- The technology enables web3-native social publishing through a Dutch auction-powered economy.
Former Sushi CTO and Ethereum core developer Joseph Delong has introduced a new decentralized social network called SocialFi that offers a creative twist on blockchain-based social media.
On July 26, Untitled discreetly went online as an ecosystem that combines blockchain technology with financially motivated social interaction.
According to Delong, the goal of Untitled is to create a disintermediated social platform where people may express and view what they want, as well as what they want. Our ultimate objective is to completely shut down our server using on-chain control.
How it functions
The daily title message, which users can claim ownership of by participating in a 48-hour declining Dutch auction prior to the post becoming live, is the focal point of activity on the network. The owner of the winning title can then write a statement that appears in the daily title in an attempt to encourage user debate. The starting bid for the subsequent title auction will be double that of the preceding title.
Through a different Dutch auction system, users can publish comments in response to titles. The cost of commenting starts at half the price paid by the title owner and decreases over the course of 48 hours. The initial commenter receives a portion of the auction price for each subsequent reply, with auctions beginning at half the price of the preceding comment. Additionally, the platform has a tipping tool that lets users snap comments and titles in exchange for money.
By keeping 90% of the money made from comments and likes, the title owner encourages users to take part in title auctions and create interesting content on the platform.
Delong added that the platform’s content screening is handled by a user-configurable AI model.
He went on to say that eventually, all content will reside on decentralized storage (IPFS), with each user serving as both a content server and a client.
Early on
Untitled launched three weeks ago and is gradually gaining users and engagement.
With four comments, the post announcing Untitled’s launch received the most attention. With 44 snaps, a post stating that “hell is empty and all memecoins are here” received the most attention. According to Delong, 178 individuals have uploaded 857 photos, 156 replies, and 101 titles on Untitled.
Memecoins, Delong’s philosophical musings, and the Untitled platform itself are among the topics covered.
Untitled was introduced atop Lens, Avara’s (the parent company of Aave) decentralized social network system. The CEO and founder of Avara, Stani Kulechov, called Untitled “one of the most exciting social apps launching on Lens.”
Delong clarified, though, that while Lens is creating Lens Network, a future Layer 2 that will be powered by ZKsync, Untitled is presently powered by Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 network.
Delong tweeted that he was disappointed with the direction web3 development was taking and that this was what spurred him to start Untitled.
Delong stated, “We believed in a decentralized future when I started in web3.” Instead of joining the banking system, we aimed to create an unstoppable decentralized finance system. Our use cases have deteriorated into government coins, but with degenerate leverage, pump and dumps, and on-chain transactions. There’s no denying that the web3 we envisioned is dying. It’s time to make a reset now.
Additional social-fi trials
Recent socialfi initiatives have combined speculative game theory dynamics with point-based incentive schemes to generate spectacular short-term growth, but the industry has had difficulty maintaining long-term user retention.
With the Layer 2 network’s mainnet launch in August 2023, FriendTech immediately became one of the most well-liked decentralized applications on Base, leading to its stratospheric growth. Users of the platform can exchange and purchase keys that grant access to chat rooms connected to Twitter accounts.
FriendTech hosted more over $20 million worth of daily key trading at its peak in September 2023, but by April, the number had dropped by more than 99%. The platform had a brief upswing in popularity after the release of the FRIEND token and its v2 iteration in May, but over the previous two weeks, daily volume has been fluctuating between $10,000 and $26,000, according to Dune Analytics.
Since the release of its Frames feature, which enables users to incorporate interactive content, including applications, into their messages, Farcaster, a social networking site built on the OP Mainnet, has seen a significant increase in activity. The number of active Farcaster users increased by 15 times to reach a peak of over 40,000 in February, but then decreased by 60% in the following month. The Defiant’s analysis revealed that in June, there were only 4,360 daily active users on the network.
Nevertheless, Lens has defied the social media decline, as evidenced by the rapid expansion of its user base in 2024, driven by its permissionless launch in February. On top of Lens’s architecture, outside developers can create decentralized social apps.
Since May, Lens has continuously recorded new records for activity. Lenscan reports that although there were around 28,600 active users on Lens-based platforms in January, 262,364 wallets engaged with Lens native applications in the previous month. Wallets that interacted with several different Lens ecosystem applications are probably included in the data, though.
Program with no points for untitled
Untitled won’t include a points system to reward early adoption, Delong said.
While Delong acknowledged that point programs are a useful short-term development tactic, he also pointed out that point-based incentives frequently deteriorate user experience and lead to a sharp fall in engagement over time.
Although we haven’t figured out how to effectively reward early/frequent users, an airdrop is probably in the works, according to Delong.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
