The growing popularity of Web 3.0 and DeFi projects is due to people’s tiredness of centralization. They do not want to overpay intermediaries for services that can be obtained directly. Banks and institutions are focused on financial gain rather than the good of the people. This explains the popularity of blockchain projects that offer independence from third parties.
Decentralization is also leading to the emergence of social networks of the future, which will offer independence from corporations that make money from content. Web3 trends are already underway, and the SocialFi projects are prime examples. In this article, we will discuss what is SocialFi and show you the top SocialFi projects in 2024.
How SocialFi Can Help Your Brand?
SocialFi fosters brand visibility and adoption by incentivizing engagement through token rewards. Fans can earn tokens for participating in discussions, sharing content, or contributing ideas. Integrating social features with decentralized finance can create a vibrant ecosystem where members feel connected, valued, and incentivized to actively participate in the brand’s growth.
Thinking of implementing socialfi features for your brand or product? Let’s connect and create a correct list of requirements for your project!
Table of contents:
What is SocialFi?
SocialFi stands for Social Finance. This industry consists of platforms that combine the principles of social media and DeFi.
Users can control their data and generate revenue through content and advertising on this platform. This can solve many of the problems of Web 2.0 social networks, such as privacy protection and freedom of speech.
In SocialFi projects, users do not have to provide their personal data when registering, as the platform does not collect or store them. This ensures that users’ privacy is protected. In addition, the platform allows users to express their thoughts by controlling dangerous content.
What is SocialFi crypto in numbers? According to DappRadar research, the transaction volume in the SofialFi industry has grown 305% in 2023 compared to 2022. The rise of SocialFi is revolutionizing how we think about ownership of social media data and online identity.
If you are looking for a reliable IT partner, our IdeaSoft team can help you with social media app development!
Why do social networks and decentralized finances are a killing combination?
So far, we are living in a Web 2.0 era in which a massive disruption to the Internet has a negative impact on quality of life. For example, in the fall of 2021, there was a massive outage of WhatsApp and Instagram that brought retail, news media, and medical facilities around the world to a halt for hours.
The Web 2.0 economic model is being replaced by SocialFi, based on Web 3.0. It demonstrates the value of each individual and provides an opportunity to profit. This fundamentally changes the approach to content creation and distribution:
- Users become direct beneficiaries
- Creators of social platforms get tools that monetize user contributions
- Users themselves are fairly rewarded with tokens for time and effort spent on social presence on the web
According to CoinGecko, SocialFi coins have a combined market cap of over $5 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of over $200 million as of 12th May 2024.
Key SocialFi Features
The main reason for SocialFi’s growing popularity is that SocialFi crypto projects can address the flaws of Web 2.0 social networks. Let’s look and compare traditional online media information flow versus blockchain based onces.
Now when you see how the traditional online social media works, let’s look in the process when the blockchain technology is involved. Check the table below.
As you see, the introduction of blockchain foster transparency and creates additional reward system opporutities which is not videly used or applied in terms of traditional online media user engagement activities.
Among the key problems that SocialFi projects can solve are:
- Personal information protection and user privacy. When registering on Web 2.0 social networks, users are forced to provide their personal information, which can be stolen by hackers or used by companies for marketing purposes. In contrast, SocialFi’s platform uses a decentralized approach that does not require submitting personal information.
- Freedom of speech. Decentralized social networks, which are controlled by network members, lack censorship and user blocking by a central authority. However, a special algorithm based on artificial intelligence is created to control dangerous content.
- Digital copyright. The SocialFi platform enables automated copyright systems that allow authors to sell their works directly to buyers without intermediaries. Content creators get paid in full for their work, and users can be assured that they are buying original content and not infringing on copyright.
SocialFi features are attracting new users to the industry. It is gaining popularity thanks to its decentralized nature, which solves the key problems of Web 2.0 social networks. Nevertheless, it is as complicated to develop the SocialFi platform as to develop the DeFi exchange platform.
What challenges does SocialFi face?
A great challenge that SocialFi industry faces is scalability. You probably know that the more users join the blockchain, the slower it works. For social networks, high-speed content processing is critical. SocialFi has the task of overtaking Facebook, where 2 billion users post 510,000 comments, like 4 million posts, and upload 136,000 photos daily. This is already a huge volume. And if you add a financial system to it, it is a real challenge.
One of the protocols (DeSo) scales better than others, as it was specially created for SocialFi’s needs. The developers claim the network can process 80 posts per second for 4 million users, while X processes 6,000 posts per second for 300 million users.
Top SocialFi Projects in 2024
Perhaps the most notable representatives of the SocialFi sphere can be considered metaverses. Users there are anonymous and create and monetize content daily. Below is a top SocialFi crypto list from our IdeaSoft team.
CyberConnect
CyberConnect is a pioneering decentralized social graph protocol putting users and developers in charge of their digital presence, content, and relationships using cutting-edge Web3 tech. Built on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains, it paves the way for decentralized social applications (dApps). With CYBER tokens, users wield governance power, cover transaction costs, and snag premium usernames (CyberProfiles), all of which are vital for steering the ecosystem’s dynamics and operations.
This SocialFi crypto project harnesses innovative technologies like account abstraction to streamline user onboarding and ensure seamless interaction across various blockchains, thus elevating user experience and breaking down the usual barriers to blockchain entry. By prioritizing accessibility, CyberConnect isn’t just creating a user-friendly space but also paving the way for widespread adoption.
Entre
Entre is a social network for entrepreneurs and investors. This crypto SocialFi platform allows them to communicate with each other, find investment opportunities, and make deals. Entre uses blockchain technology to ensure secure and transparent transactions between users.
Users can find jobs and employees on Entre, share experiences and ideas in virtual co-working spaces, hold general meetings, find investors, and work remotely. The platform allows monetizing content through paid broadcasts, posts, comments, and private business events.
Cheelee
Cheelee is one of the top SocialFi projects 2024. It is a video platform on the blockchain. Content makers create and publish short videos and are paid for doing so. Other users are paid to watch videos in their feeds.
In Cheelee, every new user gets free NFT points. These points have certain features, such as attention span, battery, memory, and frame, which affect how many NFT points a person will earn for watching the feed. The points can be upgraded and improved with a platform token, which is farmed for watching content.
Qrolli
Qrolli’s Quest Hub is an innovative gaming system with many challenges and rewards to engage users. Participants earn QR tokens to access exclusive trading features. Users monetize their social content with dynamic NFTs and have the opportunity to work together to foster partnerships in the cryptocurrency community.
Qrolli is structured completely differently than other SocialFi crypto projects. It was created by combining the best elements of social networks with a system of decentralized finance. Qrolli guarantees users security, transparency, and full control over their assets to an extent that is unparalleled in traditional social networks.
DeSo
DeSo was created with the goal of scaling SocialFi applications to serve 1 billion users. The protocol is named after the first letters of the words “decentralized” and “social”. Developers around the world are creating other similar applications using the DeSo blockchain.
This ecosystem is suitable for NFT artists, software developers, and investors. It comprises a full-featured DAO builder, metaverse, NFT marketplaces, voice and video platforms, and search engines. A separate platform connects DeSo with X and other social networks.
Here, you can blog, use messenger, make stories, and more. In addition to the standard set that conventional social networks have, DeSo provides opportunities to create a wallet, earn tokens and invest them in projects, buy and sell NFT, participate in NFT auctions, and receive royalties. DeSo hosts online games, contests, and meetups. Moreover, DeSo enables users to explore various web3 apps to earn money, enhancing its appeal to a broader audience.
Future of SocialFi
Many companies that operate in traditional social networks are beginning to actively invest in innovative social blockchain projects for obvious reasons:
- SocialFi is a fundamentally new concept of user interaction on which the Web 3.0 paradigm is based
- The gradual decentralization of finance accelerates the creation and development of SocialFi projects managed by users
- The potential of Social Finance protocols is enough to solve the key problems of traditional social networks
CITE According to former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, “In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies is essential, and if these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of the blockchain technology and crypto”.
The intensive formation of the ecosystem will accelerate the mass adoption of crypto and blockchain technologies. The world needs new-format social projects that empower users and incentivize them to join the ecosystem. The future of SocialFi is bright.
Summary
The transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and traditional social networks to SocialFi is inevitable, as the need to protect users’ interests is becoming increasingly acute. What problems will the use of SocialFi solve:
- Partially eliminate censorship and allow more free speech
- Increase privacy because the network is not controlled by corporations
- Massive amounts of personal data will not end up in monopolist databases
- Users have full control over the distribution of their content and monetization
- Integrated digital tokens become a fast and secure transaction method
- NFT ensures the integrity of content and ownership
- Securely protects accounts from fraudsters
- Guarantee that moderators will not deactivate a user’s account
For SocialFi to stay ahead of the competition, it needs to constantly evolve and improve the system to retain users who came during the first wave of popularity and attract new ones. If you have an idea of developing the best blockchain for SocialFi industry purposes, feel free to investigate our blockchain development services. Our IdeaSoft team is ready to help you with any of your Web3 project ideas.
