Note: It’s my first post under this pseudonym and if people like it I will write more about the new ways of interacting online/onchain.

First things first, why are decentralized social media important and what is their value to users?

Think about it — most of our online lives are in the hands of a few big corporations: they store our chats, posts, even our photos on their centralised servers. That data is often very personal and almost never end-to-end encrypted. Often, they use our data to make money, share it with other companies you don’t know about and affect our lives in more ways than most of us would even deem acceptable.

Decentralized social media is all about breaking free from these giant data warehouses. You own your data, and it’s spread out, not just sitting in one place. This change is huge for our privacy and control over our digital selves. Let’s see some of the protocols leading the charge!

Farcaster

My personal favorite is Farcaster: a decentralized network that aims to enhance user communication and data accessibility, while fostering a collaborative digital community.

Farcaster skillfully merges onchain and off-chain systems, balancing decentralization with efficient performance. One big plus with Farcaster is that it’s great for engaging in meaningful, in-depth discussions — it’s a platform where disagreements can become learning opportunities due to the friendly atmosphere. In that sense it’s a little similar to the early days of Twitter. Farcaster is probably the most engaging DeSoc protocol out there, due to its focus on quality user growth (qDAU as they say) it has become a great spot for anyone in crypto who wants to engage with/or create a community. At the time of writing, the protocol had 300K users, quite impressive for a non-financial protocol!

The dApps built on FC that I use the most are Warpcast and Bountycaster. If you’re an Ethereum-aligned crypto enjoyer then you will definitely find your people on Warpcast. If you don’t enjoy too much crypto information and discussions, don’t fret. You can find /Channels on Farcaster similar to Subbreddits that discuss anything from diet coke to geopolitics.

And now… Frames. Farcaster revived the old Facebook Open Graph architecture to let any developer build mini-apps on top of Warpcast. This was a massive success and allowed other developers to leverage the Farcaster community without forcing them off their favourite app. People have been able to mint NFTs through frames, send money, buy cookies, read books and much more!

Finally, memes. Farcaster has become ground 0 for lots of the memes popping up on various blockchains (Base and Zora especially) and that is not without the help of Frames. Native degen communities are being born on Farcaster channels and using frames and public social graphs to distribute tokens with Tipping & Vibes being their main utility mostly. You can find a nice overview of FC meme tokens here: https://www.farcaster.in/

Lens Protocol

Another gem in the Web3 social space is Lens Protocol. Built on Ethereum & Polygon, Lens stands out for its approach to content ownership and the ability to carry your social graph across various apps within its ecosystem. Some of my favorite Lens dApps are Hey.xyz; Phaver; and Butterfly. One aspect where Lens excels is the multitude of features available for users: the protocol integrates governance tools, treats content as collectible NFTs, and allows for composability in profiles. Users can mint profiles, follow, and create/collect various publications on-chain.

Lens is your protocol of choice if you’re into testing out new DeSoc concepts/features! While Lens is great for creators and artists thanks to its collectable/mintable elements, its user engagement seems lower than Farcaster, particularly in terms of comments on posts.

Bluesky

Bluesky, initially a Twitter project in 2019 which evolved into an independent entity in 2021, aims to redefine user control over data and online content sharing. The project is creating a secure, scalable platform that ensures users’ data integrity and security, allowing them to set robust privacy controls. Bluesky’s AT Protocol emphasizes account portability, allowing users to switch providers without losing data or social connections. The protocol’s growth strategy is based on an invitation-only model to foster organic expansion, and prevent access to spammers. Bluesky is very user-friendly compared to other DeSoc protocols, making it accessible to a wider audience, while empowering content creators with better monetization opportunities than its centralised counterpart (Twitter).

That’s it with my list, hope you’ll find it insightful! Let me know what you think and/or if you believe that I missed another key player in DeSoc /SoFi :)

Next Blogpost:

We’ll go over the most innovative consumer apps that have leveraged the design space created by the protocols covered in this article. We’ll dive into Interface and Fileverse and potentially Phaver.