CyberConnect serves as a web3 social network, providing developers with the means to construct social applications that empower users to take control of their digital identity, content, connections, and interactions. By leveraging its network's capabilities, it establishes enduring on-chain connections. Developers have the opportunity to craft innovative social applications wherein users maintain ownership of their identities and data, while creators can foster their audiences within a more equitable, direct, and decentralized setting.
Established in 2021 by seasoned blockchain entrepreneurs Wilson Wei and Ryan Li, CyberConnect stands as a decentralized social network protocol. It holds the distinction of being one of the earliest Web 3 protocols and boasts the largest community membership. The platform encompasses over 2,000 projects, including prominent ones like SocialFi Link3 and Phaver. These efforts have attracted nearly 890,000 creators and users, engaging them with various community functions.
CyberConnect centers around Decentralized Identifiers (DID) and the Social Graph, facilitating Web 3 developers in the creation of adaptable, modular social applications. This empowers users with genuine ownership and control over their digital identities, content, and interpersonal connections. During the years 2021 and 2022, CyberConnect secured a total of $25 million in investments from notable institutions in its seed and Series A funding rounds. Contributors included Animoca Brands, Delphi Digital, Multicoin Capital, Amber Group, Polygon Studios, and others.
How does CyberConnect work?
The CyberConnect protocol encompasses a series of generated smart contracts deployed on EVM-compatible chains, currently including ETH and BNB. The concept of generating smart contracts entails that whenever a dApp or user engages with the protocol, it triggers the creation of a fresh set of smart contracts tied to the corresponding dApp or user. This mechanism shares similarities with the Uniswap protocol, where crafting a new liquidity pool results in the generation of a set of smart contracts for liquidity pairs. Within the realm of CyberConnect, these produced smart contracts empower dApps to establish context-specific on-chain social networks or allow users to mint personalized NFTs for the monetization of their social data.
The protocol operates through three primary contracts, all adhering to the ERC721 standard, which is employed to represent social data:
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Web Profiles: CyberProfile serves as an NFT representing the profile of each user. This is a prerequisite for users aiming to create their custom EssenceNFTs or SubscribeNFTs.
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Subscribe to NFTs: SubscribeNFT symbolizes a unilateral relationship between an address and a CyberProfile, facilitating subscription-based interactions.
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Essential NFT: EssenceNFT functions as a versatile NFT that individual CyberProfile holders can issue to symbolize diverse content types such as social media posts, videos, and blog publications.
About CyberConnect Token (CYBER)
The native utility and governance token of the CyberConnect protocol, known as CYBER, is set to be offered to the public. This public sale will make 3% of the total CYBER supply, which amounts to 100,000,000 tokens, available for circulation to residents in specific jurisdictions. The commencement of the second phase of CyberConnect airdrop will be effective from August 1st onward. CYBER's primary role lies in securing and governing the DAO, which will oversee the allocation of future funds and all essential updates to the protocol's infrastructure. CYBER brings the following functionalities to the decentralized social networking protocol:
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Governance: Holders of CYBER tokens will participate in voting on proposals aimed at enhancing the CyberConnect protocol, ensuring its sustained long-term success. Forthcoming proposals encompass activating service fees for cross-protocol paid transactions, adjusting service fee rates, modifying accepted payment tokens, expanding the protocol to additional blockchains, and allocating a budget for both offline and online community initiatives for system development.
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CyberProfile Minting Fee: The CyberProfile serves as the entry point for developers and users into the CyberConnect ecosystem. When acquiring a premium username-based CyberProfile, CYBER will function as the actual payment currency.
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Gas Payments in CyberWallet: CyberConnect's upcoming solution, the CyberWallet, is a smart contract wallet intended to offer users a seamless web3 onboarding experience. This will be achieved without requiring mnemonic phrases or access to native tokens to cover gas costs across different blockchain ecosystems. CYBER will be utilized as the payment method for price lists and gas fees for transactions on EVM-compatible chains within the CyberWallet environment.
What problem is CyberConnect trying to solve?
Based on statistics, mainstream social software is projected to generate over $230 billion in revenue through paid products and advertising services in 2023. However, users and content creators on these platforms will only receive around $6.5 billion, accounting for roughly 2.8% of the total earnings.
Moreover, aside from concerns about the sale of personal data and data misuse, most users and creators encounter the following issues:
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Centralization and Fragmentation: The content found on social networking sites, such as personal connections and visual updates, is stored in separate systems controlled by private centralized companies. This prevents seamless integration or transfer of information between platforms. If users decide to switch platforms, they must start from scratch – moving from Facebook to Twitter, for instance, involves rebuilding accounts, content, and relationships.
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Platform Dependence for Content Management: Self-media operators of various scales must manage different types of content and audiences based on each platform's characteristics. This can be particularly exhausting for small-scale studios or individual creators.
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Lack of User Community Asset Protection: Even for regular users seeking social interaction, differing censorship mechanisms across platforms can lead to the loss of contacts, emotions, thoughts, or life memories if their accounts are banned or deleted. Although users think they have control over their accounts, in reality, this information is controlled by the social platform's company servers.
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High Platform Fees: While existing social platforms offer ways for creators to earn rewards or sponsorships (e.g., Facebook stars, YouTube super thanks, channel memberships, profit-sharing from ads), platforms that rely on user-generated content often charge steep commissions, ranging from 30% to 50%. As a result, creators receive only a small percentage of the total earnings.
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Friction in Payment Channels: Creators looking to avoid platform commissions often resort to using link integration tools like Linktree and Linkby. They may also direct their audience to crowdfunding platforms such as Patreon and OnlyFans for payments. The multiple platforms and varied payment methods lead to excessive friction in the audience's consumption process.
Is Cyber worth investing in?
CyberConnect has been around since 2021 and has a solid framework beneath it. There is a total of 304,000 accounts, with 134,000 accounts creating content. There is about 400,000 users, with 43,000 of these users being paying users. This means that about 10% of content consumers are paying users, and about 44% of CyberConnect accounts belong to content creators.
By far, CyberConnect is one of the best Web3 social projects, with a lot of potential. However, it may take some time for the price to increase, simply because decentralized social platforms suffer from extremely slow, expensive and complicated UX and UI when using decentralized technology. The other factor is the network effect of social platforms, where social media is so monopolized it is almost impossible to break away from the norm due to a lack of engagement for creators and content for users. Decentralized social networks like CyberConnect will breakthrough only if current social networking platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram begin to restrict their end-uses so much that consumers and creators have no choice but to change.
