Blockchain VCs love a good narrative and few are more compelling than SocialFi. The portmanteau combines the right buzzwords – social and finance – while remaining vague enough to constitute anything and everything.

To quote Chat GPT: “SocialFi, a combination of "Social" and "Finance," refers to a new paradigm in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space where social media and financial services intersect. It leverages decentralized finance (DeFi) principles to create platforms where users can interact, share content, and participate in financial activities in a decentralized manner.”

Just as every project was metaverse in the last cycle, it’s all SocialFi today. Your crypto bot has a share button? SocialFi. Your web3 game has PvP? SocialFi. Your memecoin launcher has a comments section? Yeah, you get the drift.

But it’s easy to hate on trends. There’s nothing wrong with bundling disparate projects into easily comprehensible buckets. We use taxonomy to make complex systems less taxing.

Similarly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the SocialFi label or with VCs courting projects that tick this box. But in the quest to anoint the first social finance titans, proponents appear to have overlooked something: the SocialFi revolution is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

Those in the crypto trenches, grinding it out in TG groups, Discord channels, and on CT know the reality: SocialFi is very much alive and it didn’t require VC checks or forced memes to create. Degens might not use the term, but they’re using the tools at their disposal to make SocialFi a working reality.

At Cielo, we see it all the time in the public lists users create and share with their fellow degens; in the custom bots they add to private trading groups; and in the wallet profiles they use to flex, debate, and emulate.

Signal + Social Consensus = SocialFi

Call it SocialFi; call it Onchain Social; call it apes aping together. Whatever you wanna label it, the social revolution is already here. Like the air we breathe and the memecoins we trade, it’s all around. If you’ve yet to discover it, you don’t need to fund it – you need to find it.