The platform facilitates a Dutch auction-powered economic system for web3-native social posting.
Joseph Delong, the previous CTO of Sushi and a former Ethereum core developer, has launched a novel decentralized social platform providing an progressive tackle blockchain-based social media, aka, SocialFi.
Untitled quietly went stay on July 26 as an ecosystem combining blockchain expertise with social interplay fueled by financial incentives.
“Untitled is focused on creating a disintermediated social platform where users can see what they want and say what they want,” Delong informed The Defiant. “Our long-term goal is to turn off our server with all control on-chain.”
The way it works
Exercise on the platform facilities round a every day “title” message, which customers can declare possession over by bidding in a 48-hour declining Dutch public sale main as much as the submit going stay. The successful “title owner” can then compose a message featured within the every day title in a bid to kickstart dialogue amongst customers. The subsequent title public sale will start at twice the value of the earlier title.
Customers can submit feedback replying to titles via one other Dutch public sale mechanism, with the value of replying beginning at half the value paid by the title proprietor earlier than declining over 48 hours. The auctions for subsequent replies begin at half the value of the earlier remark, with the unique commenter receiving a share of the public sale worth. The platform additionally includes a tipping function permitting customers to love or “snap” titles and feedback alongside a monetary reward.
The title proprietor receives 90% of income generated from feedback and likes posted, incentivizing customers to take part in title auctions and submit participating content material on the platform.
Delong stated a user-configurable AI mannequin is accountable for content material filtering on the platform.
“All content will eventually live on a decentralized storage (IPFS) and each user will act as a content server and client,” he added.
Early days
Untitled is slowly garnering customers and exercise after launching three weeks in the past.
The submit saying Untitled’s launch attracted the best quantity of feedback with 4. A submit proclaiming “hell is empty, all the memecoins are here” garnered essentially the most snaps with 44. Delong stated Untitled’s 178 customers have posted 101 titles, 156 replies, and 857 snaps.
The themes mentioned embody memecoins, Delong’s philosophic ponderings, and the Untitled platform itself.
Untitled was launched on prime of Lens, the decentralized social graph protocol from Avara — the mum or dad firm behind Aave. Stani Kulechov, the founder and CEO of Avara, described Untitled as “one of the most exciting social apps launching on Lens.”
Nonetheless, Delong stated that Untitled is at the moment powered by Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 community, whereas Lens develops Lens Community, a forthcoming Layer 2 that might be powered by ZKsync.
Delong tweeted that he was motivated to launch Untitled by dissatisfaction with the trajectory of web3 improvement.
“When I started in web3 we believed in a decentralized future,” Delong stated. “We wanted to build unstoppable decentralized finance to rival the financial system, not join it… Our use cases have devolved into government coins — but on-chain, pump and dumps, and degenerate leverage… The web3 we wanted it to be is definitely dying… The time is now for a reset.”
Different socialfi experiments
Whereas latest socialfi initiatives have loved explosive short-term development combining speculative sport idea mechanics with points-powered incentive packages, the sector has struggled to realize long-lasting consumer retention.
FriendTech loved meteoric development after rapidly rising as probably the most in style dApps on Base after the Layer 2 community launched on mainnet in August 2023. The platform permits customers to purchase and commerce “keys” permitting entry to chatrooms related to Twitter accounts.
At its September 2023 peak, FriendTech hosted greater than $20 million value of every day key buying and selling, however the determine crashed by greater than 99% by April. Whereas the platform loved a short-lived resurgence following the launch of its v2 iteration and the FRIEND token in Could, every day quantity trended between $10,000 and $26,000 over the previous two weeks, in accordance with Dune Analytics.
Every day FriendTech key quantity. Supply: Dune Analytics.
Farcaster, an OP Mainnet-based socialfi platform, loved a surge in exercise in February with the launch of its Frames function — which permits customers to embed interactive content material together with purposes into their posts. Lively Farcaster customers surged 15 occasions to a peak of greater than 40,000 throughout February, however dropped by 60% throughout the next month. Evaluation carried out by The Defiant discovered that solely 4,360 customers have been energetic on the platform every day in June.
Nonetheless, Lens has managed to buck the socialfi downtrend, with its consumer base having fun with surging development in 2024, buoyed by its permissionless launch in February. Lens supplies infrastructure for third-party builders to construct decentralized social apps on prime of it.
Lens has constantly posted new all-time highs for exercise since Could. Whereas almost 28,600 customers have been energetic on Lens-based platforms in January, 262,364 wallets interacted with Lens native purposes final month, in accordance with Lenscan. Nonetheless, the info seemingly counts wallets that interacted with a number of purposes inside Lens’ ecosystem.
No factors program for Untitled
Delong informed The Defiant that Untitled gained’t launch a factors program to incentivize early adoption.
Regardless of describing factors packages as an efficient short-term “growth hack,” Delong stated points-based incentives typically degrade the consumer expertise and culminate in a steep exercise decline in a while.
“An airdrop is likely in the plan but we haven’t mapped out how to best reward early/frequent users,” Delong stated.
Associated: Avara Broadcasts Lens Community L2 Leveraging ZK Stack