Author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke
TLDR
The current development path of Web3 is shifting from competing for TVL and building a DeFi ecosystem to the attention economy. In Web3, SocialFi and Meme are typical representatives of the attention economy. TON, Solana, and Base are among the best.
TON currently has great potential, with mini games and Mini Apps becoming more and more popular, and it has also attracted the attention of leading exchanges. Solana's Blinks still has many potential problems to be solved, making it difficult to popularize. Base has grown under the management of CB. Gradually prosperous.
The best economic model may be no economic model. Once something can be calculated, its life cycle and ceiling will have an upper limit.
1. Embrace the attention economy
Ethereum has completed the transformation from 0 to 1, but the entire industry is stuck in a vicious circle of how to solve the problem of going from 1 to N. So much so that most of our articles this year are basically about how to make up for the modular defects of the underlying infrastructure. In the previous article, we mentioned that the lack of applications is because Layer2 is not enough to support the emergence of "super applications". In fact, in addition to the limitations of virtual machines and TPS caps, The goal of some Layer2 is still to maximize the value of the main chain through incentives and DeFi ecology, and finally quickly occupy the high ground in TVL. Pure template-based thinking will only produce a bunch of faster and more The cheaper and less liquid "Ethereum" is highly homogeneous and there is no difference in the user experience.
However, in contrast to the “templated public chain”, emerging ecosystems such as TON, Solana, and Base are embracing the development of the attention economy to truly prosper on the chain. According to the encyclopedia, the so-called attention economy refers to maximizing the attraction of users or consumers. The economic model is to attract the attention of the public and cultivate potential consumer groups in order to obtain the greatest future commercial benefits. In this economic state, the most important resource is neither monetary capital in the traditional sense nor information itself, but the public. Only when the public pays attention to a product can they become consumers. One of the important means to attract the public's attention is visual competition. The power economy can also be called the "eyeball economy".
In Web2, most social or search engines such as YouTube, Twitter, Google, and TikTok are representatives of the attention economy. Let’s take a simple example. Have you ever paid for using these platforms? I believe that most people The answer must be no. Have you ever noticed that these platforms always push advertisements for products you like? This is someone buying your attention, which is also one of the main ways for such platforms to make money, converting traffic into products. It is enough to support these Internet giants with a total scale of trillions of dollars.
In Web3, SocialFi and Meme are the representatives of the attention economy. We will not go into details about Meme, but mainly talk about today’s SocialFi. All of them belong to SocialFi, and even the public chain TON can be included in the Social type of application chain. The form of the three is not important. Whether it is a project, a component or a public chain, the ultimate goal is to transform the public chain of traditional Web2 social media into a This is consistent with what I wrote more than a year ago when I was discussing non-financial applications. The best Web3 non-financial application should be to "suck blood" from Web2 rather than reconstruct some The heavy application that was falsified in Web2 is actually exactly the same.
2. TON
2.1 Architecture
The original intention of TON’s design was to enable Telegram to make smooth payments and run Mini Apps, without considering traditional DeFi applications. This is also the fundamental reason why its TVL is much lower than other leading public chains. The reason for designing a chain is that It is not like WeChat with built-in mini-programs and payments. This is because TG’s user base is spread all over the world, and it is difficult to reach a consensus on currency and regulation. At this time, blockchain can serve as a good source of trust. I will briefly describe it here. The following is the architecture of TON:
Multi-chain structure: TON adopts a multi-chain architecture, including a master chain and multiple work chains. This structure allows different types of transactions and applications to be processed in parallel on different chains, greatly improving Overall throughput;
Mainchain: Masterchain is the core of the TON network, storing the network configuration and the final status of all working chains. It maintains the list of active validators, their rights and interests, active working chains, and information about related shard chains;
Workchains: Workchains are customized blockchains that can be optimized for specific types of transactions or use cases. Each workchain can have its own rules, consensus mechanism, and token economics;
Shardchains: Each work chain can be further split into up to 2^60 shard chains. This extreme sharding capability enables TON to handle a large number of concurrent transactions;
Dynamic Sharding: TON uses dynamic sharding technology, which can automatically split or merge shard chains according to network load to maintain the appropriate size and efficiency of each shard chain;
Hypercube Routing: TON uses hypercube routing technology to achieve efficient communication between shard chains, ensuring that transactions within the entire ecosystem can proceed smoothly;
Validator network: TON uses the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, and validators participate in network maintenance and transaction verification by staking Toncoin;
TON DNS: TON includes a domain name system that assigns human-readable names to accounts and smart contracts, improving usability;
TON Storage: Based on technology similar to BitTorrent, TON provides a decentralized file storage solution;
TON Proxy: Provides decentralized VPN and TOR-like services to enhance user privacy and anti-censorship capabilities;
TON Payments: A payment channel system similar to the Lightning Network for efficient processing of small payments;
TON Service: Provides a platform for developers to deploy applications and smart contracts.
This complex architectural design enables TON to theoretically scale infinitely, processing millions of transactions per second from billions of users while maintaining high speed, low fees, and decentralization, providing the foundation for a variety of applications and use cases. Facilities. But on the contrary, in addition to the above-mentioned unfriendly conditions for DeFi, this architecture also has problems of centralization and complexity.
2.2 Mini Games
The launch of Notcoin on Binance has completely ignited the craze for Tap-to-Earn games in the TON ecosystem. From the perspective of traffic distribution, Tap-to-Earn is extremely successful. On the other hand, Binance Labs has been silent for nearly half a year. The first investment after that was also placed on the TON mini-game ecosystem. Although this may be just to attract more new users to the exchange, Binance is the biggest trendsetter in the industry after all. This indirectly proves one thing, that is, Binance is certain that Notcoin will not be the last hit.
So, back to the core question, is the airdrop plus mini-game really sustainable? Most of us should have come into contact with a very popular WeChat mini-game in 2022 - "Sheep Sheep". The first level is simple to guide users, but the difficulty increases sharply in the second level. The accumulation of user frustration and the strong desire to win among friends make users try to get props and resurrections to pass the game. The game was forwarded crazily and ads were viewed on WeChat. The social fission and the special era factors made this product the most popular phenomenon-level game of the year. According to online rumors, the advertising revenue of this game in a single day was close to 5 million RMB.
In simple terms, a successful mini-game monetization path should be to maintain user stickiness through addictiveness and realize monetization through advertising or recharge income, that is, the simple logic of "game-advertising/recharge-monetization/exit". Is it easy to implement in Web3? I think it is difficult and unsustainable. Although many project parties are currently purchasing the source code of some small games, they are trying to achieve a closed loop through the airdrop expectation combined with this traditional path, or in the case of not even receiving advertisements, In the most optimistic scenario, you can use the exchange rebate code to achieve traffic distribution, and in the most optimistic scenario, you can get rich by relying on tokens. But in fact, most of the current Tap-to-Earn games give me the intuitive feeling of "homogeneous-work Indoor airdrops - lack of user stickiness - death as soon as the coin is issued". After being falsified, only a very small number of high-quality projects will remain. The end result of most projects will be that they will not be able to control the witches and ultimately will not be able to recover their costs.
Finally, from the perspective of retail investors, I think it is still possible to take a gamble and participate appropriately. First of all, the cost of participation is close to 0. On the other hand, I personally think that Binance intends to use its influence to create several more "STEPN". TON Most of the projects in the ecosystem are in line with the aesthetic logic of the top exchanges. That is, low market value and high user base. Notcoin is also the only small and medium-sized project in this round that is listed on both OKX and Binance. After going online, it has almost crazy stock-pulling techniques. , and Binance’s current attitude towards TON (recently announced the airdrop of Banana Gun to Binance Holders), these signals all make me feel like the flavor of STEPN back then. Of course, Binance’s ultimate goal is to consume a large number of projects to lift the BNB sedan chair, It doesn’t matter whether it’s continuous or not, as long as it can “explode”.
2.3 Mini App
Mini App has always been one of the directions I personally like the most. For Web3, this is an interesting attempt to move towards Mass Adoption. I won’t go into too much detail about what Mini App can be used for. We can still get the answer from WeChat. In short, the two can complement each other. Mini App has more advantages than WeChat in terms of coverage and application flexibility. Just imagine a very simple scenario. A small or medium-sized e-commerce platform wants to To long countries, it is necessary to provide subsidies to users. If we enter the market through local traditional social applications, we will inevitably face a lot of publicity and time costs. However, in addition to being able to more effectively track the completion of user tasks, TON The cost is transparent and much lower, which is the bottom-up advantage of blockchain.
2.4 One of the best abstraction layers of Web3
Solana's Meme Summer this year not only made itself popular, but also made TG Bot popular. At that time, the transaction volume of the top bots alone could reach hundreds of millions of dollars a day. The common problem of Web3 dapps is that the entry products are not user-friendly. Many abstract layer projects were born. These projects often use the slogan of "chain-free" to promote themselves, but the truth is that the more abstract, the more complex, and there is no balance between security and ease of use. There are only three projects that are most user-friendly for accessing the chain: OKX Web3 wallet, UXUY, and TON.
There is no need to say much about the first two. In the inscription craze, they have gained the favor of a large number of users with the most friendly mobile user experience, and have also contributed to the prosperity of the inscription ecosystem. TG Bot is quite special. It does not belong to the official It is not an application developed by a project, but is developed by individual project owners themselves. It can basically support all token sniping and transactions of major public chains, and has more convenient and faster operations than the web version. From development to user mobile terminal experience It is extremely user-friendly. With this idea, you can actually expand a lot of imagination, such as introducing external chain DeFi, chain games and task platforms in the form of Mini App. There are actually many projects involved in this area, and there are some that have achieved Centralized approach, perhaps in the near future we will achieve true “chain-less” in TG.
3. Solana Blinks & Actions
3.1 Architecture
Blinks and Actions are not complicated from a technical perspective. The reason for developing this tool is that Solana observed the huge potential of the attention economy from Meme Summer and the importance of lowering the user threshold. Similar to TON, it aims to use social networking as its "second layer". Here we quote the content of our previous research report to talk about the architecture of the two:
Actions (Solana Actions)
Official definition: Solana Actions are compliant APIs that return transactions on the Solana blockchain that can be previewed, signed, and sent in a variety of different contexts, including QR codes, buttons + widgets (user interface elements) and websites on the Internet.
Actions can be simply understood as transactions to be signed. In the Solana network, Actions can be understood as an abstract description of the transaction processing mechanism, covering a variety of tasks such as transaction processing, contract execution, and data operations. In terms of application, users can Transactions are sent through Actions, including token transfers, purchases of digital assets, etc. Developers also use Actions to call and execute smart contracts to implement complex on-chain logic.
Solana uses the form of "Transaction" to handle these tasks. Each transaction consists of a series of instructions that are executed between specific accounts. By parallel processing and utilizing the Gulf Stream protocol, Solana forwards transactions to validators in advance, thereby reducing Delay in transaction confirmation. Through a fine-grained locking mechanism, Solana can process a large number of non-conflicting transactions at the same time, greatly improving the system's throughput;
Solana uses Runtime to execute transactions and smart contract instructions, ensuring the correctness of the input, output, and state of the transaction during execution. After the initial execution, the transaction will wait for block confirmation. Once the block is agreed by the majority of validators, the transaction is The Solana network is capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, with transaction confirmation times as low as 400 milliseconds. Thanks to the Pipeline and Gulf Stream mechanisms, the network's throughput and performance are further improved;
Actions do not just refer to certain tasks or operations, they can be transactions, contract executions, data processing, etc. These operations are similar to transactions or contract calls in other blockchains, but in Solana, Actions have their own unique advantages: The first is efficient processing. Solana has designed an efficient way to process these actions so that they can be executed quickly in a large-scale network. The second is low latency. Thanks to Solana's high-performance architecture, the processing latency of actions is very low. , enabling Solana to support high-frequency transactions and applications. Finally, there is flexibility. Actions can be used to perform various complex operations, including calling smart contracts, storing and reading data, etc.
Blinks（Blockchain links）
Official definition: Blinks converts any Solana Action into a shareable, metadata-rich link. Blinks enables Action-enabled clients (browser extension wallets, robots) to display more functionality to users. Transaction previews can be triggered immediately in the wallet without jumping into the decentralized application; in Discord, the bot can expand Blinks into a set of interactive buttons. This enables on-chain interaction with any web interface that can display a URL. .
In layman's terms, Solana Blinks converts Solana Action into a shareable link (equivalent to http). By enabling the relevant functions in supporting wallets such as Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare Wallet, websites and social media can be transformed into places for on-chain transactions. Allows any website with a URL to directly initiate a Solana transaction.
The direct purpose of Actions&Blinks is to directly "http link" Solana's on-chain operations and share them to Web2 application products such as Twitter.
3.2 Application Examples
This paragraph is taken from some of the 33 usages compiled by @starzqeth
1. Send red envelopes on social media
Author: @zen913
2. Promote Memes with Blinks
Author: @MeteoraAG
3. Trade in DM
Author: ft. @tensor_hq
4. Tip on social media
Author: @zen913
3.3 Lack of security
Blinks looks cool and has been very popular in the industry recently, but unfortunately the actual experience is not very good. First of all, this function is not very friendly to users of mobile terminals. Secondly, any action will jump to the detailed The webpage then links to the wallet and signs the transaction, and the close integration with the wallet will also double the risk. Would you dare to sign and complete the entire transaction in a link posted by a stranger?
Compared with TON, Blinks' advantages are only wider dissemination and simpler, but in terms of user experience, it is not very comparable to the integrated experience of TG+TON. It is a question of whether to decentralize or not, which needs to be solved completely by wallet detection. Therefore, Blinks is more like an attempt at present, which gives other public chains some ideas, but there are still many security issues that need to be addressed.
4.Base
4.1 Take-off without issuing coins
I believe everyone is already familiar with the architecture of Base, so I won’t go into details here. One thing similar to TON is that both have a very powerful father. The history of the chain is very similar to that of Solana in this round. , relying on Meme to start, not relying on points PUA, and only relying on the myth of wealth creation to rush to the top of OP. In the early stage, Friend.tech was crazy about attracting customers, and after abandoning Friend.tech, its own Farcaster dragged it down. It is said that Coinbase knows very well how to operate crypto projects.
4.2 Farcaster
Farcaster is another answer to SocialFi. Simply put, Farcaster is an open social protocol framework that allows developers to build various social applications, similar to the email protocol that supports multiple clients. Its outstanding feature is interoperability. Designed to interact seamlessly with other blockchain networks, enabling smooth exchange of information and assets across different platforms. This makes it possible to build multiple social media dapps on top of the Farcster protocol, such as the popular Twitter-like platform Warpcast.
4.3 Application Examples
Here is a quote from Wilson Lee, a core contributor to the "Biteye" community
WrapCast
Warpcast is the core application under the Farcaster protocol and the first Farcaster client. It was developed by a team of top engineers formed by Dan for more than a year. Its overall architecture is similar to traditional Web2 social software, and its user experience is smooth. It currently accounts for 50% of the Farcaster protocol traffic. 90% of the total.
The registration process for Warpcast is simple. The system will automatically generate a bound wallet for the user. All Warpcast accounts are associated with a Farcaster ID, and the generated content is stored in the Farcaster Hub.
This design allows even non-cryptocurrency users to easily enter the on-chain world, greatly reducing the cognitive threshold for new users.
For users who are familiar with on-chain interactions, they can also bind their commonly used cryptocurrency wallets. These adjustments make Warpcast not only user-friendly, but also play an important role in promoting the growth of the Farcaster ecosystem and user acceptance.
Jam
Jam is a creator economy platform based on Farcaster, which can convert every tweet of users on Warpcast into NFT assets similar to Friend.tech Key. Users can buy/sell each tweet at the following prices: Determined by the Bonding Curve of the graph.
Clubcast
ClubCast is an application similar to Knowledge Planet on Farcaster. It has enabled the Token-Gated Casts function. Users need to pay to purchase other users' Club Tokens before they can unlock and view hidden content in club cast. xyz or Frame. Currently, developers need to obtain Permission is required to use.
4.4 The best economic model may be no economic model
Base hopes to consolidate itself by providing a variety of SocialFi applications through Farcaster, which is different from the methods of Ton, Blinks, etc. that only attract and convert users from Web2. Farcaster is the most traditional Web3 social protocol, which includes lightweight applications that enable Web2. , and refactoring heavy applications. Both are more closely integrated with "Fi", so first of all, they need to face the problem of content pricing and economic model design. Heavy applications also face the problem of lack of content and scarce users.
We have already answered the question about heavy applications at the beginning of this article, so how should we think about the design of economic models? From Friend.tech to Pump.fun, the best economic model may be no economic model, not giving content The pricing curve allows it to develop freely. Looking back at the heyday of Friend.tech, there were a lot of discussions around the Key pricing model. In fact, once something can be calculated, there will be an upper limit to its life cycle and ceiling.
