In the blockchain field, emerging new technologies and concepts always attract widespread attention from the market. Currently, SocialFi has become one of the most dynamic and innovative tracks in the crypto field. On May 2, crypto investor and influencer Su Zhu pointed out on the X platform that SocialFi not only showed strong development momentum, but also demonstrated its innovative potential in the entire crypto field. This can be seen from the recent active performance of multiple SocialFi projects.
For example, on March 28, Ethereum founder Vitalik recently posted on Mask Network's social aggregation application Firefly, mentioning Farcaster and Lens, emphasizing the importance of diversified clients. This move immediately triggered a surge in the price of MASK tokens, rising from $5 to $6.4. This market reaction not only proves the market's high expectations for the SocialFi project, but also highlights the influence of this track on the entire crypto market.
The rise of SocialFi has brought new business models and user interaction methods to the blockchain community. Its redefinition of data sovereignty and economic incentives is gradually changing people's expectations and usage of social networking platforms. Below, let's take a deep look at the key projects in this field and their potential impact on the entire crypto community.
SocialFi, a new field that combines social media and decentralized finance, has experienced significant rise and attention in recent years. According to Google Trends data, the search popularity of SocialFi showed a significant increase in 2022, especially reaching a significant peak in early 2024. This trend reflects the community's broad interest in combining social media mechanisms with the potential of blockchain technology.
The SocialFi platform has attracted more than 8.7 million users, of which about 550,000 are active users. These users are not only spread across multiple blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Optimism, and BSC, but have also executed a total of 82 million transactions on these platforms. This data shows how SocialFi uses decentralized technology to provide users with a more direct revenue model and higher data control.
Although SocialFi has shown great potential with the surge in users, the development of this field also faces a series of challenges. For example, early SocialFi projects BitClout and Mastodon failed due to problems such as creating personal profiles without user consent and fund withdrawal restrictions. These challenges reveal the importance of designing incentive mechanisms and ensuring excellent user experience.
However, with the emergence of second-layer solutions and improved blockchain infrastructure, such as Optimism and Base, modern SocialFi platforms have higher transaction processing speeds and lower operational latency, making real-time interactions possible. This not only improves the platform's user experience, but also helps further integrate social media with decentralized finance.
Although no project has yet fully realized the ideal SocialFi model, the market demand and interest in such products is still very strong. The community has great expectations for the first platform that successfully implements this model, indicating that it may have huge market potential and room for development.
Although SocialFi's future is full of challenges, with the advancement of technology and the active participation of the community, its integration and development in the blockchain and financial fields is still worth looking forward to. Below we begin to review the projects worth paying attention to.
Farcaster is an innovative SocialFi protocol that has attracted more than 300,000 users and 50,000 daily active users. It provides a smooth user interface similar to modern social media, making it easy for everyone from leaders to novices to participate and monetize content in a variety of ways. One of the most popular monetization methods is tipping rewards through the community token $DEGEN. Technically, Farcaster uses smart contracts and a client network matrix based on "Hub" to strengthen its decentralized structure, ensuring data consistency and network stability.
These technical applications enable the entire network to maintain operation even if some nodes have problems. According to the latest data, Farcaster's protocol revenue has shown significant growth from September 2023 to May 2024, with total revenue approaching $1 million, reflecting the market's high recognition of its model.
Friend Tech is a decentralized application (dApp) that allows users to tokenize their social media profiles. It has achieved a 416-fold increase in user base and revenue of more than $27 million in just three months. The platform took advantage of the early development stage of the Base chain and the widespread market expectations to quickly accumulate users by binding with Web2 social accounts. It adopted an invitation system and took advantage of people's curiosity and vanity to achieve virality. In addition, Friend Tech has kept the project mysterious, reduced operations, and focused on the product itself, which is eye-catching. The project has completed a seed round of financing led by Paradigm, and the specific amount has not been disclosed, indicating the broad potential of its business prospects.
Mask Network is a decentralized social networking tool that aims to combine traditional social media with Web3 features. Through the Mask Network extension, users can display and manage Web3 assets such as NFTs on Twitter, conduct cryptocurrency transactions, and use encrypted tweets to enhance privacy. Mask supports multi-chain transactions, including Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon, and integrates with DEXs such as Uniswap and SushiSwap.
The development of Mask Network has received significant support from Vitalik Buterin, who is active on the platform to express his views and has distributed his first ETH red envelope through Mask, increasing social media users' acceptance of Web3 functions. In addition, Mask has completed a $2 million seed round led by HashKey and Hash Global, as well as a $3 million follow-up round, demonstrating its strong potential as a bridge between social and Web3.
As a pioneer in Web3 social networks, UXLINK now has more than 5.8 million users and covers more than 8.34 million users in its network, involving 102,010 active groups. This platform bridges real-world relationships with Web3, enabling high-frequency information exchange and asset transactions through a powerful social network.
UXLINK leverages familiar social interactions, combined with a decentralized framework, to significantly boost its rapid growth. It not only facilitates a smooth transition for users to Web3 investment and entrepreneurship, but also enhances user engagement through social media mechanisms adapted from Web2, thereby driving broad network effects and fostering an active digital ecosystem.
Tomo, a Web3 social platform based on Linea and Base, recently launched Tomoji Launchpad, a Meme distribution platform based on ERC404 protocol that allows users to create and trade personalized emojis. This platform not only provides a high-quality Web3 interactive environment, but also completely innovates the way users' social activities and content monetization are realized through its unique social wallet function.
Tomo currently has 350,000 community members and generates more than $50,000 in transaction fees each month through TomoID, a management tool designed for KOLs and community leaders. This tool not only aggregates the link entrances of all social platforms, but also allows users to get rewards by participating in content creation, similar to the content experience of Instagram.
In addition, Tomo’s development has also been supported by heavyweight investments, including strategic investments from OKX Ventures and HTX Ventures, and a $3.5 million seed round led by Polychain Capital. These investments not only demonstrate the market’s recognition of Tomo’s strategic position in the Web3 field, but also reflect its trust in its transformative potential. Tomo’s NFT fragmentation and token native liquidity functions indicate its commitment to creating a transparent and open trading market environment, injecting new vitality into the Web3 ecosystem.
Pop, a leading SocialFi AI project in the BSC ecosystem, has rapidly developed into a star project in the industry. Currently, Pop has more than 500,000 global online users, including 50,000+ daily active users and more than 100,000 monthly active users. By strengthening DeFi functions and combining rich AI technology, Pop provides a mature and user-friendly product that has created more than 20,000,000 pieces of content worldwide.
Pop's token (PPT) has been successfully listed on major exchanges and has been widely recognized by the market. In addition, Pop successfully completed a $4 million financing led by Fundamental Labs and Chainlink, which not only provided solid financial support for the project, but also enhanced its credibility in the investment community. These achievements mark Pop as a leading project in the multi-chain SocialFi field, demonstrating its innovative capabilities and market potential in connecting social influence with blockchain technology.
Fantasy Top (FT) is a social finance (SocialFi) game built on Ethereum L2 Blast, which allows users to participate in competitions by buying, selling and trading virtual trading cards related to cryptocurrencies. These competitions provide players with rewards such as ETH, reward token GOLD on Blast, native "fan points" and additional trading card packs. FT not only creates a high-quality Web3 interactive environment for users, but also has become a leader in the multi-chain SocialFi field.
According to a report by K33 Research analyst David Zimmerman, despite the challenge of "perverse incentives" in the SocialFi field, the introduction of FT has been seen as the next potential hotspot in the field. FT successfully raised $4 million, and in the first week of the game's launch, it has accumulated more than 7,000 ETH in trading volume, has 33,000 users, and generated 236 ETH in fees in the market. These data not only show the market potential of FT, but also highlight its unique position in the field of Web3 social and card games.
The success story of FT highlights the signal that the SocialFi season may have arrived, demonstrating the growth and maturity of the social finance sector. As more innovative projects such as FT enter the market, it is expected to promote the development of the entire Web3 ecosystem.
Although there are still many challenges to the complete success of decentralized social networks, including the need to scale infrastructure to accommodate more users, simplify the process of creating digital wallets for new users, and reduce gas fees, substantial progress has been observed on platforms such as Farcaster. Farcaster's daily active users have grown to 20,000, a 10-fold increase from two weeks ago, demonstrating the rapid expansion and high engagement of its community.
In addition, the permissionless nature of decentralized social networks provides developers with a broad space for innovation, allowing them to further develop on the basis of existing blockchains. This has been widely reflected in the DeFi field and is now gradually emerging in the SocialFi field.
In this environment, emerging SocialFi applications such as Fantasy Top and Focus have demonstrated their market momentum. Fantasy Top combines social media elements with game mechanics, quickly gathering a large number of users and stimulating active market transactions. Meanwhile, Focus raised $75 million in the first week of its launch, and its strong market performance indicates its potential in the social subscription platform market.
Looking ahead, the social Fi space is expected to continue to expand with the launch of more innovative blockchain social platforms such as Xterio and Young Protocol. These platforms provide new paths to the decentralization of social networks by providing new ways for users to interact and community building tools. This not only drives user growth, but also provides developers with rich opportunities for innovation, heralding the continued progress and expansion of decentralized social networks.
