The Onchain Social Landscape

The Onchain Social Landscape

OSL is a project aimed at tracking the evolving landscape of decentralized social networks, web3 social media apps and open social protocols.

This serves as the official map of the Onchain Creator Economy.

Say hello to the Onchain Social Landscape! 🫡

This map is not complete, but rather a starting point to open discussions.

Let’s talk about the onchain creator economy, the platforms, protocols and apps that represent the future for social media.

The Onchain Social Landscape is rapidly evolving so if you have experience using onchain social apps or part of a team developing onchain social tech, let’s connect and collaborate!

Please email [email protected] to provide feedback or suggest updates to the map.

What is Onchain Social Media?

Onchain social media is a new approach to social media that fixes several key problems plaguing the largest, most popular social networks in use today.

Perhaps you’ve already experienced some of these problems yourself.

Onchain Social solves issues related to:

• Privacy & Security

• Content/Data Ownership

• Security & Data Privacy

• Moderation, Censorship & Deplatforming

• Misinformation & Disinformation

• Annoying & Creepy Advertising

• Bots & Scammers

• Algorithmic Bias & Manipulation

• Political Bias & Influence

This is why onchain social is such a big deal - An industry is being transformed.

Tracking The Onchain Social Landscape

The Onchain Social Landscape map breaks things down into categories, showing various projects “stack” and how they related to each other.

Onchain Social Categories

1. Decentralized Social Protocols

2. Layer 1 Blockchains

3. Ethereum Social Apps

4. Layer 2 Blockchains (EVM)

5. Layer 2 Social Protocols (EVM)

6. Decentralized Storage & Content Delivery Networks

In addition to these main “infrastructure” categories, onchain social protocols each offer their own unique ecosystem of decentralized social apps.

Listed below are few of the most popular social apps in their respective onchain social ecosystems.

DeSo Protocol

NFTZ, Entre, Desofy, Openfund, Diamond, Focus

Farcaster

Paragraph, Fabric, Buttrfly, Drakula, Warpcast

Lens Protocol

Hey, Orb, Buttrfly, Phaver, Lenstube

The EVM Onchain Social Stack

Something I noticed in this map is what I call the EVM Onchain Social Stack.

This stack is made of blockchain protocols and apps tied to Ethereum.

With onchain social, we’re now seeing the use cases for layer 3 and even layer 4 applications.

Ethereum serves as the base layer.

Later 2 (EVM) protocols offer scalability.

Layer 3 social protocols like Farcaster and Lens offer a social graph.

Finally, consumer app ecosystems are built on these as the 4th layer.

Open Source Social Protocols

Some web3 social apps are also built directly on top of layer 1 blockchains, which are faster and more scalable than layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum.

No 2nd layer is needed for onchain social apps built on blockchains like Solana, Internet Computer and DeSo Protocol.

Nostr is an open social protocol built on Bitcoin and supports onchain social apps like Primal and Damus.

Some web3 social apps are not actually built on a blockchain, but simply serve as open social protocols.

Apps like Mastodon, Threads and Pixelfed are built on ActivityPub and part of an open source social ecosystem known as the Fediverse.

Bluesky is a web3 social app built on the AT Protocol. This project was once supported by Jack Dorsey (founder and former CEO of Twitter).

Decentralized Content Delivery

As the onchain social landscape grows, an important piece of the puzzle will be the usage of decentralized storage and content delivery networks.

Some of the most popular networks in this category today include:

IPFS, Arweave, STORJ, Livepeer, Thera Network, Vibehut, Odysee and LBRY.

Going forward I’m already thinking about designing individual maps that showcase the full landscape of apps in each ecosystem - so, individual maps for DeSo, Farcaster, Lens, etc.

For now, I hope this offers a helpful visual of where things stand today in the landscape of decentralized social networks and onchain social apps.

It will be fun to see how this landscape evolves and I look forward to providing regular updates.

My goal is to update this map quarterly based on feedback and input from YOU and the rest of the onchain creator community.

Cheers!

Ryan

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