Web3 Social: A booming space with an identity crisis

In web3 social, users own their identity, data, and the content they create for apps and protocols. Web3 social is a springboard into the world of DAOs (Distributed Autonomous Organizations), platformless social networks. Finally, it’s a new era for social media where users own the networks and protocols and create positive externalities for non-us... See more

What’s the role of a social network in a user-centric web3 world? No longer platform-centric venues, social networks become portals into a metaverse, full of opportunity. Users own the value they create and carry the credibility they accrue. Social Investing 2.0 promotes meaningful connections that lead to platform agnostic, liquid collaboration be... See more

Finally, I touch on a few other conceptual opportunities (DeFi, the economic self, and the power of pseudonymous identities), identify some cautions and concerns about the intersection of web3 and the social sector, and conclude with a list of ventures, solutions, and other things that maybe should be built in the future.

Web3 platforms also have the potential to unlock a novel and especially powerful form of network effect through community engagement and social cohesion. 

If Web3 platforms want to fully replace existing social apps, they’ll need to power discovery - helping users find content (and therefore creators). But this implies the existence of a centralized authority that designs the mechanism by which discovery occurs. Does this conflict with the decentralized culture of Web3?

Since social platforms built on Web3 will adopt the principles of decentralization and privacy enabled by blockchain, people who are involved in this space have found creative ways to build a digital identity that demonstrates an alignment with those principles 

Core to the tenets of web3 are the notion of self-sovereignty through cryptography, the ability to organize into global communities that resonate with our tailored values and interests, and the redistribution of network value back to users through incentivized participation.