Redefining Social Networking with Decentralization | KBW2023

hello hello hi everyone thank you for sticking with us wow you guys have some stamina uh day two end of the day well done well done um I guess before we kick off with uh Wilson uh I want to see a show of hands from the audience so who here has a Twitter account who is a Twitter user raise your hand Twitter users very few like 10 people okay all right they reeded to X yes the the bird app formerly known as Twitter um uh of those Twitter users who has a blue sky account any blue sky users one two three and of those Twitter users again who has a threads by meta account two all right well that somewhat illustrates my point right which is like we have these centralized Web Two social media platforms um but then things happen to that centralized entity and you know here we are with like five Twitter clones and and you can't bring any of your followers with you um so to talk about that issue a little bit is Wilson uh from cyberconnect I guess you know why don't we do the conversation this way right let's start big we talk about the big issues and then we zoom in on how Cy cyberconnect does the things it does um so Wilson I guess lay out for us you know what is the problem right now with with web 2 social and why why do we need um a new solution sure uh before I get into that uh let's just uh quickly say hi to everybody here anas hope that pronunciation is working um yeah so uh the the problems with um web to traditional kind of social networks and Medias was fundamentally no one none of us no you users no creators uh uh entitle of their data or whatever they created on the platform and uh that's a root problem and it causes so many other problems on top of it for example like unfair monetization policies um unfair algorithm U exposure pushing um Shady like Shadow bands um they could do whatever they want with the data with your account because essentially no one actually owns it other than the platform himself um and um since you know after a couple decades of of development of of of the internet now we have come to the age where social medias social networks has been monopolized by a couple very you know limited numbers of tech Giants um and therefore uh when when it gets to a point you know they have the unlimited barting power against users and creators all those problems uh comes out you know so that's the fundamental problem I think yeah you know I was talking to your colleague um Elon right and I think he brought up a a great point which is like in a way like web 3 social media is what web 1 social media was right which was it was a lot more decentralized it wasn't dominated by these kind of intermediary platforms um and it was based on a lot of open protocols that you could Port your data and have a lot more control as a user um I mean do what do you think of that framing like is that sort of where we're headed with with web 3 social I think it's not only that uh I do value the decentralization of of content distribution for example uh but I think most importantly it's it's a value like whether you actually own the piece of content and the monetization channel brings along with it uh whether you own any valuable content and data right so um comparing to web one one um where we have like emails and uh uh blogging sites uh value are still not being distributed to any of the users and I think that Still Remains at the as a major issue with it and web 3 I think um with blockchain with the Cyber account that we're building I think we're going to solve the problem you're going to get your data back and therefore you're going to get the value back yeah yeah well put um you know this whole question of value I think Echo is a point made by one of the other speakers uh Hilmar from CCP games right they make Eve online which is I think the longest running excuse me MMO RPG or or open world game uh it's like 20 years old right and um I think he made a great point about um using web 3 Tech uh in the game uh and the game economics right it's like it's all about uh uh getting away from this idea of influencers on social platforms capturing most of the value um um and then Distributing that value much more evenly throughout your user base um so you know hopefully that that's kind of the direction that we're headed where it's a it's a lot more egalitarian a lot more uh well distributed um so Wilson you know your experience you were at bit torrent before which is you know probably one of the most kind of emblematic um distributed decentralized platforms from from earlier phases of the web um you were at dive and and loo all things to do with content and media decentralization I guess what Drew you to some of these projects you know and and what did you learn there that you can now apply to the web 3 uh phase and and to cyber connect yeah so uh we started our first web3 Native uh startup back in um 2017 in Silicon Valley and um we started to you know we were trying to build a decentralized Content economy um the the blockchain and we launched the test net um we raised about like 20 million um and uh later on we onboarded l uh dive.tv um a streaming platform for gamers we had once uh before we got acquired by bit Toren I think we have more than 15 million monthly active users um and including uh some of the very top streamers exclusively live streaming on on the platform um so that was our first um uh trial on U on you know leveraging the blockchain technology to build like decentralized social media platforms um so I I'll say you know we learned a lot um we learned that how creators matters and how how users would be able to actually engage with the platform um that's uh ready for Mass adoption I don't think a lot of the you know of the projects within the space right now is ready for that uh we already have that experience um and uh I I think that's also one of our biggest um um thesis when we're designing uh this hyber connect uh social gra protocol by the way I think we are also U Back Then I think we were at least one of the very first one who come up with the concept of a decentralized social graph protocol yeah you know let's let's talk about some of these um you know um previous I guess desck attempts right decentralized social attempts I think one of the general criticisms from people is like this is financializing uh your social graph right uh and that's a general criticism of like web 3 and crypto in general right it's it there's a financializing logic here and I think it's it's a little bit like you know to to what the previous panel was talking about the Art Market and so on um and so I guess you know does it matter does financialization of a social graph matter um um in your opinion and then secondly can we do things in web 3 without financializing it that's a very interesting question um first of all I um I think what we're doing it's we we're giving back user the right over the asset um a lot of the data are not that valuable um when when it's a small number but it it gets uh larger and larger when you have a you know a massive set of data um um that come to uh form the network um so I'll say capitalizing it it's important uh not necessarily financializing it uh I've seen projects you know uh that have gone uh far away on the other side like like just uh building some kind of like obviously non-sustainable tokenomics around your uh the So-Cal social influence on Twitter uh which I don't think um you know to be honest I don't think it's uh it makes sense um in the longer term but I I do believe that um letting people understand how valuable their their social graph is it's important um the company running the platform they are capitalizing it um they're running ads on your feed they're running ads um on your content um why can't you somehow capitalize that and also your social graph it's another it's it's it's also a form of your Social Capital which definitely worth some some amount of money um by giving users back those rights um enables them to do the rest of it like like however you want to monetize it however you want to build your community and and MTI uh CH monetization channels um I think it's it's more about that like like whether you have to the right to do so um to the extent that like how far you go with like what what you said like financializing it um I think it it really depends on um um you know what what PE people what people or or users are looking afterward if they really U enjoying the network and uh just trying to you know uh play a fair uh uh like like hope the platform can can do a fair job um I think that's uh that's for me that's quite good enough but I'll be very cautious about um involving too much defi schema into social networks yeah I mean I think that's a like one of the responses to the claim that crypto financialized everything is that is things is things are already financialized right the what the what crypto bit does it kind of makes it apparent and makes it visible um and kind of you know shows you how the sausage is made uh which which may not be pleasant for everyone um you know I think just on that topic of financialization you know there was a great paper that I that I read when I was uh researching a lot of these uh decentralized social networks U as a researcher at rally uh an earlier attempt to do to do this for creators uh and this paper was all about like how do fans of football clubs like soccer right how do these fans interact with the share market the stocks of those football club clubs if they're listed and I think the authors found that you know those uh if you're a fan of let's say Manchester United you tended to buy the stock and hold it much longer than a typical Market participant right and in the end it didn't work out well for those fans like basically they they did their portfolios were worse off because they were holding it due to Intrinsic factors like uh Club loyalty so I guess you know it's you get into these weird situations with creators right when you when you financialized that um and the relationship between the fan and the Creator like that loyalty could could end up making the fan you know someone else's exit liquidity right which I think is like part of the part of the problem that we're all trying to solve with uh with web3 social um first of all I I don't think I don't think decentralized social platforms has to be like as financialized as you mentioned like you're talking about like um treating creators as stocks and buying their shares that's basically like enabling individuals to sell Securities um I don't think we need to take that far I think what would be a great Improvement is the entitlement of your data and content and being being able to capitalize ize it first you have to realize that what I'm creating on the platform it's owned by me and um therefore the revenue behind it I I should have the rights over that um so yeah again I I don't think that's uh that's the that's our Focus here like to try to financializing wrong we should leverage the the the assets of the value aspect of of content and and and and data uh but I'll say better not take it too far yeah Gary is always watching um um so so tell tell us more now about about cyberconnect I guess you know like how does it work and um what are some of the apps I think that are that are building on top of it sure um so cyberconnect we just um um it has been like two and a half years since we first launched the first version and now we we are um on like version 3.0 um so we have this cyber account system alongside with the Cyber graph um and a Cyber Network so in short um I think the best way to understand cyberconnect it's you think of it as an account system similar to Facebook login or Google locking um the differences here is it's with an embedded account abstract wallet plus you own all the data generated by this account and therefore when the next time you locking into other application using this Facebook comparable account you have the right to bring all the assets you created all the social graph with you without asking Facebook for permission I think that's the most easiest ways to understand what cyberconnect is actually building um and um there are more than 50 plus applications that's uh within our ecosystem right now we are also the largest account abstraction providers on most of the evm compatible chains including L2 um yeah and for folks who you know may not be following uh all the feature developments on ethereum can you just explain account abstraction briefly uh just think of it as um you abstract all the complex from U your engagement with blockchain so uh before that uh with with your mamas account or your U General eoa uh address when you're trying to achieve something on chain like minting something there there are just multiple process um and account abstraction could help you uh uh resolve all those problem within one like one or two clicks uh just the easiest ways that I could it's just a simplified version and uh to users just need to understand that it's uh it's it's for better user experience it's like less signing things in metamask right yeah um and also session key better locking experience um social locking social recovery um gas fee delegation cyber could be used for um gas fee on multiple different evm compatible chains instead of confusing users constantly like oh okay uh now I want to M this thing on polygon what is polygon okay now I know polygon what is madic I need to have like buy a mic in order to you know make a transaction um and then same as all the other chains just so complicated and therefore we make this Universal account system to solve all the onboarding issues with uh with ordinary users yeah yeah I mean like you know I I did the Cyber Trek which I think we'll get into a little bit which is like a campaign that cyberconnect is doing I just tried it out and you know you can you can min and do stuff across multiple chains uh just by funding and and paying in one gas token right so which I think was a super smooth experience when I tried it and I think it makes a huge difference now that especially this multi-chain ecosystem that we exist in now where you're like you know hopping from chain to chain and you have assets across different places um things like that really make a huge difference if you're a a retail you know consumer facing kind of thing yeah um so I yes one other question I had was like you know lens for example is a is a well-known example of uh someone that's also doing decentralized social uh and I know there's apps like favor that use both lens and uh cyberconnect so like what's the difference between cyberconnect and something like lens um first of all we were earlier and um yeah as I mentioned like uh now we're in this cyber connect v3.0 version um we provide this holistic account system for on boarding and also data um um uh recording on chain and um and I think all of those um are not provided on any other comparable um uh protocols per se so we are in a very unique uh position at the moment um we take that because we do believe that um in order for decentralized social networks to work you have to bring in the mass adoption um and I think we are the very you know one of the very uh small group of people that actually care about it um like for example if you go to other decentralized social media platforms that exist right now you have to first somehow create a matter mask and that's filtering out like 99.9% of the population globally and therefore I don't think that's going to work right you don't like metamask and switching rpcs no it's uh metamask is really you know it's a it's a daic design for well-trained people uh but when we're talking about Mass adoption we're talking about Gamers we're talking about like Facebook ordinary users like Twitter you know um it's really hard to educate users I don't think educating users it's the right path just give them something that they could understand and use within a like at maximum three clicks if you can't deliver that kind of experience you lose the user so a lot of people talking about education I don't think that's the route we're taking yeah no I I tend to agree um so you know I saw some data that says you know there's like 400,000 like Maus right mon monthly active users on on Cyber connect as of uh uh I guess two months ago July um so you know what what is everyone doing on Cyber like what are some of the popular apps what kinds of things are people doing yeah uh so as we've seen right now like people are doing um many different interesting things like for example like on on I think uh there's a pretty cool um experimental U ecosystem app called cyber tune um um which allow users to Mint uh um music nft um on cyberconnect uh and uh for example example like uh link 3.

2 uh which has on boarded more than 2,700 official organizations within our industry um and enabling those organization to create Post in a decentralized manner um and also organize online events like um Twitter amas Discord amas um and and and being able to track the attendance and issue the proof of attendance token uh which we call West Web status token um so those are a whole bunch of different use cases and uh link three moving forward will have a huge upgrade coming up um and um yeah right so and and Link 3 is a little bit like uh it's like link tree right a bit like link you can think of it as link three plus LinkedIn or you know um the mission here with link 3 is to build up a verifiable trustworth it Network so think about think about when you when you see someone's link tree profile or a LinkedIn profile uh ask a question whether this is trustworth it like it's hard to get the answer even on Twitter right like you can if you search on cyberconnect there are multiple cyberconnect with different colors of checks um it's just confusing um it's not trustworthy at all um C from binance once that on Twitter um there are more than like 10,000 people or even more on LinkedIn claiming their work worked at uh binance which 99% of them are fake profiles so um I think link three it's solving that problem um by you know enabling users to establish online presss that's trackable and verifiable and we have the best position in this industry to do so because you know we have been adopted by those like almost 3,000 verified Orcs including like well-respected or organizations like Masari projects like dydx project like Coy maret cap um yeah so you mean my request for that Ico listing on binance was uh was to a fake binance employee no wonder it never happened um you know we talked about user stats earlier like 400k Maus right do you have any developer stats to share like because you know various people are building on top of uh uh cyber right yeah um so far we're pretty sure that there are more than um um 50 apps that's uh building within our ecosystem um and uh we're just uh about to kick off another series of of ecosystem of development um which will be announced in the you know coming months so uh after after the whole integration of cyberconnect V3 with link 3 plus uh mocha ver and all the other crucial part Partners uh when we feel like you know this account system it works so much better than Facebook it works so much better than WeChat locking it works so much better than mamass lock in I think that would be the time for us to go on in and and start expanding the the ecosystem um yeah and also IID like to add that I think the account system that we're building like you mentioned mamas before I think mamas is great but um what what's the difference between U locking with cyberconnect this account abstraction like smart contract wallet versus um locking with metamask I think first of all like there there there are two major differences one it's with account abstraction the user onboarding experience and also the daily engagement experience it's going to be so much easier and second the second aspect of it it's we're creating a social network between those accounts so you have a mamas account I have a mamas account we're not corelated at all it's not a network but if you have a cyberconnect account I have a cyberconnect account you know our cyber accounts are somehow related connected together because you can see you know I'm verified as the co-founder of cyberconnect on link three moving forward that that's a new feature we're coming out a little bit lck um and then uh you can see who Am I who I'm following and then who are the followers I have and therefore you might be uh identif ify as my second or third degree friend um and those kind of network effects will definitely change the mindset of developers when they start thinking about like whether I should use mamass lockin as my account system or I should use you know U just a traditional kind of of MPC wall solution I think um cyber account will eventually you know uh become a very obvious best solution solution for developers to to to build up on because of the user experience attack and also the data Network that we're building well let's talk about um identity a little bit right which is something I think um cyber connect addresses quite a bit in in your literature so like one of the issues and this goes all the way back to like the web right like uh like domain names right one of the issues is like domain name squatting right um I registered McDonald's. comom because it it expired and and I'm not McDonald's right so how do you deal with that kind of fundamental issue with uh with cyber cyber names yeah so first of all cyber accounts is not um um like cyber ID the domain name service it's um it's a very independent components to the Cyber accounts user does not need to have a cyber ID for creating a cyber account so you can always have a cyber account and that makes on boarding easy you don't have to pay things um so uh for for the issue with a cyber ID like domain uh register like trust I think I think the trust is the trust the trust itself we building it's attached to the web three status token which is a so bound token which is non-transferable it's going to be attached to your cyber account perpetually um um and and that's where people gain their trust from and uh the name the username just think of it as a a a premium phone number you want your phone number to look better that's it um so I think as long as they cannot register or somehow steal your cyber account or the status the social graph all those data accumulated on your accounts uh people wouldn't be fooled by just like you know uh someone re register your ID because your for for example the verified check is going to be followed with your cyber account instead of your ID so basically users will be able to cross reference the address the name McDonald's look at it see if it has the corresponding history that makes sense and decide whether to trust it or not right yes gotcha um you know we only have two minutes left but I know Mass adoption is something that you've been thinking about and and working on um you know I guess what what's your framework for that like do you think of it in terms of Crypton native non- Crypton native people like how do you sort of think about um um you know marketing and getting the word out and getting users on board it I don't um in most cases I don't actually discriminate people from uh crypto native or non-crypto native um I think we have that kind of mindset only because we haven't done a great job um as builders in the industry um we haven't make products that's easily accessible for ordinary users like WeChat did a great job u u creating the WeChat wallet um and now like ilas is trying to do the same thing um so yeah I don't I don't look at things like from that angle but I I'll say uh when we do like um audience targeting when we do go to market strategy um we'll probably still want to test out some models some product features within a small group first um and that group it's the So-Cal Crypton native folks and I I I I just want express my sincere you know appreciation to all the supporters who are eager out there to try out our different features which might fail some of them might succeed some of them might fail but uh it's important to have users try it out which is harder like uh marketing uh to developers or to end users well um both really hard um but I think we we're getting traction from both side we're the largest Network out there already and uh yeah I I think I think what I'm trying to get to is like if our Network the data the adoption for account let's say like right now we have um 1.8 million um uh cyber profile users and we have like half a million cyber account users within the last two months if we can 10x that number it would be a very easy conversation with developers well that's a good note to to end on I think um yeah two-sided Market very tough but uh you're succeeding so thank you very much come to me all of [Music] you