Original｜Odaily Odaily
Author: Wenser
As the fastest-growing L2 ecosystem in recent years, Base chain has produced high-quality social application protocols including Friend.tech and Farcaster . Now, a "bunny dress-up game" called Sofamon is expected to take over the former two and become the next "star player" in the Base chain social ecosystem.
Next, Odaily Odaily will take you to understand what is the charm of Sofamon that attracts so much attention?
Project progress: Seed round financing completed, Beta version launched
Previously, Sofamon officially announced that it had received seed round financing from Polychain Capital, Seed Club Ventures, Inception Capital, Celestia COO Nick White, former Coinbase engineer 0x Beans, Divergence Ventures co-founder George Lambeth and other institutions and angel investors. Although the specific amount has not been disclosed for the time being, it can be seen that applications in the social field are still favored by investors from different fields.
Base's soil ecology has laid an extremely friendly and promising foundation for social applications; the funds injected by the initial capital have provided the possibility for the subsequent expansion of the product's gameplay and application ecology; the Beta version of Sofamon is currently online, but an invitation code is still required to register and use it.
Project positioning: New way to play with social expressions or new consumer application?
Sofamon's official account describes itself as "A new layer of social expression." It may sound confusing at first, but when combined with its specific gameplay, you can understand the meaning of its introduction.
In simple terms, Sofamon is a “dress-up game” where users can choose to do the following after registering an account:
Set a personalized image (that is, simply set the color and expression of your own "little rabbit" character)
Click the wallet icon in the upper right corner, enter the Settings interface and link the X platform account (that is, support social account authentication)
Click the wallet icon in the upper right corner and deposit Base chain ETH (that is, you need to prepare funds before shopping)
Collect the first wearable decoration (that is, purchase various "decorative parts" already available on the market, which can be bought and sold at any time, but there is a 6% transaction tax)
Generate exclusive emoticons (different decorative parts and bunny images will generate different emoticons, which can be used in chat applications such as Telegram)
By purchasing decorative parts and sharing the corresponding emojis, you can earn carrot points and participate in a lottery to get priority in purchasing the next set of decorative parts (for example, the parts related to the recent cooperation with Eigenlayer, which are cheaper when bought early and have greater profit margins)
https://www.sofamon.xyz/
Different from Sofamon’s self-positioning, Eigenlayer and many people in the market position Sofamon as a “new consumer application”, as Eigenlayer mentioned in the official cooperation tweet : “one of the most popular new consumer apps on base !” (One of the most popular new consumer apps on the base chain).
To some extent, Sofamon’s current application gameplay is indeed somewhat similar to Centimeter Show and QQ Show in QQ, and it also has certain new consumption attributes (such as cultural consumption, spiritual consumption, creative consumption, etc.), so I think it is not an exaggeration to call it the "Web3 version of Centimeter Show".
Not only that, the Beta version of Sofamon is still not fully open. Users need to enter an invitation code to enter the app and participate in various activities, and one invitation code can only invite 5 new users per day. Therefore, this setting makes it naturally have a certain social fission attribute. The existence of ranking lists and invitation lists is also an excellent manifestation of high social value.
After all, when it comes to Web3 social networking, being on the list is a must for many “top players”.
Project features: agreement income + creator economy + brand IP rental
Compared with the above introduction to its application functions, the project features of Sofamon are more worthy of discussion. In summary, they can be summarized into the following three points:
First, Sofamon's decorative parts transactions can bring negotiated income to the project.
According to the Dune data panel information , Sofamon's current TVL is around 3 million US dollars, and the protocol revenue is approximately 291.83 ETH (about 875,000 US dollars). For a Web3 social project that has been online for less than a month, this data is already extremely objective.
Second, Sofamon’s emoticon dressing function has activated the creator economy to a certain extent.
According to the Dune data panel information , the current income of Sofamon's creator is 89.24 ETH (about 267,000 US dollars). The more decorative parts you buy and the more exclusive emoticons you share, the more carrot points you can get, and you will have a better chance of getting the priority purchase right for the next set of new decorative parts. At the same time, the continuous buying and selling transactions also help push up the price of decorative parts, forming a small "ecological flywheel".
Third, Sofamon’s decorative parts brand cooperation has laid the foundation for IP rental collection.
As shown in the recent cooperation case between Sofamon and Ethereum re-staking protocol Eigenlayer, cooperation on decorative parts brands can not only bring new user traffic to the partners (such as the increase in the amount of assets pledged/re-pledged by users in protocols such as Eigenlayer affects the chance of winning), but also bring a new asset issuance model to the Sofamon platform. Decorative parts and carrot points have become a combined "golden shovel". Although Sofamon currently has only more than 2,400 independent users, with the subsequent wealth-creating effect and continuous expansion of brand cooperation, the chain of "paying users-decorative parts-new brand cooperation-new assets-new users-external social platform users" is expected to be further opened up.
summary
Of course, it is still too early to mention the time node for verifying the positive externalities of the Sofamon project. After all, the Beta version of the project has been online for a short time. However, a major advantage of social applications is their network effect. If Sofamon can achieve results in the following aspects in the future, the day of real large-scale growth may not be far away.
Specific ideas include:
Increase the usage scenarios and platform channels of emoticons;
Expand the scope and specific forms of subsequent brand cooperation;
Segment emoji creators and decorative parts traders and balance their related benefits.
In the Web2 field, QQ Show once saved Tencent from collapse and saved the collapsing building; Centimeter Show once found a new growth point for QQ and made the post-00s fall in love with QQ again. In the Web3 field, Sofamon may also be able to bring something different to the slightly dull social track. Let us look forward to it together.
