Blockchain + social is an interesting track that always attracts developers to keep trying.
As one of the hot tracks in the industry, the social token ecosystem is constantly growing. After 2020, the era of DeFi has begun. Under the influence of open financial concepts and liquidity mining methods, SocialFi has also begun to transform from "Social + Finance" to "Social + DeFi".
After the advent of the DeFi era, NFTFi and GameFi have exploded one after another, and SocialFi has high hopes from the community. In fact, in the first half of 2021, many new projects of the SocialFi concept are joining this track.
At present, the track is still in the early stages of development, and most ecological participants use Social Token as the basis for concept divergence and technology updates. Among most data statistics platforms, there are still relatively few platforms that classify the concept of SocialFi alone, and some projects often overlap with concepts such as NFT and GameFi. On the Coingecko platform, a total of 33 social tokens are included in the relatively clear "Social Money"; on the Zerion platform, a total of 18 social tokens are included in the category of Social Token.
Blocklike sorts out the public information from multiple channels, sorts out the main players in SocialFi's existing ecology, and shows the latest appearance of the social token ecology.
Definition and Classification
The SocialFi track project organization is based on the following definitions and classifications:
Social Tokens are defined as “a token backed by a person’s reputation, brand or community
", social tokens are built on the premise that the value of the community will continue to increase. Among them, casting and distribution, and content capitalization are relatively mainstream project concepts.
Social projects manage the communities they create by issuing tokens. They can be divided into levels according to the activity and contribution of users in the community and enjoy tokenized rights and interests to increase income for creators, cultural producers, and related participants. Many tools are currently available for support.
Most social tokens are based on ERC-20, and mainly carry out technical extension and project innovation from four main directions: distribution model, asset preservation, token model, and community management.
In terms of function, personal tokens, community tokens, and social platform tokens are the main categories. In a more detailed classification, social platform tokens tend to emphasize the generation of value circulation within the platform, and social tokens emphasize the services and value provided by individuals. Dao organization, liquidity mining and other methods also promote the development of community tokens, and many projects also cross with other concepts.
Currently, the existing distribution of social tokens involves personal financing, private communities, fan economy, platform subscriptions, sports entertainment, personal funds, community brands, and more.
SocialFi Ecosystem Overview
◆ Personal Token
RAC（https://rac.fm/）
RAC is a fan token based on Ethereum launched by Grammy award winner DJ RAC (André Allen Anjos). Holding the token will give users access to exclusive Discord channels, early access to airdrops, and early access to unpublished content. In addition, holders of a certain amount of RAC can participate in exclusive privileges such as exclusive product launches held by RAC in digital product trading markets such as Zora or SuperRare.
ROLL（Creator Token） (https://tryroll.com/)
Roll is one of the established social token issuance platforms. Under the platform’s issuance model, Roll will create ERC-20 tokens on behalf of users, that is, issue personal social tokens for content creators. The supply of each personal social token is 10 million, of which 2 million are issued directly For content creators, 1.2 million pieces belong to the Roll platform, and the rest will be unlocked linearly every month for three years. At the same time, ROLL also provides a storage and trading platform.
Currently, 200 content creators have issued their own social tokens through ROLL. However, in the first half of this year, the Roll platform was hacked and stolen 3,000 ETH, which sparked discussions and largely suppressed the enthusiasm of the entire market for social tokens.
Whale （https://whale.me/）
Whale is a well-known personal token issued by individual buyers WhaleShark based on the Roll platform. The value of its tokens is based on the NFT assets held by WhaleShark itself, and the valuation can be viewed at NonFungible.com. Whale allocates 50,000 tokens per month for the acquisition of NFT, donations to artists, team salaries, community activities, etc., and records through Discord, one of the mainstream overseas social platforms.
In addition, creators can earn WHALE by pledging their own NFT works, and they can also sell their works with Whale price on Opensea.
RALLY （Creator Token）（https://www.rally.io/creator/）
RALLY, one of the early well-known social token issuance platforms, is characterized by combining its native governance token RLY with the creator’s social token and minting it into a new personal token. The conversion of personal tokens must pass RLY . The platform covers the entire process of issuance, channels, deposits, and transactions. Rally adopts Layer2 solutions to optimize mechanisms such as instant transactions. Holders of this token have management rights over the Rally Network.
Currently, RLY is available for liquidity mining on Uniswap and Balancer.
MeTokens（all.me）
The personal token issuance platform MeTokens is also known as "Stake on Me". Users can create their own meTokens on the platform, or buy other people's meTokens. The idea is to "invest in the future of the individual and benefit from the appreciation of the individual." In this platform, personal tokens are exchanged through pledged tokens (such as ETH). The total supply of MeTokens and the number of pledged tokens reserved by a single person are fixed, so personal tokens can always redeem part of the pledged tokens.
MeTokens has completed the pre-Seed round of financing this year and has launched an App version.
MintGate（https://www.mintgate.io/）
MintGate is an Erc20 personal token issuance platform. Most of the individual token issuers distribute to fan groups through Twitter and become the access tokens of relevant communities. Fans with a specified number of tokens can obtain different service experiences.
MintGate related content can be hosted on Filecoin. It is also currently working with Matic Network.
ALEX
ALEX may be the earliest exploration of social tokens. Founder Alex Masmej issued this token in order to raise enough funds to allow himself to move to San Francisco to continue his work in the encryption field. He raised $20,000 from the "initial ALEX offering." This approach was unprecedented at the time.
◆ Community Token
1) Financialization of community content
Mirror（https://mirror.xyz/）
Mirror starts from the perspective of content financialization and provides a platform for each article to have the attribute of "NFT+governance". These contents can be invested, traded and governed. Creators who meet the requirements can initiate crowdfunding under the article, and users can get it by participating in the crowdfunding. Each transaction of the NFT share token "Article NFT" is linked to investor dividends. In addition, the invitation token "WRITE" is used to create a column, and the holder has voting rights. Under the preset conditions of some platforms, "WRITE" can also serve as an access certificate.
Mirror's NFT token minting is done with the help of the Zora platform. Since the founder of the platform was created by Denis Nazarov, a former partner of a16z crypto, it has always been widely concerned in the field of social tokens.
Cent（https://v.cent.co/）
v.cent.co is a celebrity social platform that makes celebrity tweets into NFTs and then auctions them off. In the transaction, 95% belongs to the creator of the original tweet, and 5% belongs to the platform; in the secondary sale, 87.5% belongs to the seller, 10% belongs to the creator, and 2.5% belongs to the platform.
Yup (https://yup.io/)
Yup is a protocol for tracking social activities and behaviors, tokenizing the influence of social activities such as likes and comments on content quality. In the platform, each user and content address (URL link) will correspond to a certain influence score. The platform will distribute rewards to content with more social value according to social behaviors such as users' likes and comments. Content producers and middlemen can earn assets.
Matataki（https://www.matataki.io/）
Matataki (based on Meta Network) is a social token issuance and content platform denominated in RMB. Fans can use the Matataki platform to purchase personal tokens to unlock features such as articles. The platform is powered by the META token, which is also the governance token of the platform and can be used for staking.
The platform supports NFT sales, enabling creators to airdrop social tokens to their fans.
SWAGG（https://swagg.network/）
SWAGG is a diverse social networking site centered on the SWAGG community. The founder is more like doing a "social experiment". SWAGG has a variety of uses, and token holders can participate in the entire ecosystem built around SWAGG tokens. Including obtaining works of art in the SWAGG network, obtaining airdrop rewards before the public sale, providing funding for projects initiated by the community, sharing valuable content to obtain rewards, exchanging tokens for community creation, making suggestions and voting for the SWAGG community, etc. wait.
2) SocialToken + Dao organization
Karma DAO（https://twitter.com/karma_dao）
Karma DAO is a very typical DAO community, which originated from a social experiment of crypto lovers. It aims to create a community for sharing investment views, providing insights and advice, leading the community, helping projects raise funds, hosting virtual meetings, and more. The main value content of the community is information and insights.
Karma DAO has three ways to interact: members hold tokens, peer-to-peer rewards, and wearable NFT. In this community, members need to hold 200 $KARMA to enter the private group chat.
Friends with benefits（https://www.fwb.help/join）
FWB is a private social platform based on the Discord private server, which gathers a group of creators and thinkers in the encryption field. Participants need to hold a certain amount of native token $FWB to join this social circle. $FWB has a constant supply of 1 million.
Ark（https://ark.gallery/）
Ark is an investment-oriented DAO organization. Members can create an "ARK" to convene other members to purchase a specific Cryptopunk; they can also participate in an ARK to obtain a share of the Cryptopunk purchased together.
Seed Club（https://twitter.com/seedclubhq）
Seed Club is an incubator for social tokens. The goal is to help social tokens create templates and make the value of social tokens clearer by cooperating with creators. The organization will regularly announce the list of creators participating in the project, and provide financing and support.
Forefront（https://forefront.market/）
Forefront (FF) is a DAO-based aggregator, the main direction is social tokens, NFT and DAO and other topics. Within the community, Forefront distributes tokens to members who complete tasks on behalf of the community. These tasks can range widely and might include promoting a blog post, designing a POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) badge for an event, or building a Discord bot, among others.
Flamingo（https://flamingodao.xyz/）
Flamingo is a DAO organization focusing on encrypted art investment. Its members have the right to jointly decide the NFT artworks to be purchased, and can split, borrow, mortgage, curate and other activities for the NFT purchased by DAO.
There are certain threshold requirements for becoming a Flamingo DAO. Some ETH must be donated as a membership condition, and the maximum number of members is 100.
◆ Social platform tokens
1) Foundry/distribution platform
Chilliz（https://www.chiliz.com/）
In this community, fans with fan tokens can vote on matters such as the club's jersey colour, stadium music and logo, friendly matches, charity lineup, entrance song, etc., and the voting results are binding. Enhanced user community participation.
In this community, fans with fan tokens can vote on matters such as the club's jersey colour, stadium music and logo, friendly matches, charity lineup, entrance song, etc., and the voting results are binding. Enhanced user community participation.
Zora（https://zora.co/）
Zora defines its protocol as a "universal marketplace protocol for media ownership." On the platform, creators of art, articles or music can issue their own tokens. Zora is also the co-issuer of the RAC community token.
At present, Zora has manufactured social media clients, and the platform attributes are more inclined to NFT casting.
CircleUBI（https://www.joincircles.net/）
Circles can issue personal tokens belonging to users, and build a social network based on personal tokens and social trust. Here, two parties who trust each other and have consistent supply and demand can conduct individual token-based transactions and obtain services from individuals. The CirclesUBI concept focuses more on social than UBI.
Martin, the founder and developer of the project, is also one of the people who proposed Uniswap's AMM mechanism, which makes the project have its own halo. At the end of 2020, a large number of users promoted their QR codes in the community and hoped to gain the Trust of others, which allowed CirclesUBI to obtain early user traffic. According to official information, the number of users in the first half of this year has exceeded 300,000.
Loopss（https://www.loopss.me/#/）
Loopss is an infrastructure that implements programmable social relationship networks and derives different application scenarios. The project was first created by DoraHacks DeFi Hackathon and built on BSC. The most basic function of Loopss is: based on streaming payment technology, individuals can issue their own personal credit currency. The value of credit currency comes from personal credit, and transactions rely on the "trust" of both parties, and are regulated by "exchange rate" and "trust degree". The project logic is similar to CircleUBI.
The use of LOOP can establish verifiable social relationships on the blockchain, and based on social relationships, token distribution, governance, and authority can be carried out. The final evolution direction is community-based capital and DAOs.
Fyooz（https://www.fyooz.io/）
Fyooz is a social token issuance platform that assists people with certain influence to issue personal tokens, which the platform calls "star tokens". Fyooz mainly works with musicians, singers, athletes or influencers. Most of the holders of Fyooz can get some "fan privileges", such as unique opportunities to participate in activities, parties, discounts, etc.
At present, Fyooz is mainly composed of three modules: trading market, internal community, and NFTs.
2) Decentralized media platform/application
Bluesky（https://blueskyweb.org/）
In the ecosystem review report written by Graber for the Bluesky project in January this year, he conducts vertical and horizontal analysis from key topics such as identity, network, data, social, privacy, interoperability, scalability, application, governance, and business models.
In the ecosystem review report written by Graber for the Bluesky project in January this year, he conducts vertical and horizontal analysis from key topics such as identity, network, data, social, privacy, interoperability, scalability, application, governance, and business models.
Currently, Graber is building the Bluesky team, and the "decentralized version of Twitter" still has to wait.
BitClout (https://bitclout.com/)
The decentralized social platform BitClout, which itself benchmarks against Twitter, aims to create a decentralized alternative to Twitter through proof-of-work and blockchain construction. The platform increases community hype by passively issuing social tokens to Twitter KOL celebrities, and individuals can own and trade their own Creator Coin. In addition, BitClout has a POW blockchain designed for running social media and a built-in dedicated DEX.
In March of this year, the BitClout social media platform disclosed a luxury investment camp including Sequoia Capital, a16z, and Coinbase Ventures, which gradually became popular in the industry. The effect increases, opening the gap with other blockchain social media projects.
Audius （https://audius.co/）
Audius, a decentralized music streaming protocol, allows token holders to directly relate to voting weight and value-added services through the native token AUDIO. Audius is dedicated to bringing music creators and fans closer.
It is worth noting that in August this year, Audius Audius announced the establishment of a partnership with the short video platform TikTok, allowing musicians on the platform to directly upload and share their works to TikTok’s Sound Kit, and musicians can also link followers on TikTok. Back to Audius.
Mastodon（https://joinmastodon.org/）
Mastodon is an open source social service network service software based on the ActivityPub protocol. It was launched as early as 2017, and its vision is aimed at the decentralized Twitter. Through the mammoth site, users can register, post messages, upload pictures, and chat, just like traditional social networks. However, if the user wants to install one of his own nodes, the steps are very complicated.
Its style is similar to the decentralized remake of the social network of the niche forums in the early years. At present, the IOS version of the APP has been launched, and the official registration number is more than 4.4 million.
Nafter（https://nafter.io/）
Nafter is a social platform that turns short content into NFT. Similar to Instagram, creators can convert their created posts into NFTs and profit from selling the viewing rights of the posts. At the same time, users can also pledge the platform's native token NAFT or the content creator's revenue share to the personal account of their favorite content creation.
Coinvise（https://www.coinvise.co/）
Coinvise is an API-focused social token issuance platform that allows developers to integrate tokens into their existing platforms. On the Coinvise platform, creators or communities can mint social tokens and build incentives on the Ethereum and Polygon (Matic) networks, while creators can also use tokens for rewards, airdrops, crowdfunding, gated access, NFT, etc. Application scenarios.
Calaxy（https://www.calaxy.com/）
Calaxy is positioned in an open social market. It was founded and incubated by Spencer Dinwiddie, a shooting guard of the Brooklyn Nets and a "jump shot man". The founder is also one of the most active athletes in the encryption field. Calaxy's recent popular activities are related to sports shoes NFT.
Clarion
Clarion OS is in the early design stage, and its core lies in a "friend to friend" message dissemination protocol, which supports real-time video, chat and other functions between encrypted identities. According to official information, Clarion uses the Web Assembly plug-in to build different types of applications on Clarion OS, including tokens and smart contracts. Clarion OS can be considered Layer 0.
The main focus of this project is: this is the latest choice of the former EOS founder BM after resigning from the position of Block.one CTO and leaving the EOS community, and it is also the third project of BM in the social track.
◆ third party
Social tokens have strong social attributes, and third-party tools such as token distribution are often required in project operation, which often overlap with the tools used by other ecological blockchain projects.
1) middleware
Mask Network（https://mask.io/）
Mask Network is a special "portal". Instead of creating a new platform, Mask bridges Web2 and future Web3 concepts in a "plug-in" manner, allowing users to seamlessly build on top of existing social networks without migration. Send encrypted messages, cryptocurrencies, and even DApps (Defi, NFTs, DAO), thereby creating a decentralized Applet (DApplet) ecosystem without the use of centralized servers.
The distribution method of Mask can allow ordinary users to further access encrypted assets without changing the usage habits of current mainstream social platforms. At the same time, Mask is also endowed with multiple attributes such as privacy socialization, decentralized storage, DeFi, and DAO.
2) Tools/Others
Collab.land（https://collab.land/）
is a Discord and Telegram bot created by the Abridged.io team that creates chat groups with certain token holding conditions. Users entering the group will be linked to the MetaMask wallet. If the user does not meet a certain amount of tokens, they will be kicked out of the group within a few minutes.
The tool will also automatically pull qualified members into the group and support snapshot governance voting.
Snapshot（https://snapshot.org/#/）
Using off-chain signatures, a governance tool that centralizes the total vote upload results
Tip.cc（https://tip.cc/）
The more commonly used tipping bots on Telegram and Discoed can be used to send tokens. This tool uses a centralized server, there is no charge for rewards, and no gas is required. The usage scenario is usually airdrops in chat software.
Communifty（https://communifty.org/）
Communifty (formerly DAOFi) is a dedicated social token-based DEX built on the success of KarmaDAO. Designed to help token creation and bring early liquidity to the community.
Outpost（https://outpost-protocol.com/）
A subscription blog that accepts crypto tokens.
The platform provides services with many personal tokens, among which JammSession (JAMM), the first social token that is relatively "out of the circle", is more well-known.
Kickback（https://xdai.kickback.events/）
Kickback is an event management platform for community currency. Users pledge community currency to obtain the right to participate in activities.
SourceCred（https://sourcecred.io/docs/beta/cred）
A tool for community data evaluation and rewards. Calculated by data such as posts, likes and replies, the community can provide rewards based on member data and exchange social tokens.
Muzenetwork（https://muzenetwork.org/）
BSC-based encryption community establishment and management platform. It can assist users to build their own encryption community.
Gnosis Safe（https://gnosis-safe.io/）
Multi-signature management tool and digital asset management platform, most of the users are from Dao organization.
SuperFluid（https://www.superfluid.finance/home）
On-chain streaming payment and fund management tools, the protocol is suitable for DAO payment, recurring payment, frequent reward distribution and other scenarios.
