Author: YBB
Translation: Blockchain in Plain Language
The current development path is shifting from competing for TVL and building DeFi ecosystems to focusing on the attention economy. In Web3, SocialFi and Memes represent the attention economy, while TON, Solana, and Base stand out.
TON has huge potential, with mini-games and mini-programs gaining unprecedented attention and attracting the attention of major trading platforms. Solana's Blink has many potential problems, making widespread adoption difficult. Base, under Coinbase's management, is growing steadily.
The best economic models may not need economic models at all; once something can be precisely calculated, its lifespan and upper limit become limited.
1. Embrace the attention economy
After Ethereum completed its transition from 0 to 1, the entire industry has been struggling with how to go from 1 to N. Most articles this year have focused on how infrastructure can address its lack of modularity, with less discussion on applications and the ecosystem. In a previous article, we mentioned that the lack of applications stems from the fact that Layer 2 is still insufficient to support the emergence of "super applications." Beyond the limitations of the virtual machine and TPS caps, most Layer 2 implementations remain focused on maximizing value extraction from the main chain through incentives and the DeFi ecosystem, aiming to quickly dominate TVL. This templated approach only results in faster, cheaper, but less liquid "Ethereum clones," failing to provide a unique user experience.
In contrast, emerging ecosystems like TON, Solana, and Base are fostering genuine on-chain prosperity by embracing the attention economy . According to Wikipedia, the attention economy aims to attract as much attention as possible from users or consumers, cultivating a potential consumer base to maximize future business benefits. In this economic state, the most important resource is neither traditional monetary capital nor information itself, but public attention. Only when the public notices a product can they become consumers and purchase it. A key method for attracting attention is visual appeal, which is why the attention economy is also known as the "eyeball economy."
In the Web 2, platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Google, and TikTok are prime examples of the attention economy . A simple question: Have you ever paid to use these platforms? Most likely, your answer is no. However, you may have noticed these platforms constantly pushing ads for products you like. This is because someone is buying your attention, and converting traffic into products is one of these platforms' primary revenue streams, supporting trillion-dollar internet giants.
In Web3, SocialFi and memes are representative of the attention economy . We won't discuss memes in detail here, but will focus on SocialFi. Whether it's friend.tech or Solana's Blinks, I categorize them as SocialFi. Even TON can be seen as a type of social application blockchain. The form of these entities—whether projects, components, or blockchains—is not important. Their ultimate goal is to convert public traffic in traditional Web2 social media into private traffic. This aligns with what I wrote over a year ago when discussing non-financial applications: the best Web3 non-financial applications should learn from Web2, rather than rebuilding applications that have proven ineffective in Web2.
2. TON
1) Architecture
TON was initially designed to enable seamless payments and mini-program operations on Telegram , rather than traditional DeFi applications. This is the fundamental reason why its TVL is significantly lower than other major blockchains. The choice to build a blockchain instead of embedding mini-programs and payment functions like WeChat stems from the challenges of monetary and regulatory consistency faced by Telegram's globally dispersed user base. In this context, the blockchain can effectively serve as a source of trust. Below is a brief overview of the TON architecture:
Multi-chain architecture : TON adopts a multi-chain architecture, consisting of a masterchain and multiple workchains. This structure allows different types of transactions and applications to be processed in parallel on different chains, greatly improving overall throughput.
Main Chain : The main chain is the core of the TON network, storing the network configuration and the final state of all working chains. It maintains a list of active validators, their staking, active working chains, and information about related shard chains.
Workchain : A workchain is a customizable blockchain optimized for specific types of transactions or use cases. Each workchain can have its own rules, consensus mechanism, and token economic model.
Sharding : Each working chain can be further divided into up to 2⁶⁰ shard chains. This extreme sharding capability enables TON to handle a large number of concurrent transactions.
Dynamic Sharding : TON employs dynamic sharding technology, which automatically splits or merges shard chains based on network load to maintain the optimal size and efficiency of each shard chain.
Hypercube Routing : TON uses hypercube routing technology to enable efficient communication between sharded chains, ensuring smooth transactions throughout the entire ecosystem.
Validator Network : TON uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, where validators participate in network maintenance and transaction verification by staking Toncoin.
TON DNS : TON includes a domain name system that assigns readable names to accounts and smart contracts, improving usability.
TON Storage : Based on BitTorrent-like technology, TON provides a decentralized file storage solution.
TON Proxy : Provides decentralized VPN and TOR-like services, enhancing user privacy and censorship resistance.
TON Payments : Similar to the Lightning Network, it has a payment gateway system that can efficiently process micropayments.
TON Service : Provides a platform for developers to deploy applications and smart contracts.
This complex architecture theoretically allows TON to scale infinitely, handling millions of transactions per second from billions of users while maintaining high speed, low fees, and decentralization, providing infrastructure for a wide range of applications and use cases. However, in addition to the aforementioned issues that make it unfriendly to DeFi, this architecture also faces challenges related to centralization and complexity.
2) Mini-games
Notcoin's listing on Binance ignited a surge in "Tap-to-Earn" mini-games within the TON ecosystem. From a traffic distribution perspective, Tap-to-Earn has been extremely successful. Furthermore, Binance Labs' first investment after nearly six months of inactivity also reflects their bet on TON's mini-game ecosystem. While this may primarily be aimed at attracting new users to the exchange, Binance, as the industry's leading bellwether, at least demonstrates their confidence that Notcoin won't be the last blockbuster.
So, back to the core question: Is the airdrop plus mini-game model sustainable? Most people probably encountered the popular WeChat mini-game "Sheep's Goat" in 2022. This game guided users through an extremely simple first level, but significantly increased the difficulty in the second level. Users' frustration, intense competition with friends, and desire for game items and extra lives led to users frantically sharing and watching ads within WeChat. Social sharing, coupled with some special factors at the time, made this game one of the most popular phenomena of the year, reportedly generating nearly 5 million RMB in daily advertising revenue.
In short, a successful mini-game's monetization path should maintain user engagement through addictive gameplay, then generate revenue through advertising or in-game purchases—a "game—advertising/purchase—monetization/exit" model. Is this easily achievable in Web3? I believe it's extremely difficult and unsustainable. Currently, many projects are buying mini-game source code, attempting to combine airdrop expectations with this traditional path to create a closed loop, or distributing traffic through exchange referral codes without advertising, optimistically hoping to get rich through tokens. However, my immediate impression of most current Tap-to-Earn games is "homogenization—studio airdrops to inflate numbers—lack of user engagement—total token issuance kills." Once this model is exposed, only a few high-quality projects will survive; most will be unable to control Sybil attacks and ultimately fail to recoup their costs.
From a retail investor's perspective, I still believe that moderate participation is worth the gamble, with virtually no cost to participate. Furthermore, I personally think Binance intends to leverage its influence to create multiple "STEP"-like blockbuster projects. Most projects in the TON ecosystem highly align with the preferences of major exchanges—low market capitalization and a large user base. NotCoin was also the only small project listed on both OKX and Binance this period, and its price skyrocketed after listing, coupled with Binance's current attitude towards TON (recently announcing the airdrop of Banana Guns to Binance holders). These signals remind me of the early STEPN era. Of course, Binance's ultimate goal is to consume a large number of projects to support BNB; sustainability is not important, as long as it can "explode."
3) Mini Programs
Mini-programs have always been one of the most promising directions in my opinion. For Web3, this is an interesting attempt to achieve mass adoption. The potential of mini-programs doesn't need much explanation—we can see the answer in WeChat. Simply put, mini-programs have advantages over WeChat in terms of reach and application flexibility. Imagine a simple scenario: a small to medium-sized e-commerce platform wants to expand to multiple countries and needs to offer subsidies to users. Using traditional local social applications would incur huge promotion and time costs. However, using TON, the platform can effectively track task completion while maintaining transparency and at a significantly lower cost than traditional methods, fully demonstrating the bottom-up advantages of blockchain.
4) One of the best abstraction layers in Web3
This year's Solana Meme Summer not only boosted Solana's own popularity but also popularized Telegram Bots ( TG Bots). Top bots can generate billions of dollars in daily trading volume. Web3 dApps often perform poorly in terms of user accessibility, leading to the emergence of many abstraction layer projects. These projects often tout "chain independence," but in reality, the higher the level of abstraction, the more complex they tend to become, failing to strike a balance between security and usability. In my opinion, only three projects truly provide user-friendly access to on-chain activities: OKX Web3 Wallet, UXUY, and TON.
The first two projects need little introduction. During the Inscription craze, they won over a large user base with their user-friendly mobile experience, making a crucial contribution to the prosperity of the Inscription ecosystem. However, the TG bot is unique. It's not an officially developed application, but rather created by an individual project, supporting the purchase and trading of tokens on major blockchains, offering a more convenient and faster experience than the web version . It's extremely user-friendly for both developers and users. This concept can be extended to many ideas, such as introducing external chains into the DeFi ecosystem, and introducing blockchain games and task platforms in the form of mini-programs. Many projects are exploring this, and decentralized implementations exist. Perhaps in the near future, we will achieve true "chain independence" within TG.
3. Solana Blinks & Actions
1) Architecture
From a technical standpoint, Blinks and Actions aren't overly complex. The motivation for developing these tools stemmed from Solana's observation of the enormous potential of the attention economy during Meme Summer and its recognition of the importance of lowering the barrier to entry for users. Similar to TON, Solana aims to use social media as its "second layer." The following is an excerpt from our previous research report discussing the architecture of these two components:
A. Actions (Solana Actions)
Official definition: Solana Actions are standardized APIs that return transactions on the Solana blockchain that can be previewed, signed, and sent in various contexts, including QR codes, buttons and widgets (user interface elements), and websites.
In simple terms, Actions can be understood as transactions awaiting processing. In the Solana network, Actions are an abstract representation of the transaction processing mechanism, encompassing transaction processing, contract execution, and data manipulation. Users can use Actions to send transactions, including token transfers and the purchase of digital assets. Similarly, developers use Actions to invoke and execute smart contracts, implementing complex on-chain logic.
Solana handles these tasks through "transactions," each consisting of a series of instructions executed between specific accounts. By leveraging parallel processing and the Gulf Stream protocol, Solana pre-forwards transactions to validators, reducing transaction confirmation latency. With its fine-grained locking mechanism, Solana can process a large number of conflict-free transactions simultaneously, significantly improving system throughput.
Solana uses a runtime to execute transactions and smart contract instructions , ensuring the correctness of inputs, outputs, and states during execution. Transactions await block confirmation after initial execution; once confirmed by a majority of validators, they are considered final. Solana can process thousands of transactions per second with a confirmation time of less than 400 milliseconds. Pipeline and Gulf Stream mechanisms further enhance network throughput and performance.
Actions are not limited to specific tasks or operations; they can be transactions, contract executions, data processing, and more. These operations are similar to transactions or contract calls in other blockchains, but they have unique advantages in Solana: due to Solana's high-performance architecture, Actions are efficient, have low latency, and can flexibly execute a variety of complex operations, including smart contract calls and data storage/retrieval (more details are available in the extended link).
B. Blinks ( Blockchain Links)
Official definition : Blinks can transform any Solana Action into a shareable, metadata-rich link. Blinks enables Action-enabled clients (browser extensions, wallets, bots) to showcase more functionality to users. On the website, Blinks can instantly trigger transaction previews in the wallet without navigating to the decentralized application; in Discord, bots can extend Blinks into a set of interactive buttons. This enables on-chain interaction from any web interface displaying a URL.
In simple terms, Solana Blinks can convert Solana Actions into shareable links (similar to HTTP). Supported wallets include Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare wallets. It can turn websites and social media into on-chain trading venues, allowing any URL to directly initiate Solana transactions.
The primary goal of Actions and Blinks is to "HTTP-ify" Solana's on-chain operations, integrating them into Web2 applications like Twitter.
2) Application Examples
The following content is excerpted from some examples of the 33 use cases compiled by @starzqeth:
A. Sending red envelopes on social media. Author: @zen913
B. Promoting the meme creator through Blink : @MeteoraAG
C. Transactions via private message. Author: ft. @tensor_hq
D. Tip the author on social media : @zen913
3) Safety issues
While Blink looks cool and has recently gained some attention in the community, its actual usability still has significant room for improvement. First, the feature is not user-friendly for mobile users. Furthermore, each action requires redirecting to a detailed webpage to link your wallet and sign transactions. This tight integration with wallets significantly increases the risk. Would you dare sign and complete a transaction through a link posted by a stranger?
Compared to TON, Blink's main advantage lies in its wider and simpler distribution, but it lacks the integrated experience of TG + TON. In terms of security, Blink's issues go beyond decentralization; it relies entirely on wallet checks for security. Therefore, Blink is currently more of an experiment, offering ideas for other blockchains, but many security problems remain to be addressed.
4. Base
1) The rise of tokenless technology
Base's architecture is likely familiar to many, so it won't be elaborated on here. Similar to TON, Base also has a strong backer. Its rise is analogous to Solana's current success, launching on memes and achieving success without token incentives, purely based on the promise of wealth. Initially, Friend.tech attracted a large user base, and after separating from Friend.tech, Base has its own Farcaster as a backer. Coinbase clearly knows how to operate a blockchain network.
2) Farcaster
Farcaster offers an alternative solution for SocialFi. In short, Farcaster is an open social protocol framework that allows developers to build various social applications, much like how email protocols support multiple clients. Its key feature is interoperability, designed to seamlessly interact with other blockchain networks, facilitating the smooth exchange of information and assets between different platforms. This enables the construction of multiple social media dApps on the Farcaster protocol, such as the popular Twitter-like platform Warpcast.
3) Application Examples
This section references the work of Wilson Lee, a core contributor to the Biteye community.
A. Warpcast
Warpcast is the core application under the Farcaster protocol and the first Farcaster client. Developed by a top-tier engineering team assembled by Dan over a year, its overall architecture is similar to traditional Web2 social software, providing a smooth user experience and currently accounting for 90% of Farcaster protocol traffic.
Warpcast's registration process is incredibly simple; the system automatically generates a wallet for each user, and all Warpcast accounts are associated with a Farcast ID. Generated content is stored in the Farcast central hub. This design allows non-crypto users to easily enter the on-chain world, significantly lowering the cognitive barrier for new users. Users familiar with on-chain interactions can also link their preferred crypto wallets. These adjustments make Warpcast more user-friendly while simultaneously promoting the growth and acceptance of the Farcast ecosystem.
B, Jam
Jam is a Farcaster-based creator economy platform that allows users to convert every tweet on Warpcast into NFT assets similar to Friend.tech Key. Users can buy and sell each tweet, with its price determined by the binding curve below.
C. Clubcast
Clubcast, an application on Farcaster similar to the knowledge-sharing platform Zhihu, has launched a Token-Gated Casts feature. Users must pay to purchase Club Tokens from other users to unlock hidden content on clubcast.xyz or Frames. Currently, using this feature requires developer privileges.
4) The best economic model may be no economic model at all.
Base aims to solidify its position through the various SocialFi applications offered by Farcaster. Unlike TON and Blinks, which primarily attract and convert users from Web2, Farcaster is a more traditional Web3 social protocol. This protocol includes lightweight applications that enhance Web2 functionality, as well as more sophisticated applications designed to rebuild social interaction. Both types of applications are more closely tied to "Fi," meaning they first need to address issues of content pricing and economic model design. More complex applications also face the challenges of content scarcity and user scarcity.
We've already discussed the issues of complex applications at the beginning of this article, so how should we view the issue of economic model design? From Friend.tech to Pump.fun, the best economic model might not exist at all, allowing content to evolve freely without pre-setting a pricing curve. At the height of Friend.tech, there was extensive discussion about Key pricing models. Once something can be precisely calculated, its lifespan and ceiling become finite, which is exactly what happened with Friend.tech.
This article's link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/08/5358.html
Source: https://medium.com/ybbcapital/attention-as-the-core-an-overview-of-the-ecosystem-layouts-of-ton-solana-and-base-bd01fdfb18b4
