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Every year, speculators, investors, and people interested in crypto are watching the industry trends. GameFi, NFT, and AI projects have grown so fast that many investors could only watch the events around new technologies.
As the industry grows, new industries regularly emerge. Therefore, it is already possible to suppose today in which area projects will be created that are interesting for investment in the coming years.
Crypto-trends. Which industry will be the new driver
Crypto-trends usually arise around new tools, technologies, and infrastructure that bring value to the community. Projects that bring huge profits to early investors are also growing quickly. This was the case in 2020 when DeFi startups grew, this was in 2021 when the industry was discussing GameFi, and in 2023 AI-projects gained popularity.
This is the latest trend that is being discussed in the financial and business world. A lot of AI-based crypto projects have shown growth this year. But in the crypto industry, events happen quickly, which means that the investment opportunities of AI startups have already been left behind.
The rise of AI projects has an interesting feature. In fact, this technology emerged many years ago, but the market success for crypto projects with AI at their core came only this year. This is one example, but we can assume that the next crypto-trend will also come from the field of already existing technologies. Games have already been transferred to Web3, which means other businesses popular on Web2 can be decentralized. For example, we can take a closer look at social networks. Projects to transfer them to decentralized platforms are already underway, and along with this the SocialFi system is being formed.
What is SoFi, and how do decentralized social networks work?
The concept of SocialFi combines the idea of a decentralized Web3 Internet and a new generation of social networks. The idea of SocialFi is to create a community that is managed by users directly, instead of a monopolist — the owner company.
In crypto social networks, personal information is stored by the user, not on the company’s servers. In SocialFi, the author is not just a content creator. He becomes the owner of the digital asset. This is what makes it possible to implement a new business model into the crypto social network.
In the world of SocialFi, revenues are distributed differently and do not depend on the number of integrations and native advertising, but on the approval of the community. People’s interest in content is the basis of creators monetization in decentralized social networks. But in SoFi, all users can be rewarded for their activity — comments, moderation of content, creation of NFT or purchase of project tokens.
Due to the lack of a monopoly on feed algorithms in SoFi, content is ranked according to its value, as well as the trust it inspires in the community. This is another difference from traditional social networks, which promote content that is easy to make money on. What’s more, the classic business model prioritizes «quick» content to increase advertising revenue. And that kills the fan and creative economy.
The first decentralized social networks
Crypto social networks emerged back in 2010. The first attempts were poorly scalable, and their mechanics were not fully thought out. Then many blockchain-based networks were created. Some of them are still popular today.
For example, Minds, a combination of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, or BitClout. This project was scandalous and is known for copying profiles popular on Twitter.
Another cryptocurrency network is Steemit, which appeared in 2016. The project rewards users for publishing and viewing content. Every day, new STEEM tokens are printed on the Steem blockchain, which go into the reward pool for the most active authors. The more votes users earn for their content, the more tokens they receive in distribution. The coins give network members the right to decide how the platform will develop.
Strong SoFi Projects Today — MAIN
A more modern SoFi project is MAIN. Conceptually, this crypto network is similar to Reddit. MAIN also has boards — communities of interest, but they are managed by users themselves.
Board tokens can be bought and sold, and the more popular a community becomes the greater its capitalization. Both content creation and people’s activity in the social network are monetized. Users can invest in community coins and receive rewards for communicating, posting, and content moderation. Coins are distributed daily.
Today in MAIN, the top board is worth more than $30k. Users can also invest in the project’s native token — MAIN. You can use it to buy board coins or keep it as an investment. As the audience grows, so does the complexity of the network, the demand for the token, and therefore its cost increases. The main competitive difference between MAIN and Steemit is that the issue of MAIN tokens is limited to 1 billion coins.
Why classic social networks will lose to SoFi projects
SoFi projects have several advantages over traditional social networks. All of them are due to the technological superiority of the Web3 Internet over the Web2. No matter how progressive the current social networks are, they cannot solve the technological and conceptual problems that the past generation of the Internet has:
Monetization
Traditional social networks are developed by advertising revenue and take most of the profits for the benefit of the owner, not the author. SoFi projects are built on servers that do not belong to a specific business. Therefore, in crypto social networks, the authors are the owners of their own content, and receive all income from it.
Personal data
When registering on any social network, users enter their phone number, e-mail and other information. This data remains on the companies’ servers. If there is a failure or hacker attack, then all personal data will be in the public domain.
Every user in Web 3 owns his or her own personal data. A decentralized approach will save users of the problem of protecting personal information. DApps don’t collect or store user data. They are also protected from hacking thanks to blockchain.
Freedom of speech and protection of property rights
The moderation system in traditional social networks does not allow all content to exist. Sometimes blocking and censorship come not only from a company, but also from states that are trying to control undesirable content. In decentralized social networks, content is managed by the network members themselves. This makes it impossible to censor or block users without appeal.
Moreover, decentralized social networks guarantee authors the protection of property rights. Technologically, this can be ensured by NFT, because any created content is already endowed with digital rights, and it is easy to find its owner through a smart contract.
When SoFi overtakes traditional social networks
Today Web3 projects have hundreds of millions of users. SocialFi is a new trend that has yet to win its audience. We have already witnessed the hype in GameFi-startups, and no one is arguing with the value of their products anymore. AI projects have taken off even in the bear market this year.
To assess the prospects of decentralized social networks and guess when they will succeed, we need to look at the era of Web 2. The maturity of SocialFi today can be compared to Facebook when it was developing on the university campus. But an important difference between decentralized social networks and traditional ones is that crypto projects allow every investor to invest in a startup at an early stage. This is another advantage of Web3 over Web2 — anyone can become a co-owner of a crypto social network.
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