How to deal with the opportunities and challenges of decentralized social networking｜FarCon Asia Roundtable

From September 16 to 17, Tako Protocol, BlockBeats and Jam jointly held the first large-scale Farcaster ecosystem offline event in Asia in Singapore and concluded successfully. The conference aims to deeply explore and showcase the innovative achievements of the Farcaster ecosystem and the future prospects of Web3 social networking, breaking the stereotype of one-way output in traditional financial encryption conferences. Many Farcaster ecosystem builders, active users of Farcaster ecosystem in Asia, VCs and well-known investors, senior researchers, etc. attended the event.

FarCon Asia officially opened at The Art House in Singapore at 10 am on the 17th. The meeting was divided into two agendas. The morning session consisted of a conversation between Base protocol head Jesse, Tako founder Tony, Farcaster protocol founder Dan and Farcaster KOL Ted. BlockBeats reported all the wonderful speeches of the guests. Related reading: "Jesse: Paving the way for creators, Asia is now a hot spot for on-chain innovation | Dialogue with the front line", "Farcaster founder: Warpcast will reduce registration fees and encourage more personalized voice | Dialogue with the front line"

The afternoon meeting agenda consisted of five high-quality panels, including A16Z crypto investment partner Jane Lippencott, DWF Labs executive partner Andrei Grachev, and Dragonfly partner Cheryl Chan. BlockBeats has compiled the core content of this roundtable discussion, hoping to help social application developers and audiences. The following is the content of the conversation:

Roundtable theme: Building a decentralized social network - opportunities and challenges

a16z Crypto Partner: Early projects need to have clear stakeholder groups, Farcaster has an advantage in user diversity

a16z Crypto Partner Jane Lippencott:

For early projects, a united community may be needed to gain initial traction, and the quality of the community's content is also very important. Only when the project has very clear stakeholders in this field, and their connections are coherent and high-quality, will the project have a stronger sense of attachment and higher usage.

I personally think that user diversity is very important, and looking at what Twitter has achieved, you will find that they have the potential for user diversity. I agree that users don't necessarily care whether they own their own data, but I think users can get a lot of benefits if their data is owned by a network and can be accessed through different client experiences. I think what's more important is the experience that any developer can build with the network. The Farcaster ecosystem has done very well.

Tako Lianchuang: Decentralized social projects will bypass many traditional methods, and token incentives are a new way for creators to earn income that is worth exploring

Tako Protocal co-founder Tony:

The key to Farcaster is the use of encryption technology, which will bypass many traditional methods. In the traditional ecosystem, if you are a creator on TikTok, you should be able to charge more than 30% of the fees from the platform. I think this is also feasible in an open network. Such problems can be solved to a certain extent by incentivizing tokens. You hold these tokens and ensure that other values are brought into the network. Therefore, I think this is the root reason for our exploration, that is, using token incentives instead of using fair cash.

Roundtable theme: Strategy and inspiration for online social discussion

STEPN Lianchuang: Profit model and user growth are crucial to products, and AI still needs to be explored

STEPN Lianchuang Yawn Rong:

When a project becomes popular only because of token incentives, it usually ends up being worthless. Maybe we can discuss why you would want to own something on the chain besides token incentives? No one can figure out how to get users to spend money on products, and if they don't spend money on products, it means that the products don't meet the standards they are willing to spend money on. Based on the analysis of the past 3 years, I think it takes very strong growth to do this. If you maintain operations for a period of time, you will have key users, and their consumption will increase accordingly.

I think for most AI companies, they can't figure out what to do with their products and how to make money. I don't think that combining blockchain or cryptocurrency can solve this problem. So I'm not saying that I'm not optimistic about AI. Maybe in the next 10 to 20 years, AI will dominate, but we need to figure out how this technology will develop. The first is how to monetize, and the second is how to grow. For AI companies, they are just burning investors' money, although it is still in the early stages.

Taiko Social and Game Director: Web3 games should be patient to polish the quality, and playing games for token incentives is not a long-term solution

Taiko Social and Game Director Pigi:

There are indeed problems with many current token economics, but this is another topic. It cannot be denied that direct rewards are very effective in games. I think raising funds directly from other projects is also a very effective thing. For example, Black Myth: Wukong took 7 years to develop, and the team even set up another department to release mobile games, just to fund the development of Black Myth: Wukong itself. If you can get these funds in advance from a community that supports your project, it will be much easier.

In the past, the industry habit was to launch products quickly, with very short product cycles, but games take several years, especially good games, so we should be patient and wait for quality. In addition, I think a very important point is not to set the entry barrier too high. If you dare to sell your NFT for 0.4 ETH without a product, it really won’t work. Even if you need to raise funds, you should lower the threshold for buyers.

For example, it costs $70 to buy a game like Black Myth: Wukong, but it’s really great. So why should I spend $1,000 (0.4 ETH) to buy something that only has a trailer? And maybe I have to wait three years to join the private test, and I may have to have the right NFT. People spend a lot of time playing games, and their life time is precious. Time is money, so rewards are a good supplement. But if a token or incentive is the main purpose of playing games, it is missing the point.

Roundtable theme: Meme and NFT also have dreams

DWF Labs partner: Meme coin is a culture related to people, and it is worth learning from for all those who hope to make successful projects

Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner, DWF Labs:

Projects that look really good and promising. I think there is about a 95% chance that new tokens will be launched. When you invest in normal projects, you need to wait (for them to launch coins), which may be months or even years. But here in Meme Coin, you can receive feedback almost immediately. Meme Coin is a cultural structure that is related to people. If we talk about the culture of success, people should understand this.

Who is behind the project and how you can use all the resources you have to make it successful. I believe this is exactly where we need to focus. I think Meme Coin is a perfect example that you need to have a community, you need to have traders, you need to be able to inject liquidity, you need to be connected with trading platforms, and you need to be creative enough to create something that people like.

Head of Community and Partnership at Yuga Labs: The word NFT is outdated, and projects are trying to rebrand

Tina, Head of Community and Partnership at Yuga Labs:

I think the word NFT is definitely outdated, I think so. NFT projects need to be rebranded, and I think we are seeing different attempts at "rebranding" from projects, but digital identity and digital ownership will not disappear. As for where it is going, I can talk about what we do at Yuga Labs and how we see people getting involved in NFT purchases.

If you are an Ape creator, you want to use your Ape intellectual property to do business. To this end, we launched a project called Mede by Apes. For me, on this road, NFT is just getting started. Reviewing roadmaps is a tricky thing, and we've seen a lot of other teams whose roadmap promises have not been fulfilled. But you need to really pay attention to the team behind it, who is holding, the team's ability to deliver, and how the investment you see is reinvested into the community.

BlockBeats Note: "Made by Apes" is an IP (intellectual property) tool launched by Yuga Labs. Members can apply for unique on-chain licenses, register businesses or products (such as clothing, food, games, music, etc.). In addition, the platform can also be used to verify and distinguish authentic products produced by BAYC and MAYC holders.