1. What does it mean to have a discussion around decentralized social network?
1.1）How to Understand Social Interactions?
Social interactions is an instinct of human beings as social animals. We try to connect with others and establish relationships through information transmission, interaction, material and spiritual exchanges. In this process, a single individual cannot have social behaviours on one’s own.
There must be some form of medium to carry out these contents. The most direct and simple way is face-to-face communication, and our voices and expressions are the carriers. However, this way of socializing is greatly limited by space and time as we can only interact within small circles or small groups of people.
1.2）The Social Environment We Live in Today
To some extent, the development of information technology represents the change of human social behaviour. From carrier pigeons to Blackberry devices, to the Internet and today’s mobile Internet, we have established an efficient social system, of which the biggest contribution is made by social tools and platforms managed by major tech giants.
Many huge platforms abuse our data information and privacy. It is now a social norm that our data rights do not belong to us, ironically by our own hands.
Social platforms are like empty plots of land without people, as more people join the network and contribute to this space, it becomes more developed and interconnected. As more of the user’s network contribute to this, more people join the network and more information and data is given. This then creates a vicious cycle of contribution because these contributions are not attributed to the people, but to the platform.
1.3）The Hope for Decentralization
At the base level, we hope to have choice and autonomy, which we usually refer to as freedom. We want to truly own what we "have", to freely disclose what we want to disclose, to choose to give what we want to give, and paradoxically, we always thought that these things belonged to us.
This is almost impossible to achieve in a centralized network. When the profit behind the behaviour is much higher than the cost, the for-profit organization will inevitably exploit the situation because it has never been up to us in the first place.
Decentralized social networking is a new social system based on the decentralized identity (DID). Among them, users have their own asset sovereignty, an open credit system, controllable data privacy, and multidimensional identity portraits. We can freely choose where and the kind of speech to publish, and types of permissions to open. Additionally, no one can tamper with or influence our choice.
1.4）The Predicaments of the Decentralized World
While all of this looks wonderful and exciting, the overall decentralized environment and system are still in the early stages of construction, and decentralized social networks are also facing bottlenecks. The most common problems are "user traffic" and "application scenarios".
a. User Traffic
Years of operation and accumulation of centralized social applications have formed extremely strong user habits and stickiness, which becomes a hefty migration cost. These migrations not only face the loss of assets but also also individual migration alone has no social significance Therefore, the transition and transfer of existing social relationships becomes the first barrier to traffic.
Almost any social interaction depends on the network effect, especially in the case of decentralized social networking. In the context of unified identity at the bottom layer and unlimited applications at the upper layer, network effects can increase decentralized social interaction at an incredibly exponential rate. However, at present, the overall web3 user base is small and the barrier to entry is high, which makes it difficult to accumulate network effects in the early stage, thereby becoming the second barrier to traffic.
b. Application Scenarios
In addition to the user traffic problem, the lack of application scenarios is also the pain faced by developing decentralized social networks. Although most of us yearn for freedom, in reality our perception of "being trapped" is not as high as we imagine. Therefore, when most of the social scenarios have been satisfied by traditional applications, we are not as motivated to actively migrate. A large number of past X2E failure cases are enough to show that “profit” motives cannot support an application scenario.
When we look back at the evolution of the Web2 social platform, we see that social games played a critical role in traffic acquisition during the platform's growth phase. Therefore, we believe that in the Web3 world, games will also be a growth driver for social traffic.
2. The Fusion of Decentralized Social & Games
Games attract users to join by constructing brand-new world views. Through games, we can experience and feel a completely different, even divorced from reality experience and life. Social interaction may not be necessary in games. There are many excellent consoles and independent games on the market that allow players to immerse themselves in it.
However, it has to be acknowledged that social network is a naturally fit for games. Like social tools, games themselves have the ability to break through the limitations of time and space to establish links with others. Meanwhile, life and activities in different worlds also become the perfect scenario to establish connections with others.
We can see many proven cases in traditional online games, such as the World of Warcraft with its grand background and opposing alliances. With the game’s development coupled with its social elements, we establish various new relationships with others in game events such as friends, brothers, mentors and apprentices, and even lovers, and these relationships lead to more interactions in the game, such as team-up dungeons, PK, gang battles etc.
In addition, we can also see younger games like Fortnite, which not only de-emphasises in-game competition and enhances social entertainment, but also amplifies social events, bringing real-life revelries to the game world with musicians such as Marshmello and Travis Scott. This kind of virtual but real connection and experience is unforgettable for everyone who has experienced it. Therefore, integrating "social" and "game" will be something worth looking forward to in the future.
2.1）The Key is to Unlock Interoperability
The existence of games as a centralized operation is not immune to the problems of property ownership and data silos, which affects both the player's game and social experience. Therefore, decentralized games have emerged to solve this problem with NFTs and Tokens, which allows players to completely own their assets. Hence, even if the game is shut down, the player's experience and possessions will not disappear.
Although the reality is so for an isolated game, however if the player holds an NFT asset, the value of that asset will be wiped out as soon as the game goes down because there is no other use for it. Therefore, the ultimate goal of almost every mainstream GameFi is to start from the "Metaverse", that is, all the output of the game has strong "interoperability" — assets and data can move freely between “universes”. It is only under these conditions that game assets have long-term value.
2.2）GameFi+DID = GameID
To achieve this, players need to have a universal identity format, specifically the game version of DID, which records the players' experience, reputation, assets and achievements in various games. At the same time, due to the versatility of decentralized identity, the social relations associated with this identity can also be freely brought into different games. We'll refer to this ID as a GameID, which along with other identity data, forms a complete DID profile of the user.
To better understand GameID, you can quickly refer to the previously popular "Loot". Loot belongs to a special kind of GameID, and each Loot represents a set of identities that contains 8 pieces of item each person own, including shoes, rings, helmet etc., which can be used to freely move between different games and applications in the Loot ecosystem. The same identity may have completely different images for different experiences. However, it is also confined to the Loot ecosystem (more on Loot later). GameID is akin to a more open Loot that runs through the entire GameFi ecosystem.
At the same time, leveraging on GameID/ DID, we can also achieve social interaction outside of the game. In traditional games, once players are offline, they can no longer be connected, thus giving rise to out-of-game social tools such as Discord, which allows players to maintain social interaction even when they are offline or in other games. However, in the context of decentralization, we believe that this need can be completely replaced by common decentralized social tools, which allow us to interact socially with our work partners and gaming friends without having to switch accounts and platforms.
Additionally, with the aid of GameID/DID, we can also facilitate socializing beyond gaming. In traditional games, once the player logs off, they become inaccessible, leading to the products of external social tools like Discord to allow players to maintain social connections even when they are offline or engaged in other games.
However, a universal decentralized social tool can fulfill such a need in the decentralized environment. This would enable users to simultaneously socialize with work colleagues and gaming friends without switching between accounts and platforms.
3. Unfolding Integrations and Future Possibilities
In the previous segment, we discussed various aspects of decentralized social networking and the game scenarios that fit well. In the current web3 environment, many interesting ideas have cross-pollinated around the propositions of "social" and "games". Here is a brief overview of the current projects that we think are representative/ interesting grouped by categories:
3.1）Web2 Friendly Wallet Solution
The whole web3 industry highly anticipates the integration of Social and Gaming, which history tells us that they have the most potential for early massive adoption.
However, as discussed, the high barrier of entry prevents this from happening. Users need to be educated about Externally-owned Account (EOA) wallets and ensure they do not lose their private keys — the retrieval process is fatal for any user-experience-focused industries.
In response, new wallet solutions have emerged. These projects offer developers SDKs to embed smart contract wallets or Multi-party Computation (MPC) wallets, which do not require mnemonic phrases into their App. Thus, applications or games are able to quickly deploy a user-friendly built-in wallet to facilitate the onboarding of web2 users and providing them with the servers based on address, such as p2p private chatting, web3 feeding etc.
In addition, with the composability of smart contract wallets, many features can be achieved within a wallet, for instance connecting to multiple EOA accounts to form a more comprehensive profile, social recovery, etc.
Typical projects include:
a. Sequence https://sequence.app/auth
Sequence provides users with a seamless web3 wallet to access Ethereum-compatible networks, and a powerful web3 infrastructure stack for developers that makes it easy to build web3 apps and games. Designed as a modular web3 system focused on open standards, compatibility and interoperability, developers can use just one of the modules or the entire stack.
Although it is not yet compliant with EIP-4337, Sequence has established notable partnerships. As their founding team members came from a game studio (Horizon, the founding team of Skyweaver), they are mainly focusing on gaming areas, including Skyweaver, Cyball, Dark Earth, NiftySwap, CoolCats and a few other games, which is supported by 7 chains with over 700k wallets created.
b. Web3Auth https://web3auth.io/
Web3Auth is a pluggable auth infrastructure for Web3 wallets and applications. It streamlines the onboarding of both mainstream and crypto native users to under a minute by providing experiences that they're most comfortable with. With support for all social logins (Google/ Facebook etc.), web & mobile native platforms, wallets and other key management methods; Web3Auth is a standard cryptographic key provider specific to the user and application.
In addition, Web3Auth recently published the MPC solution — developers can easily deploy or whitelabel a built-in MPC wallet, which supports multiple chains without the need for users to manage the seed phrases.
c. Openfort https://www.openfort.xyz/
Openfort is also a smart contract wallet solution, which provides game developers the tools to use the blockchain without disrupting user experience.
Unlike Sequence, Openfort is based on EIP-4337, which removes the need for centralized relayers to start transactions on Ethereum while providing a lower cost and latency solution. By the inherent properties of smart contract wallets, Openfort enables players to enjoy a gasless web3 experience without any concerns of losing seed phrases.
Currently, Openfort is partnering with game studios such as Alterverse, Parcel, Vulcano etc.
d. Argent https://www.argent.xyz/
Unlike those mentioned above, Argent is a consumer-direct smart contract wallet application, and it appears to be the first smart wallet for Ethereum. It provides users easy access to dapps and security features such as recovery without seed phrases, trusted contacts and multisig.
Argent is also available on Layer2 like zkSync, and with the new publish ArgentX, users could also freely explore StarkNet via smart contract wallets.
3.2）Web3 Gamer Profile, Identity and Behaviour
The idea for this type of project is as described in this article — to grasp the most critical part of GameID/Gamer Profile.
The typical process would be to aggregate, process and visualize the player's on-chain/ off-chain game interaction data, in-game assets, and contributions to the game. This can enrich the dimension of DID and also serve as proof of property rights declaration, value accumulation, reputation and skills within the GameFi ecosystem.
However, while the identity data is generated by the user, the information generated by the profile in the early stage is not very meaningful to the player. Therefore, the primary audience of GameID are game studios and guilds, who can use GameID to better screen, analyze, capture and motivate players.
Therefore, the current GameID project is often presented in the form of platform, similar to the GameFi version of Project Galaxy. In addition to providing value to users through other content, it continues to work with more game parties/guilds to obtain more data interfaces, thus creating a positive flywheel.
Typical projects include:
a. Cartridge https://cartridge.gg/
Cartridge is a platform that allow users to build a reputation within the gaming community by completing tasks in different games. The unique names and avatars used by users on Cartridge help foster a sense of community and facilitate the building of social bonds with other members.
Cartridge creates a social graph that users can use to see the games that their friends are playing, conversations in the community, and new games being released. Meanwhile, it also aims to create a seamless user experience for on-chain gaming by using WebAuthn and Pass Keys to save passkeys in platform accounts (iCloud Keychain), making it easy for any user to play web3 games.
b. DeQuest https://beta.dequest.io/quests
DeQuest is a GameID platform based on the Quest system. It has a very interesting gamification design, which allows the user's GameID to be presented in the form of an avatar (this image can be used to enter the sandbox in the future), and the equipment and skills can be unlocked during the completion of the quest.
Overall, the user experience is seamless. They have a very comprehensive tutorial for beginners and high-quality content production, with a much larger volume of tutorial quests than other similar projects. The content production is very professional, which can effectively help players lower the barrier of entry to games with complex mechanisms.
The data coverage of GameID is relatively complete, including Web2 (connected to Steam data), on-chain data, and in-game data (the Trophies section allows players to share in-game data from partners for achievement distribution). At present, 122 games have been listed on the DeQuest platform (as of early August, most of the games have been hidden recently), 10 of which have systematic Quest tasks.
The GameID on DeQuest is presented in the form of a MetaPassport which will be dynamic NFT aggregating data both from on-chain achievements of players as well as their previous history in gaming from web2 platforms. You can already earn Soulbound NFTs as Badges for completing large Quests and as Trophies for completing unique game-focused activities.
DeQuest will focus on building new streams of value creation for players with reputation based on the MetaPassport, including new Distribution mechanism and direct earning opportunities. In 2023 they plan to build the first protocol for interoperability between guilds, influencers, gaming communities and Games.
c. Carv https://carv.io/home ****
Carv is a GameID platform that is based on an achievement system. Interestingly, it calculates a user's reputation score based on their past on-chain data. The rendering of its overall GameID is also based on this reputation score + earned SBT. The platform will capture the data on the chain to verify the users' achievements, and if the conditions are met, the corresponding soul tokens (SBT) can be received.
The platform provides social data analysis for List projects, allowing players to discover potential and popular games easily and concurrently track the latest social trends of the games they follow. The platform also has an INO section, which allows the game to be launched as an NFT, but this section is more dependent on the BD capabilities of the project, of which there have only been 10 releases so far.
d. Arche https://arche.network/home
With the first two projects centered on the user, Arche has shifted its focus towards the enterprise side and guilds. As there is no demo available at present, the final product is still pending the official announcement. However, according to the information on the official website, it can be understood that it has an SDK that can help the game project party to quickly open a mall — similar to the Steam game release mode, and players can purchase and trade the assets of the game in the game party's mall.
In terms of GameID, it primarily focuses on information aggregation and game asset display. It can also present the user's past rate of return in the GameFi field, which is very useful for finding and following smart money.
A standout feature of Arche is its partnership with prominent game guilds like YGG, Avocado, and GoodGame to form an alliance. This grand alliance promises to develop a range of functions and rights in the future, which is very exciting.
e. Soulbound https://soulbound.gg/
Soulbound is also a GameID platform with an achievement system. There is no demo yet, but according to the official website, it can be inferred to have excellent in-game data access. Players can upgrade their reputation by completing certain in-game achievements and get token rewards, and the guild connections within the platform appear to be relatively strong.
The more intriguing feature is that any individual can post a quest on the platform and offer NFTs or tokens as rewards. The project raised a $3.6 million seed round of financing led by Animoca in June this year.
f. Lysto https://lysto.io/
Lysto is also a GameID protocol that focuses on the player’s data, enabling the player to obtain digital certificates on-chain, and using this certificate to demonstrate their skills to find partners or participate in competitions. According to the project, the highlight is that traditional game players can also verify their credentials through the protocol, which has strong data aggregation for web2 games.
The project is currently being tested on Polygon, and in the future it will expand from Solana, ImmutableX, and Flow to almost all blockchains. The project closed a US$12 million Series A funding round from Tiger Global in August.
Summary
GameID is a relatively hot category at the moment with both private parties and VCs covertly working on their ventures. Mainstream projects usually choose to focus on one or two aspects of players, project parties or guilds. The aforementioned Carv, DeQuest, Soulbound caters to the player’s experience; while P12, which has set off a wave of upsurge, focuses on lowering the publishing barrier of on-chain games for studios and game developers. On the other hand, projects like Arche, Guildly, and Tavern prioritize the guild experience. Although the focus of each project is slightly different, the ultimate goal is to achieve an effective and organic integration of web2, on-chain and in-game data.
We envision users being able to display their ladder rankings and rare NFT weapons on Twitter, with these achievements earning them unique rights in the game. As gamers ourselves, we are really looking forward to seeing top-notch projects emerge.
3.3） Identity Protocol & Ecosystem
Unlike GameID, which is often presented in the form of a platform or application, Identity Protocols present a more fundamental infrastructure with a broader scope than GameID. They aim to improve upon an existing or create a new ecosystem by applying their protocols. In comparison to Game Profile projects, which are only for the gaming vertical, Identity Protocols have more excellent compatibility and combinability. As protocol, they even have the potential to be compatible and integrated with GameID projects to achieve better synergistic effects.
Typical projects include:
a. Starknet.id https://www.starknet.id/#info
Starknet.id is an all-in-one identity system on StarkNet that allows users to mint their StarkNet identity with the suffix .stark for free and link their own web2 accounts (i.e. Twitter, Discord, Github, etc.). At the same time, Stark.id and ENS are interoperable. Every .stark domain owner gets a free .eth domain name on Ethereum, and every .eth owner gets a free .stark domain name on StarkNet. Many projects (not just gamefi) have started to use Starknet.id to log in, including Loot Realm, Cartridge, Carbonable, Onlydust, Mintsquare, Eykar, Imperium Wars, Frends Lands, Early Starkers, and more. In the future, Next.ID (https://next.id) will also be connected to StarkNet.ID to integrate various game account IDs and serve as the root node to bind identities between games, social networking and other platforms.
StarknetID’s recent launch has attracted more than 15,000 people who purchased over 30,000 domains.
b. The Rift (Hyper XP) https://rift.live/
The Rift (HyperXP) is a game identity protocol that enables Web3 project developers to implement a trustless, decentralized XP system on-chain to recognize and reward user activity and engagement (gameplay, governance voting, community participation).
Originally intended to be the Loot universe's identity/ experience system, the Rift has evolved beyond the Loot ecosystem — from the various CC0 NFT to the entire Web3 world. For Web3 projects, implementing a shared on-chain XP system can motivate, identify and reward the most active and engaged users and build bridges with other projects in the broader Hyperverse. For the user, a well-designed XP system can reward participation with value, such as unlocking mints, gaining privileges, discovering hidden entrances, getting airdrops, etc.
c. Next.ID next.id https://next.id/
Next.ID is a decentralized identity aggregation protocol that aims to provide users with a comprehensive and verifiable identity database, while also giving them full ownership of their identities. The protocol integrates all Web2 and Web3 digital identities and offers Decentralized-Identity-As-A-Service (DIaaS).
Next.ID's identity infrastructure aggregates users' identities into Avatars, which serve as a primary point of interaction with any app or dApp. These Avatars are independent from Web2 and Web3 and utilize a blockchain-like model to maintain data integrity, allowing Next.ID to connect to all Web2 and Web3 platforms and unify them into a single decentralized identifier (DID).
The protocol also includes three services: ProofService, which uses cryptography to ensure data integrity through a blockchain-like model; KVService, which organizes and structures the data provided by users; and RelationService, which enables comprehensive identity queries and social use cases, as well as integration with external protocols.
In addition, Next.ID is committed to full transparency with ProofService and its history fully visible on Arweave. It offers a valuable solution for open-source developers and projects looking to innovate and build dApps, as well as for users seeking to manage and control their digital identities.
3.4） Social Components for Games: Cross-Platform Social
Unlike GameID, which focuses on game data and player identities based on the data, this type of project is more inclined towards identity-based social networking. It is not necessarily limited to game scenarios, but it is indeed a very effective social complementary tool, similar to Discord, WeChat, and Whatsapp. etc., but with stronger cross-platform interoperability.
Typical projects include:
a. XMTP https://xmtp.org/
XMTP is a project that started to work on the web3 communication protocol much earlier. The protocol aims to establish a unified and decentralized receiving system that can be used by all dApps. It can be simply understood as a decentralized xmpp. Users can use applications with embedded XMTP clients to send and receive encrypted XMTP messages and authenticate using a wallet signature. Messages can be effectively encrypted and spam can be prevented, although the protocol only supports peer-to-peer messaging currently.
b. Web3MQ https://www.web3mq.com/
Web3MQ is an open source decentralized secure communication protocol, dedicated to becoming an encrypted native communication infrastructure. It has been extended and improved in terms of XMTP, providing an all-in-one communication solution that includes push, chat and community functions.
At the same time, Web3MQ is also compatible with a wide range of social identity and social graph protocols, using communication protocols as a bridge to unlock the potential of each social relationship. It also introduces the existing Web3 ecosystem, including web3 storage (e.g. IPFS) and computing (e.g. Internet computers) as a complement to the messaging ecosystem. In addition, users can achieve higher levels of privacy protection and other personalized features through custom configurations. Compared with the current web3 communication protocol, Web3MQ is a relatively matured protocol in terms of functions.
Web3MQ is in deep discussions with Starknet.id, Loot's core game realm, and Argent (major wallet solution for Starknet).
c. Swapchat https://www.web3messaging.online/SwapChat/
Swapchat is an address based, cross-social instant messaging application plug-in. As a plug-in, it can simultaneously support instant chat on Opensea, Twitter, Discord and more. When you find a favourite game equipment NFT on the OS, one-to-one or group chats can be initiated directly through Swapchat, and the conversation can be extended to other web2 social platforms, which is very useful and practical for fragmented exchanges such as high-frequency game asset transactions and impromptu game strategy discussions.
d. Beoble https://www.beoble.io/
Unlike Swapchat, which focuses on cross-platform application features, Beoble makes social features into APIs and SDKs that allows any project to efficiently access and improve its own social scenario through modular features such as profile, feed stream, and real-time private chat. It's a handy tool for game/ project owners looking to build their own social ecosystem.
e. MetaForo https://metaforo.io/
MetaForo is a forum-like project that currently has its own platform and can be embedded in other applications to create decentralized forums/ discussion boards. The combination of games and forums is a mature model that has been tested and proven for a long time. Whether it is Taptap which has been around for years or the Steam’s discussion board, it has been embraced by a large number of players. Unlike real-time chat, which requires a higher level of online status, the forum discussion board provides group social interaction with a longer topic cycle, which can meet more game discussion needs, although currently there are relatively few projects working on this.
f. Party Protocol
Party Protocol is a platform that aims to resolve issues with group purchases of blue-chip NFTs. It provides on-chain functionality for group coordination and a trustless crowdfunding contract that allows users to crowdfund and purchase NFTs.
Participants in the contract receive voting rights based on their contribution and receive on-chain NFTs that can be used to create proposals or delegate votes. These on-chain NFTs are also transferable, allowing new users to buy a share of an NFT from other users rather than participating in a new purchase proposal. This offers a solution for those who are unable to afford blue-chip NFTs on their own and want to pool their resources with friends to purchase one.
g. Guildly https://alpha.guildly.xyz
Guildly is a guild system built on StarkNet that provides a "blank canvas" guild contract, which allows players to securely share game props and each other's statuses. Guildly allows token holders to share their NFT and receive revenue from it, while users can also use the NFTs of other members of their guild. Guildly is building a suite of additional features and plugins to give guilds more flexibility and customization when designing the architecture and interoperability of games. Guildly's shared account protocol will allow players to securely share assets, expanding user base while retaining core game mechanics. Guildly’s first game partnership is with Loot Realm.
g. RSS3 https://rss3.io/
With cross-network indexing, social network support, and capitalized ownership, RSS3 aims to become the backbone of future social, content, and gaming applications. As an information dissemination protocol for Web3 with the core elements of feed and search, it defines the format of information presence and communication in an elegantly designed and user-friendly content format. Users are able to easily access a variety of content sources in a uniform format without the need for extensive compatibility logic.
RSS3’s pioneering applications included Cheers and Revery. The former was initially named Web3 Pass, it was the first cross-platform profile dApp for Web3 and supported indexing data from different networks. The latter was released after RSS3 prenode was able to power its first aggregated feed of Web3, it showcased the possibility of building out social media with activities from different decentralized networks. Both later consolidated and became an enhanced version of rss3.io — beyond a portal for developer docs, it has watch and reader features, which allows users to keep track of addresses easily. Further, activity-focused profiles now come with any ENS or address searched.
3.5）NFT Communities-based Games
NFT itself has strong social attributes, especially PFP projects. Holders use PFP to show their identities. Although the project has established a certain community network through operations in the early stage, these are generally not practical due to the lack of actual application scenarios. Therefore, games that allow access to various NFTs have emerged.
By providing a complete game world, players can import their own NFT assets into the game and use them as characters, leveraging the community network built by the NFT project party. At the same time, it can also allow the project party to consolidate and activate the atmosphere in their own community. For players, it not only increases the usage value of NFT, but also extends its social scenario.
Typical projects include:
Arcade is the most classic project in this category. Although it was launched as a land NFT project, it has emphasized its social attributes from the very beginning. The holders have their own space and can invite friends for social chat and play various mini-games. The core feature is that players can use their own NFTs to interact and compete with each other, which greatly improves the gameplay and compatibility compared to BAYC vs. MAYC in the early years.
Early on, Arcade managed to attract a wave of buzz and traffic by collaborating with well-known communities such as BAYC, Azuki, and Punk, which is what makes this project successful.
2,000 out of 10,000 pieces were left for public sale on April 2 this year, which was sold out within half an hour. At that time, gas prices soared to more than 2,000wei. In the following week, the weekly trading volume reached the top of the OS list, with the smallest land offering priced at 0.25E and the highest at 1.04E.
However, for projects such as Arcade that use land NFT as a social carrier, NFT plays the role of an amplifier, which means that when the market is hot, it can help drive more traffic to the project; but conversely when the market is bleak, NFT attributes will also make the project fare worse. As of August 27th, the floor price of Arcade is only 0.17E and although the largest plot is priced around 11E, the daily trading volume is poor.
Nevertheless, Arcade is still a very noteworthy project, and it is indeed one of the few social games that can support NFT interoperability.
b. Worldwide Webb https://webb.game/
Worldwide Webb is a much more OG project than Arcade, which depicts a much larger ecosystem. It uses NFT to build elements including characters, pets, props, quests, etc. More intuitively speaking, it positions itself as an MMORPG. However, in contrast to the similarly positioned Treeverse, the key is that Arcade brings other NFT's into the world as personal characters to interact with.
Worldwide Webb's land NFT was launched on November 29, 2021, with a total of 9,508 pieces issued. The issue prices of different room types are 0.069E, 0.12E, 0.24E, and 1E respectively. With the team's continuous delivery commitments and the public’s pursuit of land and social projects, the floor price peaked at 2.84E at the end of February this year.
Despite the current market slowdown, its floor price still maintained at around 0.35E, partly due to the positive and continuous delivery results of the project. In Q1 2022, it launched a friend list and chat function that supports wallet addresses/ ENS, as well as an Alpha version of a Pokemon style combat system. Further, in Q2 2022, it launched an Alpha version of a Mario Kart-style PvP game, building a lot of confidence in the community.
c. Loot Ecosystem
Over a year ago, Dom delivered an on-chain masterpiece to the world — Loot. An NFT collection that has become a center of gravity for a decentralized world-building community, Loot was intentionally left as text only, without any visualization, as a way to leave the whole world to the imagination. With Loot as the Canonical Foundation, the Lootverse was born: a decentralized collective of thousands of developers, creators, writers, and fans building a fictional fantasy world with games, multimedia, and more.
We believe that Loot is a public good for the Web3 ecosystem: it is a bridge for writers, creators, musicians and builders into Web3 and acts as a canvas to experiment with the power of decentralized collaboration. It’s a way to “turn on multiplayer mode” for their creative work.
c1. Loot Realms
Realms started out as the land for the Lootverse but has since evolved into Civilization — a fully onchain game with land serving as the basic unit. It has established itself as the flagship game of the Lootverse that will incorporate most of the Loot ecosystem’s composable innovations including genesis adventurer, crypts and caverns, the OG loot, etc.
Realm is also adding or in discussions with a lot of identity protocol projects with social components. This includes StarkNet.ID and The Rift (Hyper XP) as the ID and domain name solution; Web3mq as the communication and notification solution; and Guildly as the multiplayer guild solution, etc.
c2. Genesis Adventurers
A Genesis Adventurer is an NFT (ERC721) representing one of the 2,540 original adventurers in the Loot Universe. These Genesis Adventurers (AKA “Genesis Loot” bags) can be minted from wallets carrying a perfect set of 8 Genesis Mana mint passes, one GM for each item type (Weapon, Head, Hand, etc), all from the same Order (of the Fox, of Brilliance, etc). When a player summons the spirit of a Genesis Adventurer, the player receives their Genesis Loot bag. This Genesis Loot bag entitles the player to special privileges, Adventure Time ($ATIME), GA characters, quests, rewards, access, community, and the power to steer the overall Genesis Project. You can name it to your liking and play it across various Loot ecosystem games.
This is no easy feat as putting together the 8 pieces require multiple conversations with other Loot holders especially if you want a specific rare item, which could be hard to come by and would require both IRL network and on-chain/ social media forensics. It is an elaborated process of figuring out the pieces you want first before finding the owner’s address/ ENS and searching for them across Twitter/ Discord, etc, and finally direct messaging them. While it is a hassle, it definitely shows why Web3 native social network is a necessity. This process led us to meet the founder of PartyDAO/ Party Protocol, and could have partly inspired their current product.
c3. Banners for Loot
Banners was inspired by Loot and is designed to be the society and politics layer for the community. Like the original Loot project, it has not been prescribed how Banners will be incorporated into other projects. Though the creation of strengths, combinations and interplay between Banners is a source of creativity, inspiration and ideas. Banners aims to bring life to everyone else in the realm.
Banners’ guiding principle has always been, who else is in the Lootverse? Who are the non-Adventurous? In a world that has warriors, surely there are other people and places to defend. If there are hunters, there must also be farmers. And as one of our earliest supporters opined, ‘If there are kings, then there are kingmakers.’
With that as the guiding principle, Banners set out to create the foundation of everyone else in the Lootverse. Banners are meant to be built on and integrated with other projects. It's an organisational layer that has been designed to incorporate game-theory and interplay.
Each Banner has hundreds of connections to other Banners; owning one opens you to a long list of possibilities. In future, the act of “calling one’s Banners” could be used within a LARP, for a collaborative quest, for governance, or in one of a vast variety of games. LARP games could also be a very cozy way to spend time with your friends.
Putting the Lootverse together can give you a good overview of what a composable gaming future could look like with the help of the social components.
d. Sonar https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1512829586
Sonar is a San Francisco-based NFT Mobile Game and Social Metaverse Developer where players build digital worlds, interact with user-created spaces using NFTs and be part of activities such as listening to music, playing games, and engaging with other users via custom “moji” NFTs.
It has recently been acquired by Aave Companies — an umbrella entity for various crypto projects such as the Aave, a lending and borrowing protocol; Lens Protocol, a Polygon-based decentralized social media protocol that lets users store their content as NFTs; and GHO, a stablecoin. The acquisition will see Lens’ decentralized profile system integrate with Sonar’s avatars – cutesy emojis called “mojis” – to create a singular identity within its metaverse. Players can log into the Sonar game using Lens.
Summary
On the whole, this model is very attractive to existing NFT projects with the idea of establishing interoperable game scenarios. Although judging from the current landscape, there has not yet been a game with phenomenal potential, but the relatively mature Worldwide Webb is still in the stage of continuous development of small scenarios. NFT itself is extremely malleable and we believe that with the development of NFT and GameFi, there will be more highly combinable and playable projects in this category, which is a good direction for NFT to land or socialize.
3.6）Social Mini Games/ Display
This category revolves around the existing social relationships of users, stimulating players to share through light-weight and interesting mini-games with a certain degree of provocation. For instance: Farmville, Trivia Royale, Bitmoji Party, etc.
However, in the current web3 environment, there has not been a relatively large-scale traffic aggregation platform, so they still rely more on web2 social platforms. Though, with the development of the DID social graph, there may be new presentation methods for these projects.
Typical projects include:
a. Mask Extension (Built-in Game Module) https://mask.io/
Mask itself is a social-centric web2 and web3 middleware. As a Twitter-based browser plug-in, it can make efficient use of users' original web2 social network to expand into many scenarios. The most similar models is FarmVille, a mini-game embedded in Facebook. In the Mask extension, we can also find similarities.
Although there is a game component in place, there is currently only one built-in game, and the gameplay is poor with the social attributes being difficult to demonstrate. We still need to look forward to more development and high-quality collaboration in the future and introduce more mini games that can go more viral and interesting. With the help of Twitter's traffic volume, we can leverage a social communication phenomenon based on web3.
Shil.me is an NFT display project, similar to QQ Zone in the past. Although its gameplay is weak, its NFT has strong display and social attributes, and it can complement social networks very well akin to QQ and QQ Zone, thus forming a unique ecosystem.
Summary
We believe that the original idea of social networking has a lot of room for expansion, and we will definitely see more excellent presentation forms in the future. FarmVille, Pokemon, QQ pets, etc. will all be high-quality product reference prototypes. The organic integration of NFT, social and games will inevitably form a strong explosive force.
3.7）Virtual Relationships Around AI
Relationships have always been at the core of social interaction, but in virtual time and space, they can spread from person to person on a much broader scenario, which may directly establish a unique 1-to-1 relationship with NPCs in games, or the opportunity for intelligent virtual pets to bond with others.
At the same time, one of the most attractive aspects of DID is that it does not limit the race of the identity subject, which allows AI to have a more complete presentation form. Perhaps most people are unable to imagine or accept a completely virtual relationship at present, but if AI has social intelligence that can match or even surpass human beings, can we really distinguish, or it is necessary to distinguish the real subject behind the DID?
Case in point, ChatGPT — a variant of OpenAI’s popular GPT3.5 language generation software that is designed to carry out authentic conversations with people, bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds in a way that was previously unimaginable. Trained on an enormous amount of text data with the ability to recognize patterns and produce its own text mimicking various styles; its features include answering follow-up questions, challenging incorrect premises, rejecting inappropriate queries and even admitting its mistakes. With its high scalability and ability to learn and adapt quickly to new information, it is highly raved as a game-changer for businesses/ large-scale applications that rely on nature language processing. GiroGiro (one of the project mentioned below) is building on top of ChatGPT.
Current projects of interest include:
a. GiroGiro.AI http://girogiro.ai/
GiroGiro is an AI project that aims to democratize the creation and value of AI. It plans to do this by building an AI engine that enables individuals to create their own AI based on open-source models and train new layers of bespoke AI.
The project will first focus on delivering conversational AI for dApps, which will enhance the interactivity and playability of these apps. It will also enable NPCs in games to have more intelligent and anthropomorphic lines that can adapt to different situations and moods.
Thereafter, GiroGiro will isolate its AI workflow as infrastructure to create an AI engine that allows users to create and own their own unique AI using verifiable zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML). It is expected that most AIs will eventually come from user-generated content (UGC), with the value of these AIs being returned to their creators.
GiroGiro is also working on establishing an on-chain AI identity for each NFT, which will endow these tokens with specific AI models and allow them to interact and create autonomously.
The AI model will have a binding relationship with the NFT, enabling the NFT to perform self-learning and training based on its interactions with users and evolve into a unique on-chain intelligent body. This will enable NFTs with successful works of art to transform their positioning from "proof of ownership" to "virtual idol" with AI capabilities, and increase their commercial value.
b. rct AI https://rct.ai/en-us/about
RCT.AI is a technology company that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create solutions for the gaming industry. It leverages AI computing power, particularly deep learning and reinforcement learning to provide dynamic and intelligent user experiences for both consumers and producers. The company has developed core technologies such as the Chaos Box algorithm and the Morpheus Cloud dream cloud platform, which are widely used by top games and web3 projects around the world. These technologies enable the creation of dynamic and personalized interactive games in real time across multiple scenarios, including gameplay, plot generation, NPC personalization, and character dialogue.
In addition to its focus on the gaming industry, RCT.AI also conducts research on AI and has developed an ecological layout centered around the concept of "virtual humans." This involves not only creating virtual humans with technology, but also endowing them with life, ability, freedom, and equal rights.
With a strong technical foundation and a cutting-edge business model, RCT.AI has gained extensive experience in the fields of science and technology, games, entertainment, and the metaverse and has amassed over 200 million users.
Overall, the company has created a comprehensive architecture that spans from underlying technology, representation NFT, interactive games to a deep ecosystem.
c. Soularis
Soularis is a virtual society that utilizes the latest AI technology and a virtual human system to create a digital world where both users and AI virtual humans can coexist and interact in the web3 era. It was co-founded by RCT.AI, a company specializing in AI technology, and Next Generation, a firm that focuses on virtual human ecosystem technology.
The goal of Soularis is to establish interconnectivity among virtual identities while following the principles of sustainability, self-growth, and scale in native virtual worlds. This means that users and AI virtual humans can travel to different virtual scenarios and participate in different lifestyles with the same identity and soul, allowing them to explore the concept of life and find their inner selves.
Soularis is equipped with a range of core technology solutions, including deep reinforcement learning and content production from RCT.AI, as well as the Virtual Beings System (VBS) developed by Next Generation.
The VBS is the first digital identity generation and universal system in China, and it serves as the foundation for the creation of truly independent digital avatars in China. This advanced technology enables comprehensive personalization, intelligence, and interoperability for virtual humans, thereby taking the virtual human industry to the next level of AI-driven personalized data interaction and multi-scenario data interoperability.
4. Conclusion
In the field of decentralized social networking and gaming, innovative and imaginative concepts continue to emerge, which generates promising projects where the two converge. This makes the existence of incubation platforms that can aid developers in connecting to the ecosystem and hastening their development vital.
Among these, MatchboxDAO stands out. Serving as the connector between on-chain games and the ecosystem within StarkNet, MatchboxDAO not only incubates and assists early game projects in integrating with ecological resources through Matchbox Spark; it also provides developers with a range of tools through Matchbox Studios. At the Hackathon, we also found many projects with interesting ideas.
It is evident that incubation platforms play a crucial role in the growth of Web3, and the $7.5 million raising of MatchboxDAO also proves that it is favoured by the capital market. It is believed that with the accumulation of resources, the influence of these connectors will be further enhanced.
This article presents a glimpse into the potential of these groundbreaking ideas, from the basic solution of the access layer to the thought-provoking virtual relationships. While it currently only scratches the surface, it is our hope that it will inspire further exploration and discussion.
We believe that the convergence of gaming and social networking will be a crucial development in overcoming the limitations of the current web3 landscape. It is only a matter of time before we see truly transformative applications emerge, and we eagerly look forward to the day when this potential is realized.
*Special thanks to my colleagues Daphne, Taylor @TianranZhang and Dov @dov_wo for translating and expanding the article!