For a long time, the web3 ecosystem had to organize and communicate on web2 platforms. From the memes of crypto twitter to the project-specific communities that congregated in Discord and Telegram, there were no dominant web3 platforms. That is changing quickly and there is something special happening in web3 social right now.
Over the past several years, we have seen a series of new projects emerge that finally give the web3 community a place of their own. They are unique, constantly evolving, and growing quickly. These projects have real tailwinds because people who like crypto have an explicit preference to use crypto-native products instead of web2 ones (even if they are less convenient to use), they are willing to experiment with and try new things, and nascent communities are always more fun than big ones with a lot of noise.
The trend for a lot of these projects is that they begin as a skeuomorphic representation of their web2 counterparts to attract an initial audience, and then they rapidly experiment to introduce weird and crypto-native features. This is just the beginning of what we are seeing:
Twitter ➡️ Warpcast
Reddit ➡️ Warpcast Channels
Tumblr/Instagram ➡️ Zora
Substack/WP ➡️ Paragraph
Discord ➡️ Towns
Patreon ➡️ Fabric
TikTok ➡️ Drakula
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples I am missing here. In all of these instances, the web3 version initially mirrors the web2 counterpart, but then they quickly diverge. A lot of times this divergence is marked by some crypto-native feature: financialization and minting as a web3 version of “liking,” things that can only happen because of web3 composability like Frames, the emergence of memetic tokens that transcend applications like DEGEN, etc. All of these things are new, they are weird, and they are uniquely web3. The other characteristic they share is they are simply more fun and entertaining than anything that exists in web2.
Too many web2 applications being used for web3 coordination (eg discord and telegram). This will change. @paragraph already doing it w substack/WP. Each web3 counterpart has its own different and magical spin bc the 1:1 translation doesn’t work on its own - needs to get weird. https://warpcast.com/matthuang/0x693c9e2c
We are now beyond the hand-wavey language and posturing and pounding the table on “everything needs to be open and portable and LOUD NOISES” We are seeing applications emerge that are fun, have real DAU and utility, are birthing products and memes that transcend beyond those communities, and represent the beginning of a new wave of emergent social networks that are fundamentally different. And while it’s still early (when will it not be“early?”), things feel more promising, useful, and engaging than they ever have.
At the very least, it’s a joy to see so many people rapidly experimenting together, building new products and features that could have never existed before, trying new things, and having a good time. It’s very reminiscent of early Twitter where an early community of curious people took a platform and morphed it to their liking. Now it gets to happen all over again, just with a new set of tools, functionality, and a permissionless and open system to ensure its future belongs to everyone.
as Shakespeare so eloquently put it in Hamlet: “the token’s the thing wherein i’ll catch the conscience of the king” https://jared.xyz/web3-social-skeuomorphic,-then-not
Should consumer crypto be skeuomorphic? No - because it’s a historical anti pattern for other tech platform shifts Yes - because the innovation occurs in the biz model / monetization / incentives Wdyt?
Both - the skeumorphism is a Trojan horse Get users to enter shop by mirroring existing usage patterns, and then discover new patterns once they become comfortable with crypto rails (minting is an example) Hard to change most people’s relationship with money quickly, which is why we hard to start with degens
yes - everything successful is skeuomorphic initially crypto was skeumorphic – a decentralized version of a public ledger. the bloating beyond the original use case is the biggest reason crypto doesn't have mainstream adoption, because now it's an exposed box of loose wires and switches on top of a ledger and the industry shoves millions of dollars into rube goldbergian "innovations" on top of it that make connecting wires and flipping switches "easier" rather than solving for the problem that it's an exposed box of loose wires and switches grafted onto a public ledger in the first place.
Dayumm
at first I thought yes but now i find myself questioning this all the time https://jared.xyz/web3-social-skeuomorphic,-then-not
I googled "skeuomorphic consumer crypto design"
First, it’ll be skeuomorphic. But systems should be designed to be expressive enough that someone could build something qualitatively different. This is why I’m excited about more declarative blockchain architectures.
What’s that?
https://x.com/CannnGurel/status/1663292583550803969
I agree, skeuomorphic has made it's way back as a trend that's just not really feasible. That's why I tend to aim for glassmorphism, as it's much more aesthetically pleasing, replicatable, and brings more delightful experiences to people. Hope you enjoy 🌐 👾 🤍 https://warpcast.com/metawavestudio/0xb5fda94c
so, how do creators make money on the internet? in a lot of ways, ofc. subscription, advertising, sponsorship, etc. https://warpcast.com/mjc716/0xfc2b8f64 🧵👇
these are distinct on the surface, but when you dig a bit deeper, it’s plain to see that the success you have monetizing a content business, in whatever form, runs downstream from the *attention* you command.
this statement is not all that insightful on its own. and I know I’m grossly oversimplifying. but what’s revealing is that the principal monetization primitives of the internet map pretty closely to the analog methods they derive from.
we’re all here because the promise and potential of composable crypto is to blaze new paths. and there are definitely some exciting experiments underway
For a long time, web3 had to organize and communicate on web2 platforms. From crypto twitter to Discord and Telegram, there were no dominant web3 social platforms. That is changing quickly and there is something special happening in web3 social right now. https://jared.xyz/web3-social-skeuomorphic,-then-not