Dialogue, Vitalik, Suji: Why failed to go to the center of social products
EditZenium Wu said the chain
This session was organized jointly with Mask Network in Chinese on January 23, with the participation of the co-founders Vitalik Buterin, Mask founder Suji Yan, U.S. editor Colin Wu and other community representatives, mainly focusing on the chain reaction of X (tweet) to the closure of the “shudding platform” and exploring in depth the real dilemmas and new opportunities for de-centralised socialization。
Vitalik has analysed the root causes of the failure of most decentrized social products from the perspective of the unbreakable effects of the web, misalignment of incentives, excessive financialization, and has stressed that the product should be redesigned from the point of view of “socialization itself” rather than “encrypted financial overlay”. Suji UnionLensThe analysis of product cases, such as Farcaster, indicates that the migration of users is a slow, phased process that requires a combination of centralized and decentrized patterns and collaborative advancement. The discussion also extends to the possible combination of social protocols and wallets, forecasting markets, AI and community governance, arguing that decentrization still has long-term exploratory value if the goal is “to improve the quality of discussions, bring facts and consensus closer”。
The personal views of the guests do not represent the views of Wu and do not constitute any investment proposal. Please strictly abide by local laws and regulations。
AUDIO TRANSFER IS DONE BY GPT, AND THERE MAY BE AN ERROR. PLEASE LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST IN THE LITTLE UNIVERSE, YT ETC。
Vitalik, re-focusing on the real context of de-centre socialization and two reasons
Colin: Recently, Twitter focused on blocking the “sniffing platform” and rekindled discussions about de-centre socialization. Vitalik, what do you think about this incident and the overall trend
Vitalik: I've been focused on going to the center for years, 2023 to 2025FarcasterMore. There are two main reasons for the recent renewed and clearer focus on this direction。
First, Twitter is becoming more and more obvious. Whether it be encryption, politics or public issues, the quality of the discussion as a whole continues to decline, and it is no longer appropriate to be at the centre of global public discourse. However, the biggest challenge for the new social platform has always been the web effect, and the best products cannot be created without users。
There are now two relatively viable paths to go to centralization: one is to split the layers of the protocol, place the account numbers and content on the sharing protocol, have different teams as customers, and new users can see the whole network as soon as they come in; and the other is to put Twitter, Farcaster, Lens, etc., in the same interface, gradually leading users to migrate without leaving Twitter. Both approaches are, in essence, mitigating network effects。
The second reason is technological maturity. Over the past three years, there has been a marked improvement in user experience, whether it be Firefly, Farcaster, or broader encryption infrastructure, privacy technologies and communication tools。
Adding these conditions to the list of recent events, for exampleKaitoThe ban, Farcaster and Lens changes, and I think it's a time point to re-energize de-centre socialization, and it's worth looking at again。
Suji reviewed the early collaboration with Twitter and the governance gap of the central platform
Colin: Suji, what do you think about this Twitter event that focused on banning the Mouth Platform
Suji: Our collaboration with Twitter dates back to 2018, when during Jack Dorsey's mandate, Twitter was very open to encryption experiments, including encrypted tweets, chain deals, and later the first tweet was made NFT and auctioned. These are the early days of Twitter's more progressive, rule-oriented style of governance。
Elon took over and changed very clearly. While the same emphasis was placed on freedom of expression, his approach was more focused, and that difference in governance was directly reflected in product and interdiction strategies. Based on this judgment, I was not surprised when I saw products like Kaito in the Elon era。
Like Lens, Farcaster, earlier on, there was a little bit of a “positive confrontation with Twitter” approach. Personally, I prefer Jack's path: not rushing to replace, but patiently and step by step, moving user behavior and traffic。
I have also noticed that the exchange has been trying to make social products in the past few years, such as Bian Square, OKX Orbit, but has been very cautious about deep integration Twitter, which also points to the uncontrollability of the central platform itself。
So instead, I'm looking forward to going to centralization as an integration layer, but this must be a long-term process. A more realistic path is to move from a centralized platform to a “semi-centre” social form, before moving towards complete decentrization. This path is much like DeFi and predicting the evolution of the market, and now many things are concentrated in a short period of time and are essentially phased releases after long periods of accumulation。
The core issue of long-term success in socialization at the centre
Colin: The social needs of going to the centre are strong, but it is difficult to get out of the PMF these years, whether it is Friend.tech or, more recently, Kaito, Farcaster. Why is this direction so difficult to achieve
Vitalik: I think there are two main reasons。
The first is that the network effect is too strong. There have been few new social platforms in the last decade, and Twitter remains one of the core platforms, suggesting that the social arena itself has a very high threshold。
Second, there's a lot of things that go wrongSocialFi, plus Token, plus the trading layer. But from the very social point of view, the real key question is often the motivation of creators: how to make a sustainable return on new people and high-quality content。
These mechanisms have been tried in Crypto for over a decadeCreator TokenMany failures are due to the fact that incentives reward already existing demand for influence and speculation rather than content quality. In contrast to Substack, which allows high-quality creators to earn long-term income, many of the monetized platforms tend to be headed by “established social capital” such as the Big V and the exchange founders。
So to make good decentralised socialization, the starting point should be to figure out which social problems to solve, rather than how to superimpose the financial layer。
Experiences and regrets of early social products in the Chinese community: migration, governance and patience
Colin: The Chinese community has been trying to combine socialization with Cripto for a long time, such as coins, Mirror. The currency, which had brought together a large number of creators, was closed; Mirror once replaced the public and Mediam, and many institutions and authors had been writing for a long time, but had stopped because of team problems. These indicate that demand has always existed, but that there has always been no real PMF. Suji, what do you think of this
Suji: If you look only at the Chinese-speaking community, the movement has been taking place, but very slowly. The early days were dominated by microblogging and Twitter, and few people left because of their habits, despite real name and security risks. It was not until a group of encrypted accounts and media were centralized that people moved to Twitter, while the Twitter community turned to Telegram。
Twitter itself is not central, but mechanisms such as Community Notes that allow communities to correct the mistakes of authoritative figures reflect a certain spirit of decentralized governance that is attractive to many. But then it became clear that Twitter could still hurt creators and communicate in a non-transparent manner, so some people started to try further alternatives such as Firefly instead of leaving the Twitter immediately。
Historically, regulation and product experience have been driven from microblogging to Twitter, from Twitter to Telegram. Today, socialization at the centre has not yet waited for a similar threshold and continues to move forward patiently。
Moreover, neutrality is crucial. For example, the early growth of Farcaster was largely supported by Coinbase, but if it was perceived to serve only one family or a small circle, it discouraged other participants. A truly distant social infrastructure must involve different constituencies。
I feel that this is a time point of concern, and that a series of events have been so intense that the relocation has begun, but it may take a few years to be truly completed。
Lens' multi-platform collaborative thinking and predicting social opportunities in the market
Colin: Suji, what exactly is your cooperation with Lens
Suji: We were Lens shareholders long ago. And then I became more and more certain: Lens and Farcaster, they didn't have to fight alone, just one ecology. Crypto’s social market is small enough to be open enough – to work with all wallets, chains, and even to some extent access to Twitter data and social relationships。
We talked to Stanley for a long time, and finally decided to be a step in, and become Lens' new manager. I don't really want to describe it in terms of "purchases," more like unionism, not the annexation. A series of events, such as Kaito and Farcaster, happened at that time, but it was a coincidence. Instead, I hope that you will not focus on competition, a market that is too small and, above all, collaborative。
Colin: So, Lens, what's next
Suji: First step, I want all my wallets to be posted directly through Lens, no matter what chain or exchange. The second step, I think, is that "predict the market + socialization" is seriously underestimated. In places like Polymarket, many betting acts themselves trigger discussion, tuning and interaction, but now the comment area experience is rough, and almost no one makes it into a real social product, which is an opportunity。
More broadly, not just predicting markets, trading behaviors, comment zones, content incentives, and even Memecoin’s “social expression” – for example, changing a currency to say “e.g. lunch money” – are essentially like micro-mails. Our thinking is not urgent, starting with the wallet, then going to the forecast market and trade review area, and linking these real social behaviours over time。
AI + POSSIBILITIES OF COMMUNITY NOTES TO ENHANCE THE QUALITY OF DISCUSSIONS
Colin: In addition to going to the center of socialization itself, this year, Vitalik, have you noticed some new and interesting trends? Could it be one direction, for example, with the forecast market
Vitalik: I think this is a promising direction. On Twitter this year, a relatively positive change was the introduction of Grok. Now, when one issues a clearly inaccurate or even extreme view, one asks the questions directly about Grok, which tends to point to what is wrong and what is right, and to some extent enhances the quality of the discussion。
Of course, Grok is not perfect. Twitter now also has Social Notes, but the biggest problem is that feedback is too slow and it often takes a long time to show. I have been trying to figure out how to make the matter of “correcting” faster, and for the time being, predicting markets may be a viable tool。
For example, when extreme judgements are made, a forecast market can be launched directly, and the probability given by the market quickly shows how low the likelihood of this happening. In many cases, this can effectively mitigate emotional and irrational discussions。
But now some of the forecast markets are moving away from their original purpose and are beginning to place more emphasis on sports games or headwinds than on “helping to get closer to reality”. So I think that it would be a very interesting direction to look at if IA, similar mechanisms like Community Notes, forecasting markets and searching could be combined in a single interface and explicitly targeted at “upscaling the quality of discussions”。
Also, like Glen Weyl's “Second Forecast Market”, combining forecast markets with secondary voting, identity and governance, is well suited to experimenting on social platforms. Overall, the combination of AI, forecasting markets and socialization is valuable in the long run, provided that the objectives are clear and centred around “helping people better understand reality and the future”。
The rationality of predicting the coexistence of markets in different cultural contexts
Forrest: In predictive markets, human perspectives and judgements are themselves important components of price discovery, not just the functioning of capital and liquidity. The future may not require only a forecast market. The West already has Polymarket. Does the Chinese language also need a forecast market that represents the local culture and user structure? Even in the same event, prices and judgements may vary in different cultural contexts, and the differences themselves are valuable and worth discussing。
Vitalik: This is an open question, and the key is whether the demand of different cultural communities for predicting markets is really fundamentally different, and the answer is not clear. But I am very sure that this area requires more competition and experimentation. Whether it is a combination of different market patterns, different application scenarios or a combination of forecast markets and predictive governance, it is worth exploring in parallel. The ultimate model will prevail, and no one now knows, and that is why it is necessary to try in many directions。
Interoperability in social protocols and wallets
0xLuo: Now there's a growing combination of social protocols and wallets, whether it's going to centre socialization or a central platform like Twitter, it's entering into trade and finance. Firefly is also integrating wallets, predicting markets, and so on. What do you think about the trend of "social walleting, socializing wallet products"
Vitalik: The key premise is that bottom-up social agreements are as concise and neutral as possible. If the bottom is too customized and overloaded, it weakens the network effect and discourages collaboration between different products. I don't want to see every wallet develop a social network that is incompatible with each other。
One of the key success stories of the Taifeng is that the wallet can be replaced: users can freely change their wallets and move their private keys. This openness is equally important in social integration with wallets, and interoperability must take precedence。
THE WALLET FUNCTION ITSELF IS BOUND TO EXPAND, ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF INCREASING PRIVACY, WHERE IT PROTECTS NOT ONLY ASSETS BUT ALSO DATA. AT THE INTERFACE LEVEL, IT IS REASONABLE TO INTEGRATE SOCIAL AND FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS, SUCH AS REWARD, SIMPLE DECISION-MAKING, ENS, ETC. HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT MANY SOCIAL USERS ARE NOT USERS OF THE PRIMARY CHAIN。
A more realistic design would therefore be to provide built-in wallets and lower the threshold for use, while ensuring that users are ready to move accounts and assets. This “low-threshold entry + free movement” model is key to socialization and wallet integration。
FURTHER INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL, PREDICTIVE MARKETS AND DAO GOVERNANCE
Slurry pigs: I've been focusing on the combination of Communities Notes, social graph, social idity and forecasting markets, and also on predicting market-related prognosis machines. The question is: Will there be such a scenario in the future – that the content can be directly linked to a forecast market when users brush the flow of information, so that users can be involved on the spot? If Firefly did this, what would the advantage of Twitter be
Vitalik: This deeper combination is very interesting and there are many forms that can be tried. Under the post, for example, it's not just a compliment, it's a direct "I agree with" forecast market, and it's a probabilities given by the forecast market. Such experiments around the discussions themselves are highly worth continuing exploration。
Swift pigs: If this mechanism is extended to DAO governance, for example, by launching predictions or bets on a small scale, based on identity, to support decision-making, would this type of predictive governance (Futarachy) be more appropriate to be achieved on decentrized platforms
Vitalik: There is no real social platform for DAO or protocol governance, and many governance discussions take place on Twitter or in private groups, which is a problem in itself. Designing social interfaces from the outset with the goal of “service governance discussions” that combine discussion, prediction, voting and decision-making behaviour along these chains would be a very promising direction for decentrizing socialization。
Gender-neutral evaluation of the self-built social platform of a centralized company
Colin: Vitalik, what do you think of products like Bian Square? Some even joked that it might be one of the most active social products in the money ring today, but it certainly wasn't centralized. I feel like it's mostly about coins, and the users are "grass," and many people probably don't use Twitter, Telegram, but they'll talk directly into it. But there will also be pull, manipulation and even fraud. What do you think about the exchange
Vitalik: I did look a little at the Square and know it exists, but it is not used in depth, so it is difficult to evaluate the quality of content. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with companies being their own social platform. Indeed, the concentration of all people around the world on a social platform is itself a state of ill health。
It would have been an advance in itself had it been possible to move from a “centre-based social platform” to a “many social platforms” and to make each platform more relevant to the needs and use of their communities. In the next step, it would be more desirable if the platforms were connected to each other to a certain extent, for example, by allowing users of different platforms to still see each other ' s content and find more suitable communities, based on a common agreement。
I myself thought that if there was a high-quality, decentralised, neutral social platform in the future, and even my own blog comment area, such a system could be used directly. In other words, if decentrized socialization succeeds, it is likely that it will not end up as a “one-size-fits-all product”, but that it will result in a large number of companies, communities and individuals, each based on the same bottom, making completely different interfaces and products for completely different purposes。
Suji: So do you hope that the socialization of the trades, like Cheonan, OKX, Coinbase, Bitfinex, will be able to connect with each other in the future as if they were transfers from the Taifeng? There is no need for each family to have a completely incompatible system。
Vitalik: This is an issue that needs to be considered more closely. I don't think socialization has to be completely "zero friction" interoperability. Sometimes it makes sense for a community to set a certain threshold if it wishes to maintain its own sense of boundaries。
At the same time, however, interoperability itself remains very important. The key is not “to communicate or not” but “to what level and to what extent”. This may require finding a more appropriate balance between openness and community differences。
How to re-integrate talent into the construction of block chains
Jocy: We've been talking lately about why socialization and the application of the game blocks have not really succeeded. After the AI cycle, the scale of Internet applications was rapidly amplified, the attention of users became more distracted, and many began to wonder whether de-centre socialization was a hypocritical proposition。
In the current environment, it is our judgement that there is a very low probability of success in a direct application that competes positively with mainstream Internet products. A more realistic path is to make small crowds of products for Crypto users, to run through small circles, to consider expansion, for example, in Polymarket. But it is also essentially financial, social and general user products, such as games, which are difficult at present。
Another feasible path is ToB, which does real demand, has PDF and generates income. In the AI field, many Tob companies are more likely to come out。
I would like to ask Vitalik, in such a market environment, what kind of founders are more likely to make decentrized applications? And how do we get more good builders and talent to stay in this business
Vitalik: I think there is a common reason for the repeated failure of socialization and tour of the block chain: too many projects start from “We are Crypto, we can add finance”, not from application itself。
What really should be asked is three questions: what are we doing? What is really missing from this application? Can existing technologies be used to address these problems? Many of the projects that seemed successful in 2021 were rapidly losing users in Bear City, essentially because the users did not feel good at the product, but only to make money. Social products are the same logic。
So the next generation, the founders of a better chance of success, should be those who really understand socialization, who understand user needs, and even “know socialization but do not understand block chains”, which may be more appropriate than “know only block chains”. The same is true of block chain games, where understanding is more important than understanding chains。
as the block chain evolves into infrastructure, it should play a role more in the backstage than in the product itself. centralization is not "uplink + coins + speculation" but using block chains as a reliable basis for data and collaboration. it is more likely to produce products that have a long-term preference if they are based on specific uses case rather than technology or tokens。
Crypto Cultural Differences and Recommendations for Chinese Developers
Jocy: I'd like to ask you how you see the differences in the Crypto culture. The United States is more of a protocol and developer culture, while China is more of an exchange culture with relatively few truly large agreements and infrastructure. After entering the AI cycle, Chinese people are clearly leaving Crypto faster. What do you suggest to Chinese developers? How can more people continue to be involved in centralization
Vitalik: I have always believed that the greatest advantage of Chinese developers lies in product and user experience, especially for front-end capabilities, which are very good at high-quality experience for large-scale users. This is prominent globally。
THE BASE INFRASTRUCTURE IS NOW VERY MATURE COMPARED TO 10 YEARS AGO, AND IT IS NO LONGER NECESSARY FOR EACH TEAM TO DO L1 OR THE BOTTOM SYSTEM FROM ZERO. IN ADDITION TO AI’S LOWERING OF THE DEVELOPMENT THRESHOLD, I DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT CHINESE DEVELOPERS DO A BOTTOM-UP AGREEMENT ON COMPLEX, HEAVY ASSETS。
A more realistic path is to use the block chain as an infrastructure backstage, focusing on existing agreements and on innovation at the application and experience levels. You don't have to make new agreements, you can do good clients or applications. What really determines whether a product succeeds or fails is ultimately the user’s ability to experience and land, which is where Chinese developers have the most advantage。
