Solcial — social network WEB-3
We all use popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others. For many people, this is the only source of information, someone uses them for commercial purposes, someone for entertainment purposes or to communicate with friends. Life without them is already hard to imagine.
Existing social networks are free for us and few people are interested in how they work from the inside. At the same time, many people face the hidden problems that social networks create for them. We all know the situation when you ask about something and then you are inundated with advertisements for this product or service, although you just showed a casual interest. This is the other side of the coin. Web services consider users as consumers of advertising, for which they receive money from advertisers, while content and user data are used to target advertising (determine which ads to show to a particular user).
Another problem is content censorship. It can happen for political reasons or when the content is too tight and it’s easier for the platform to censor it instead of finding out everything. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, then such content has a high chance of being censored, as the attitude of different jurisdictions towards them is constantly changing. I think a lot of people had problems with Twitter when posting about cryptocurrencies.
Well, the worst thing is that your data can be stolen as a result of hacker attacks or provided to third parties. In the latter case, we usually agree to these ourselves without reading the user agreement.
As a result, the payment for using modern social networks and web services is the forced viewing of advertising, the refusal of the confidentiality of one’s personal data. Also, your content has no value in terms of platforms (even if you have a huge audience of subscribers), although they earn money on it.
Is there a solution to the conflicts that have arisen? Nowadays, the Internet has begun the transformation from WEB-2 to WEB-3. Their difference lies in the fact that with WEB-2 we can receive information and enter it, and with WEB-3, in addition, after entering the information, certain programmed actions take place with it. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are elements of WEB-3 that allow you to create a new generation of Internet.
Recently, quite by accident, I found out about the new project Solcial. They are building a decentralized social network that gives users the power of web3, allowing people to interact with each other without fear of censorship, and allowing content creators to be fairly rewarded at market value. The project is very interesting and is still at an early stage.
How will Solcial work? So far I have found information based on their AMAs.
Solcial will have its own mobile application, desktop application and the website. Each user will have their own token, upon registration you will receive 1 million coins, their number is fixed and the same for everyone. They can be sold, kept or donated. The user will have three levels of subscription to other users:
- level 1 — you can be subscribed for free
- level 2 — paid access to public content
- level 3 — paid access to private content
To pay for access, you need to own the token of the user you want to follow. In this way, content creators will be able to monetize their content, and the value of their tokens will determine content price. As for me, quite an interesting solution.
Solcial will have its own SLC token. This is a governance token that grants voting rights in the DAO and provides discounts on trading fees. The platform itself will run on the Solana blockchain.
To work with content, a special peer-to-peer (P2P) layer will be created (feed, publications, likes, etc.), and all operations related to tokens (mining, trading, exchange) will be runed on the Solana blockchain. All user content will be stored in IPFS (Distributed File Base) and available through the P2P layer without relying on censored servers or gateways.
Thus Solcial, built on a P2P level and protected by the Solana blockchain, cannot be censored. At the same time, Solcial has a policy to prevent illegal and egregious content which the users identife and report.
At the initial stage, Solcial plans to attract users associated with cryptocurrencies, as the concept of the platform will be more understandable to them compared to the simple user of social networks.
Based on what I have learned about Solcial, they are building a platform that should solve the problems that I described at the beginning of the article. I propose to follow the development of this interesting and, in my opinion, promising project.