Table of Contents
Introduction
The State of Decentralized Social Graphs and Creator Economy Projects
The Current Challenges
What is Wordcel?
The Ownership Economy
Why Decentralization is Key
The State of Decentralized Social Graphs and Creator Economy Projects: The Future
Introduction
The Internet of today is constantly evolving: there is a current shift from the centralized Web 2.0 to a decentralized Web 3.0 which is built on the blockchain. The new Web 3.0 has many benefits for Internet users, from complete user control over data to a better user experience and removal of censorship. In Web 3.0, everyone is given a voice to share their opinion as well as the opportunity to contribute to the Internet.
Creators all over the world have had their limitations: finance, content restrictions and government regulations are drawbacks for full self expression especially in political climes. It is therefore of utmost importance that content creators have complete ownership over their content as well as content distribution and monetization. The ownership economy provides this opportunity at no extra costs for the creators.
In the ownership economy, the products and services that will transform Web 3.0 are those that are owned by the users. Currently, there are over 15,000 projects in the ownership economy. These projects range from user-owned financial markets to user-owned social networks, investment clubs and digital assets. There are also projects designed specifically to provide an ownership economy for creators. In this post, we will be going over these projects, decentralized social graphs and how these projects are beneficial to creators all over the globe.
The State of Decentralized Social Graphs and Creator Economy Projects
Decentralized social graphs are block chain based protocols built on Web 3.0 and made publicly accessible for developers to build decentralized social media networks. Ideally, these graphs will enable Internet users and decentralized apps to contribute to the protocol. The data gathered is further organized in a structural manner, preventing data leaks.
The creator economy is an economic system that is built by independent content creators that are connected to their audiences and businesses via the Internet. The creator economy is fundamentally made up of creators, consumers, platforms, businesses and tools. Creators provide audio, written and visual content for Internet users while generating an income.
There are some projects designed to solve the challenges that face the creator economy while providing decentralized social graphs for decentralized social networks. A good example is Wordcel, a decentralized platform built on Solana that allows anyone to post articles on the blockchain while removing censorship. Musicoin helps musicians share their songs on the blockchain while building interactive engagement and getting fair revenue.
Crowdpad is a decentralized Solana based and community building platform that gives creators the opportunity to own their own social token. Creators also interact with fans who are interested in investing in their tokens and providing support in their careers. Chingari is a video streaming platform which provides incentives for video creators in the form of $GARI token. Creators can also convert short clips to NFTs and sell them to make money for equipment and other essential needs.
The Current Challenges
There are numerous challenges that face the creator economy, the decentralized social graphs and the creator economy that provides solutions to the previous challenges. The major challenge is that for all content creation platforms on social media, there is an imbalance in revenue distribution for content creators. The top content creators get a large sum of the revenue, while the ones at the bottom get very little. There are some other challenges like age based payments, discrimination based on skin color and censorship that the decentralized social graphs and creator economy provides solutions for.
The decentralized social graphs are frameworks on which decentralized social networks are built. The decentralized social networks provide a user controlled data base and removal of censorship, but there are some difficulties. The data on a decentralized network is not stored on any central network. If there is a disconnection on any of the servers, user data is lost. In addition, because there is no central governing body the rate of cybercrimes is bound to increase on the network.The blockchain energy consumption level is high, making costs of operating these networks very expensive.
The ownership economy also has its challenges: although it has given rewards to creators for their hard work, large form scaling may be expensive and difficult. The system is being adopted by many organizations and it is likely that in the near future there will be too many projects catering to the problems that the ownership economy faces.
What is Wordcel?
Wordcel is a decentralized publishing platform built on the Solana network. It provides a system in which creators are given full ownership of the content they create and there is no censorship of created content. Wordcel is set on building a community of writers and a set of tools that will make publishing on Web 3.0 stress free. The system cannot censor articles written on the platform and creators have full sovereignty over distribution of the content that is created. Creators can host their publications on their own domains. Creators can also import their articles, while retaining censorship and not having to create content again.The best part about Wordcel is that publishing can be done on Vim, VS Code, Notion and Custom Editor.
Wordcel is a platform that has the potential to be adopted by a large percentage of the creator population because of the simplicity of use. All you need to do is connect your Solana wallet and start: any wallet from Solflare, Sollet, Phantom, Slope, Sollet Extension to Glow can be used. There is also a desktop app that allows creators to directly post to the network from their desktops.
Wordcel emerged first position in the Riptide Global Hackathon with over a hundred up votes. The platform secured $50,000 in USDC as a winner in Web 3.0 track. For a global contest that had nearly 7000 participants and 550 projects, Wordcel stood out amongst other Web 3.0 projects as one who gave creators full sovereignty over content creation and distribution. The platform is set to take over the Web 3 market because of the features it provides and the fact that it gives all creators a voice for self expression. Wordcel is also active in community building: the Sovereign Individual giveaway, online community discussions and new collaborative bounty with Superteam are ways in which the platform creates more awareness of the possibilities available for creators.
The Ownership Economy
The ownership economy is a system where power and economic rewards are distributed to participants instead of being concentrated at the top. The ownership economy is beneficial in the fact that it provides a new tool for builders to take advantage of market incentives and build new networks. It also creates tools for positive social change through the wider distribution of wealth building assets. The user ownership economy has transformed the way people interact, invest, socialize and create content for the Internet.
On a global scale, people contribute towards, provide funds for and use the content that is available for everyone to use. The way the ownership economy works is that users become owners by consuming a product or putting digital assets into a system. When users become owners, they are more likely to become committed to a platform. They are likely to promote, engage, contribute to governance and share their opinion.
The ownership economy has several advantages: one is that the system allows users to become owners early and participate in value creation. The user ownership economy also fosters rich ecosystems of projects and contributions. The provision of incentives for users and creators keep users committed to platforms built on the ownership economy system. This encourages growth and maintenance of the reward based system. Users and creators can easily contribute and then develop the system.
Why Decentralization is Key
Decentralization is one of the most discussed topics on the blockchain and for good reason. It is one of the key features of Web 3.0 and part of the reason why the blockchain was created. Decentralization means the transfer of decision making and control from a centralized entity to a distributed network. In a decentralized system, data entered is not changed and everyone has access to the network.
Decentralization is important because it creates a trustless environment where no one has to know or trust each other. If anyone attempts to make changes to the stored data, the changes are rejected by other members of the blockchain. This creates a more transparent system where no data is altered. In addition, in a decentralized system everyone has access to the stored data. This means that data losses are reduced, unlike centralized systems where data is in the control of single entities. Decentralization reduces points of weaknesses in content creation like human errors, systemic failure, lack of incentives and exhaustion of resources. Another solution that decentralization provides is the optimization of resources on the blockchain.
Decentralization matters because it provides user control of identity and data. There have been multiple allegations of large tech giants selling off user data to large corporations for advertising purposes. Decentralization takes user data from these tech giants and hands the user data to the Internet users. There is resistance to censorship which is significant especially in countries where freedom of expression on political matters is limited. Decentralization also gives platforms the opportunity of open source development: everyone on the blockchain can contribute positively to projects built on the blockchain.
The State of Decentralized Social Graphs and Creator Economy Projects: The Future
With the advent of decentralized social graphs, decentralized social networks have been built to cater to the needs of content creators worldwide.In addition, several projects aimed at ensuring creators get rewarded for their hard work have been developed on the blockchain. These projects have explored ways to make the content creation process easy and rewarding for creators: these methods have proven successful.
In the years to come, there is a high possibility that the young content creators at the bottom of the content creation will rise to the top of the chain because of the availability of the creator economy projects. In addition to success in their respective careers, they would have built large communities of supporting fans. There will be a rise in the number of these creator economy projects because of the increased awareness. As a result, the competition between creators will be on the rise and there will be many micro organizations working on the creator economy and decentralized social graph projects. At the end of the day, the strongest platforms with the best incentives and user experience will remain. The gap between the top level creators and bottom level creators will be reduced, but the gap will remain because there are always creators with more supporters.