Following the success of Friend.tech, a decentralized social media app, industry experts highlight fundamental roadblocks that continue to hamper the sector’s advancement. Despite its recent rise, insiders emphasize that attracting and maintaining users remains challenging, with many people needing help while seeking to join and interact on these platforms.
According to two key individuals in the decentralized social (DeSo) media space, 99% of users new to DeSo platforms may eventually jump ship owing to challenges during the initial sign-up phase or a lack of known contacts inside these networks. Ed Moss, the head of growth at DeSo’s layer-1 blockchain startup, emphasizes the inconvenient nature of the cryptocurrency journey for newcomers: swapping on an exchange, transferring to a wallet via a Chrome extension, and then dealing with hefty gas prices for transactions. Moss believes that optimizing the onboarding cycle is critical to easing this procedure.
However, these issues may arise even before the onboarding process begins. Suhail Kakar, the founder of the DeSo app Onboard, emphasizes the need for users to understand concepts such as blockchain, smart contracts, and wallets before delving in. This high learning curve often turns off potential users, producing a sense of unease akin to attending a party where no one knows who you are.
Overcoming the massive network effects of mainstream social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (previously Twitter) is another massive problem. According to Kakar, being present in DeSo apps is equivalent to walking into a party without knowing anyone. He suggests creating communities and engaging notable creators and influencers to push high-quality content to remedy this, believing people will automatically follow suit.
However, figures from April show a significant disparity: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter collectively had billions of monthly active users, whereas Odysee, a popular DeSo platform, had only 5.3 million average monthly unique users. As Moss says, one problem is that current intelligent contract systems, like Ethereum, are only sometimes suited to enable social media apps at scale.
Moss sees a “storage-heavy” or “infinite-state” blockchain capable of cheaply storing massive data. DeSo apps could keep actions like posts, likes, followers, comments, and social graphs on-chain, assuring complete decentralization from centralized entities.
The emergence of Friend.tech, a base-powered social site, shines out as the DeSo landscape navigates its complicated terrain. Friend.tech has over 85,000 users, 127,000 wallets, and 630,000 network queries since its start. Skeptics, however, are concerned about its long-term viability, with some viewing it as a fad.
According to Future Markets Insights, sales revenue from decentralized social media networks will reach $12.1 billion by 2023 and a whopping $101 billion by 2033. Notable players in this emerging industry include Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky, Mastodon, and Lens Protocol, all of which are attempting to solve the complex problem of redefining the future of social media.
