Moon Capital Report #1 — Subsocial Network
Subsocial, one of the 17 Substrate Builders Programs, is also supported by several Grants from the Web3 Foundation. Subsocial has launched its Web dApp social platform and launched its first Dapp in the social meta-universe, Polkaverse. Subsocial is the “Pioneer” of Polkadot social network ecosystem. We look forward to the subsequent launch of Subsocial’s independent mainnet and the gradual expansion of its social universe.
— — Moon Capital
Social platform projects have become increasingly popular within industrial investors in the primary market recently — — Nifty’s launched Nifty.com, an NFT social platform that brings digital collectibles to a mainstream audience. It produced a series of limited edition NFT in cooperation with Warner Bros., and received investment from Coinbase Ventures, Polychain and many other well-known institutions；Only1, an NFT social platform based on the Solana ecosystem, received strategic investment from Animoca Brands, among others.
In Polkadot Ecosystem, there are few social projects and Subsocial Network can be regarded as the “pioneer”. Subsocial was one of 17 early projects handpicked by Parity to participate in the Substrate Builders Program and was supported by the Web3 Foundation’s third round of Grants.
Subsocial Introduction
SubSocial was developed by the decentralized extensible protocol DappForce team. It is a decentralized open platform for social networking based on Substrate and IPFS, with upgradability (Substrate) and review resistance (IPFS). Subsocial accepts its users to use any cryptocurrency supported by Polkadot ecosystem. Users can think of SubSocial as a decentralized version of Reddit or Medium, where Subreddit and the blog run on their blockchains respectively. At present, the Subsocial social platform Web dApp product has been launched. The core data of the platform, such as the number of communities, the number of platform users and the content interaction rate, grows steadily. The platform interaction is very smooth.
Subsocial Highlights：
1/Twitter on the chain. You can put your entire web application on IPFS without the need for centralized hosting (AWS).
2/Anti-censorship on chain, users own their own social space.
3/Built-in dynamic roles to manage your community with fine-grained permissions.
4/Spaces can have multiple owners, who can control the direction of the community and decide who gets the monetized rewards.
5/Subsocial token holders own and manage the network, which is how it grows and evolves.
6/In Subsocial, users generate revenue directly through content and community without any middlemen.
The core functions of SubSocial include Spaces, Posts and Engagements, which enable users of traditional social platforms to seamlessly interact with each other. Compared with traditional social platforms (Twitter, Medium, etc.), in Subsocial, all authors’ content are associated with their public key account. The ownership of content and data belongs to the author, which can be stored in a decentralized way through IPFS.
In Subsocial, users are the owner of the network. Subsocial token holders are able to participate in the governance of the platform, as well as the spaces of which they are a member in. Spaces can have multiple owners who can control the direction of the community and work together to drive the development of the space.
Subsocial Incentive Mechanism
As a social platform, how to attract content creators to use the platform continuously is the most important part of the whole product, so the incentive mechanism of social products is particularly important.
In Subsocial, content creators can fully “monetize” their content, generating revenue directly without intermediaries or platforms. Subsocial’s content creators can monetize their content directly through tips, subscriptions, sell/rent content, and more.
Tips: In Subsocial, users can reward quality spaces, content and comments. Not only the creators of quality posts can get paid, but also the quality comments/replies under the posts can be rewarded accordingly. The content that gets more tips and rewards will be recommended to users on the whole platform, similar to the top recommendation on bilibili and the hot searches on Weibo.
Subscription: Subscription is also an important incentive for content creators. For content of high quality with significant value, creators can set certain thresholds to filter out a part of browsing users. At the same time, creators own the ownership of their content. The platform cannot interfere with their content (including tampering and deleting), so that the data and income are all owned by creators.
Sell/Rent Content: As mentioned earlier, in Subsocial, the creator has ownership of their content, so they can make money by selling or renting the content. For example, user A writes a deep and insightful post that can generate tens of thousands of views and thousands of followers. Then User A can rent this post to User B, and User B can get a lot of attention and traffic from this content. In the meantime, User A will receive royalties from the content.
Polkaverse
Subsocial recently launched its first decentralized niche community, Polkaverse, for Polkadot and Kusama users. As the results of the announcement of five slots in the first phase of the Kusama Parallel Chain Auction, the debate about the ecology of Polkadot and its project grew. Its ecological users can discuss and research on topics in greater depth through Polkaverse. Thanks to the mechanics of the Subsocial platform, members of Polkaverse have complete control over their content, data access and revenue without facing the censorship of traditional social platforms.
Not only is Polkaverse the first decentralized niche community for Polkadot and Kusama users, it is also the first social dapp of the Subsocial multiverse. Not only does Polkaverse have the capabilities of Subsocial, but it will also integrate with Kusama to provide users with additional functionalities. For example, the identity module, the account authentication, and the treasury proposal of Kusama will be tested and go online one after another.
Fundraising
Subsocial recently closed its Series A funding round, Investors include HyperSphere, Illusionist Group, Alameda Research, NGC, Paka, Signum Capital, Gate Labs and OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Moon Capital, etc. Subsocial Ecosystem will be supported by its native token SUB and its monetization tools.
Conclusion
SubSocial’s vision is to build a social network universe where everyone can create DApps freely, build diverse communities, and build a decentralized, anti-censor and democratic social platform. With the parallel chain auction on Kusama and Polkadot, Subsocial, as a project having the “two-factor” certification from both the Web3 Foundation and Parity, will enjoy the benefits of Polkadot’s ecological evolvement, as well as the potential for future growth in the social sector.
About Moon Capital
Moon Capital is a cutting-edge investment firm focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency. Moon Capital portfolio includes, Wootrade, Litentry, Subsocial Network, Bifrost, DeepDAO and some other high-quality projects.
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