Decentralized social network Subsocial creates communities for social networking and allows blockchain-based online activities like web publishing or blogging. In addition, it also has features including in-platform transactions, crowdfunding, and rewarding users.
Social media platforms have exploded in popularity over the last decade and serve as a place where social interactions create an online society. Users can share content and create connections among numerous others.
Blockchain social media are decentralized platforms built on blockchain technology to use applications and smart contracts. User activities are irreversibly stored in a decentralized network with the network of servers including the devices of every social media user on the blockchain.
As a result, the greater the number of users, the higher the data-holding capacity of the network. All interactions on the platform are protected by end-to-end encryption allowing users to have more privacy and data security.
Subsocial Makes Blockchain Work for Social Media
In the modern digital era today, it’s hard to find someone who’s not active on social media. According to research by Statista, 81% of the US population used social media in one way or another.
The same report also estimated that the active users on social media will only continue to expand, and will be at a record number by the end of the year.
However, the boom of social media usage has also made the cases of data breaches and privacy violations more common. These have become a real concern.
The Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, which included a data security breach of close to 533 million users, is just one example.
Blockchain’s architecture is transparent and efficient which is revolutionizing how law, finance, healthcare, logistics, and many other spheres operate. The same advantages can be applied to social media.
Developers have begun to work on an answer to the problem by taking over blockchain technology to combat the concerns related to centralized social media.
What Is Subsocial?
Subsocial is a social media platform that helps users create their own decentralized version of the most popular sites such as Twitter and Instagram, which have dominated the social media market, as well as Medium, Reddit, Discourse, Patreon, and OnlyFans.
Blockchain can address two essential shortcomings of the centralized social media network including transparency and data security.
Subsocial software is developed on the Substrate blockchain and IPFS not only to allow decentralized file storage but also to offer personalized news feed and notifications, transparent reputation, full-text searching, and rich content formats to its users.
With Subsocial, users can truly be free online and capture the full value of their work while also getting rewarded for sharing it.
Instead of just only posting and not receiving any financial gain from their content, Twitter users can host their content exclusively on Subsocial to receive the full worth of their creations via tips, subscriptions, and other means of earning.
These rewards are in the form of the network’s native cryptocurrency, Subsocial social tokens.
In addition to no one taking a cut of the profit, nobody can harvest the data, or use certain content algorithms to control what users see to influence their emotions or ideas.
Built on the Substate blockchain, Subsocial is also able to connect to the Polkadot and Kusama networks. Polkadot is a next-generation blockchain protocol that combines all blockchain-built networks to make them interoperate seamlessly at scale.
Subsocial is provided cross-chain interaction as well as a security platform where it can scale while remaining secure through the integration with Polkadot. Subsocial is an unbounded social media platform!
Using Web3 Foundation Grants Program
Web3 has enhanced the internet today with some added characteristics over Web2. The Web3 applications run on blockchains, decentralized networks of peer-to-peer nodes. These apps are often called dapps – decentralized apps.
The identity feature also works much differently which ties identities to the wallet address of the user interacting with the application.
Unlike authentication methods on web2 which request email and password, wallet addresses are completely anonymous unless the user decides to tie their own identity to it publicly.
While most other social media platforms are using Web2, Subsocial is totally decentralized and permissionless by integrating Web3. This makes the platform apart from competitors in that nobody can sell your data, and nobody can ban your account.
Built on Substrate, which allows Subsocial to be interoperable with all other Substrate-based chains, as well as gives the possibility of securing a para chain slot on Kusama or Polkadot.
Smart contract support is going to be added that will let the community do all sorts of creative things with Social Finance, and push the boundaries of content and community monetization.
Besides, The platform is set to feature various decentralized monetization methods – more than any competitors. It provides immense opportunities for customization to meet user preferences. The front-end (the website) and the back-end (the blockchain) are able to be separated as being decentralized.
If users want to use Facebook’s services, they have to use their website or app. However, Subsocial allows users to create their own website or app that looks and functions exactly how they want and hook it up to the Subsocial blockchain.
Who is Subsocial Built For?
With Subsocial, users can permissionless create their own social network with a wide user base, benefiting from existing shared networking effects. Its social tokens combined with smart contracts allow people to be creative like in DeFi.
Anyone who joins and is a member of the Substrate ecosystem can be called gasfugees, in other words, anyone who is tired of the gas fees from Ethereum and interested in crypto/blockchain-based social networking platforms.
People can be tipped for anything and build their own social network, and even have their own social token if they want.
Closing Thoughts on Subsocial
Privacy and data security are becoming a significant concern in social media platforms. Blockchain Social Media like Subsocial offers many benefits other than just privacy and security.
Social media have serious privacy flaws exposing users to cybercriminals, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media companies that have been known to be selling users’ private information to advertising companies for targeted advertising.
On traditional social media platforms, some of the major privacy concerns are account hacking, impersonation, staking, harassment, and being forced to turn over passwords.
Also, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how social media platforms are susceptible to fake news and numerous misinformation postings relating to the pandemic.
Freedom in the postings makes these traditional platforms suitable for spreading propaganda and misinformation.
Blockchain technology in the Subsocial platform ensures that all users are verified, preventing the creation of fake accounts inclined towards spreading fake news or bullying other users.
Social media platforms censor users going against their user guidelines or even political ideologies since being run by third-parties.
For example, Twitter and Facebook suspended Donald Trump’s social media accounts for disputing the 2020 US elections.
Integrating with blockchain allows freedom of speech on Subsocial due to the absence of third parties exercising control. Because of this, users can freely express their thoughts on a particular subject without worrying about censorship or other limitations.
In addition, Subsocial is a place where users can rent and sell their posts as NFTs, deploy tokens for their spaces and communities.