People who paid attention to BitClout last year may have heard of its successor, DeSo, a blockchain specialized for social media applications that is now making waves in the Web3. DeSo has been in operation for over a year and has a significant ecosystem of social media apps built on it now. While most blockchains are designed for economic and financial use cases, DeSo is designed exclusively for social use by providing a decentralized communication layer for Web3 aimed at social media.
It is well known now that social media companies use algorithms to promote/degrade content, while also collecting users’ private data to sell to third-party advertisers. Even worse, all social media profiles and user posts reside on private servers and can be deleted at any time. As a result, content creators do not “own” the content they create and have limited monetization options. Many creators face the looming threat of de-platforming, demonetization and algorithmic “shadow banThese problems with centralized social media can be solved with blockchain technology, but public blockchains like Ethereum, Solana or Polygon are too expensive to use due to their blockchain gas fees being too high to store social media data on-chain. .
DeSo aims to be the solution to these problems. According to DeSo’s official website, DeSo is a blockchain designed specifically for social media applications. It seeks to provide a new way to create, own and monetize social media content by providing a “social class” for Web3. All posts and user profiles are stored directly on the DeSo blockchain and can be accessed by any app built on it, making DeSo content “portable.” Content portability is one of DeSo’s defining qualities, as all posts are stored on the blockchain, not private servers and can be uploaded to any app built on DeSo and monetized in any way the owner chooses.Also, artists can mint non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with their DeSo profile and can create and sell “social tokens” that distribute revenue from NFT sales, features used on DeSo’s popular Twitter-like Diamond app.
DeSo is the social layer of Web3
DeSo is not a smart contract blockchain like Ethereum. Instead, it is designed to store massive amounts of graph data and social media user profiles, which would be prohibitively expensive on any other network. For example, a 200-character tweet might cost $50 on Ethereum, but on DeSo it’s less than $0.000017. In addition, The block reported on DeSo’s recent integration with the popular Metamask crypto wallet, which provides Metamask users with a fully encrypted on-chain messaging service over the DeSo blockchain, along with a Twitter-like set of features. This extends the Metamask crypto wallet to include an encrypted wallet-to-wallet messaging app and allows gas-free DeSo profile creation, publishing and user following. With plans to integrate Solana’s Phantom wallet next, DeSo aims to be the Web3 internet’s blockchain-based social layer, operating across all blockchains and all platforms agnostic.
Through DeSo, users can leave comments on NFTs that will be visible across all NFT marketplaces on all blockchains, which can be invaluable in preventing the sale of fake NFTs, and can be adapted for Web3 e-commerce in the future. The ability to send messages to a user’s crypto wallet has been missing from Web3 for years, with some notable entries never catching on, but DeSo’s integration with Metamask finally solves this missing tool. With DeSo, Web3 is no longer just for sending magic internet money and buying expensive JPEG NFTs. It now offers social and communication tools that are all completely decentralized and controlled by their creators, not social media companies.
While many users will remain on Web2 social media platforms, there are many users and content creators who are tired of fooling around”The algorithm” and are open to new ideas for monetizing content. DeSo’s content portability is a game-changer for content creators. DeSo stands as a solid example of what blockchain technology can do that extends beyond just financial technology, as it aims to become the fabric upon which all communication and social activity lives.
Sources: DeSo, Diamond, The Block, Metamask, Phantom
