocurrency and sports with key holders.  

What makes the app so exciting for key holders is its ability to trade keys, turning them into a form of investment in the influencer’s future needs. Through friend.tech, users participate in buying and selling keys, and part of the proceeds go to the big V and the platform itself. Many top cryptocurrency influencers start earning hundreds of thousands of dollars through royalties sharing alpha and ideas about the cryptocurrency market. In just 2 months, friend.tech generated nearly $20 million in fees.

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Activity on the platform has dropped significantly since its peak due to user retention issues, with transaction volume down 99% since its peak above. However, friend.tech has demonstrated strong features in the adoption of web3 social platforms:

1. Progressive Web Applications (PWA): The key factor in friend.tech’s rapid growth to over 100,000 users is its Progressive web applications. This technology allows users to log in without having to go through complicated wallet setup, but instead using familiar methods such as Google, Apple or SMS verification. This greatly simplifies entry for the average user, making it easier to use.

2. Leverage the Web2 audience: friend.tech attracts users by leveraging the existing user base of web2. By letting users connect through their X (formerly Twitter) accounts, friend.tech fosters ongoing conversations about its platform on X, driving more X users to sign up.

3. Tradeable social assets: friend.tech introduces a dynamic social asset market in which users can trade keys, thanks to the low transaction cost of L2 Base. As we saw with the success of BitClout in 2021, combining financialization and speculation with social applications has the potential to create viral effects.

Focus

Recently, Pantera portfolio company DeSo announced plans to launch Focus, its premier application built on the DeSo blockchain, in June this year. Focus allows users to pay for content using cryptocurrency, while enabling cryptocurrency-native subscriptions, paid messaging, and paid forwarding. Focus is also integrating novel speculation-based primitives, such as tokenized creator revenue, through a new product called “Creator Coins.”

Solving the cold-start problem—how to attract enough users to make a social network valuable—is a major challenge in developing social platforms. Protocols like Farcaster and Lens solve this problem by delivering innovative experiences that engage users with unique interactions. Friend.tech has strategically targeted attracting crypto influencers, leveraging their following to bring a crypto-savvy user base to the platform.

Focus is trying to solve the cold start problem by using web3 incentives to attract users. Users with high-value followers on networks such as X, Instagram, TikTok or Twitch will be incentivized to sign up and engage with the platform as they will be rewarded with FOCUS tokens proportional to their influence. The team calls this novel mechanism “Social Airdrop.”

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Another necessary condition for the success of a social network is retention: users need to stick with it. The DeSo team built a Post-To-Earn mechanism to solve this problem: Focus will distribute tokens every week to top creators who also publish content frequently. Because a user’s account is connected to their on-chain wallet address, Focus is able to view the user’s activity and wallet balance to differentiate between real users and hair-raising bots.

Even without incentives, why do creators continue to use Focus instead of other platforms? Focus introduces innovative monetization methods for creators enabled by blockchain. First, Focus allows users to pay and be paid in cryptocurrency through subscriptions, paid messaging, and a new primitive called “paid forwards” that essentially acts as a decentralized advertising model on the platform. Second, since all content data is stored on the DeSo chain, users can generate new content using Focus’s generative AI tools, which allow remixing of creators’ previous images, with creators setting a fee for each time a user queries their work. Finally, through the tokenization of creator income, emerging creators will be able to issue and sell “creator tokens” and earn a percentage of content revenue, allowing early backers to invest and benefit from the creator’s ongoing success.  

Conclusion

Nowadays, with Tier 1 and Tier 2 supporting activities without high fees and novel ways of handling data storage, we are seeing a rise in social platforms across the web3 space. emerge. We have now seen various ways in which social platforms can leverage blockchain. Here are the key points:

1. Using open protocols to allow developers to generate novel use cases is very powerful. Farcaster and Lens are not the next Facebook; rather, these agreements will enable clients and applications to attract tens of millions of future users. As more data is generated and flows freely between platforms, these networks will prosper together.  

2. We also saw how combining speculative elements such as friend.tech’s keys can create virality. With the advent of PWAs and low-cost 2-tier solutions, it will become easier to get users to use killer web3 social apps. Soon, users will be able to conduct transactions as seamlessly as in video games.

3. Cryptocurrency brings new ways of monetization for creators. Whether it’s Focus’ paid retweets and paid DMs, or friend.tech’s key royalties, cryptocurrencies remove any payment friction so creators can amplify past viewership to get the most views. Therefore, they can find the method of making money that suits them best.

4. There is a lot of hope in using encryption incentives to solve the cold start problem of the network. In the past, Blur eventually surpassed OpenSea in trading volume by introducing an airdrop season event. Traders with the highest trading volume will receive more BLUR tokens. With Focus’ approach of targeting web2 platforms using cryptocurrency incentives, we can see platforms leveraging this strategy attracting the most powerful creators and influencers on X, YouTube, and Instagram.

In the next few years, social applications and networks that not only connect users but leverage open data, tokenization, ownership, identity and other elements of cryptocurrency foundation building blocks will bring millions Users enter cryptocurrencies. We look forward to accelerating the future of web3 social.