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Foresight Ventures: How do we design product models for the Web3 social platform

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The crypto world aspires to its own decentralized social media and Web3-native rules of the game.

Original title: Foresight Ventures: How We Designed a Product Model for the Web3 Social Platform

Original article by Alice, Foresight Ventures

TL; DR

The crypto world aspires to its own decentralized social media and web3-native rules of the game. Phaver provides an arena where web3ers can support their favorite content and creators with real tokens in their hands, and all community builders can get a decent return.

After testing the MVP product, we had good feedback on user growth, content production, and community operations, but there were still some product design issues.

我们进行了两次产品方案迭代，最大程度地平衡网络效应、用户隐私和 Token 滥用问题，并采用最小干预的原则，将数据主权和管理权最大程度返还给社区。

1. Why did you vote for Phaver?

I first came into contact with phaver team in May, 22nd. From the beginning, I was impressed by the aesthetic and smooth experience of its mobile product. Then I connected with the founders, Jonathan Tomi, in discord. At their first introcall, they were honest in describing the web3 social landscape. In the early days of the crypto industry, the Phaver team started with community & The product-oriented spirit, the technical background and the speed of product iteration are refreshing.

The Phaver team has a mix of social advertising, fintech, and blockchain backgrounds:

Joonatan, Co-founder& CEO, Smartly.io employee number 7 (Global Sales Lead), also formerly at Google.

Co-founder& CFO, advisor for several Finnish crypto projects, previously worked for Alibaba Ventures, Goldman Sachs, BCG

Tom, CIO, is a full-stack engineer with 5 years of experience and the founder of coinmotion, the largest web3 payment service provider in Finland

We invested with a team of more than 10 people around the world

最打动我的是，phaver 的玩法非常创新: 内容质押，让消费者用手中的 Token 投票选出自己最喜欢的内容，颠覆传统意义上的中心化的内容分发和筛选机制。

The content pledge has several interesting features:

Let more long tail creators have access to the possibility of traffic, no longer monopolized by the head account. So that the truly popular creators can make money from it instead of being monopolized by a centralized platform,

加密世界渴望拥有自己的平台和去中心化社交媒体的一套规则。Phaver 提供了这样一个舞台，让 web3ers 可以用他们手中的真实 Token 来支持他们最喜欢的内容和创作者，并且所有社区建设者都可以获得相当的回报。

Once there is consensus and momentum, we believe this will be a bottom-up revolution, a web3-native revolution. So we decided to invest in this project, join this big web3 social experiment, and look forward to starting a new journey.

2. MVP Test: We succeeded, but not quite

From May to September was the time for product testing. Together with phaver, we conducted MVP product testing, Lens whitelist distribution, co-marketing, AMA, and more. There were two major functional iterations during production.

On the data side, user growth and content operations and communities have been very well received. Phaver content accounted for 55% of all posts on Lens Protocol in July.

The community is building bit by bit, with weekly repeat users doubling roughly every two weeks and continuing to grow, to more than 20,000 users in September

We don't have any token incentives, but we reward participants with points (which can be redeemed for tokens later), but the enthusiasm for participation is still high. Even so, users' enthusiasm remains high, with more than 400,000 posts posted in September and nearly 2.5 million likes for their favorite posts.

In the test phase, we also find that the mechanism of phaver is very interesting. If the content created by the creator becomes worse, then someone will be willing to forward or create better content, so as to attract more value provided by the stake arbitrage platform. In other words, the automatic equilibrium adjustment of the market can make the content better and better.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and we realize the MVP is saying something.

反作弊机制需要尽快完善。不诚实的用户可能会给 Token 带来高通胀压力。换句话说，我们通过稀释 Token 价值来惩罚诚实的用户。我们还需要细化奖励规则和市场计划，让每个人都能更好、更公平地参与 Token 需要有更多的 utility 和流通方式，让社区成员能通过 phaver 创造价值，并将价值留存在这个生态环境中，而不是带出这个系统

3. Product design 1.0

In the first edition, our product design ideas are as follows:

To build a fun and sustainable ecosystem, Phaver will offer two systems that reward members for their contributions to social reputation, community engagement, and capital investment.

System1: indicates the SBT DID system

Each user will obtain a unique SBT DID according to the third-party score, in-app score, etc., corresponding to different levels and in-app benefits. This allows everyone to leverage their social reputation inside and outside the ecosystem.

STB DID is a non-transferable NFT that aggregates all user attributes, including creation, likes, comments and interactions, etc. Users can continuously upgrade their SBT level by completing tasks and contributing to the community

System2: NFT Pass

Phaver issues NFT Pass, which can unlock attractive premium benefits, including:

Higher returns: NFT token holders earn up to 2.5x more content pledge returns than non-token holders.

Lucky draw: The top 50% of NFTS in the SBT level are eligible to participate in the weekly lucky Draw & NBSP;

Bronze NFT Pass - $3000 per Lucky draw winner & 1.5 times staking reward

Silver NFT Pass - $4000 & per Lucky draw winner; Double staking reward

Gold NFT Pass - $5000 per Lucky draw winner & 2.5 times staking reward

Premium benefits: reading and creating premium channels, NFT-gated communities, potential airdrops/whitelists, etc

Each NFT series has a limited circulation and can be traded on Opensea.

To ensure network effects and user experience, we want 30-40% of our users to have NFTS, and this needs to be priced properly.

4. Existing problems

After discussing with the team and community, we decided that the design of the first version was not ideal. It had many problems:

Legal concern: Many countries and regions are not allowed to launch products with spinach-like play for C-terminal users, which may lead to the risk of asset securitization. The app store is also subject to strict review.

Infrastructure is not perfect, too complex NFT design is difficult to find a mature technical solution, product landing is a big problem.

The cheating problem mentioned above has not been solved.

5. Product design 2.0

对于产品设计 2.0，在经过多次权衡和讨论后，我们仍然保留了 level 等级体系。同时，为了最大程度平衡网络效应、用户隐私和 Token 滥用等问题，我们采用了最小干预的原则，根据用户的行为和对生态的贡献，制定一套简单好理解的规则来衡量等级并给予对应的权益

Level1 user: Requires email verification to participate in community activities such as Posting, liking, retweeting, reaction

Level2 用户：需要完成身份验证（如：链上声誉/链上身份/NFT 资产/Token 资产任选其一）解锁内容质押功能，并可以将 points 兑换成 token。这一道防护可以保证 Token 不被假账号白嫖，带来 Token 增发和通胀压力。针对有合规要求的地区，若需要用户做 KYC，未来也希望采用 ZK 技术方案来保护隐私

Level3 用户及以上：NFT 持有者或治理 Token 质押者，他们将获得高级福利，例如：在 Premium 频道中发布内容、提高曝光率、收入分红、随机获得更高质押奖励等。在此不做过多披露，具体细节欢迎关注 Phaver 2.0 白皮书

6. Our thinking

Specifically, we found that the main problems of web3 social platform in the market are:

in Token In terms of design, many products simply encourage post/ like/forward/comment/check in and other behaviors. The phenomenon of currency overissuance is serious, and users with currency are used to mining and selling, forming huge selling pressure ability

The solution: Differentiated rewards. phaver enables different users to have different gold mining efficiency through the hierarchical system, nft pass card and other ways, and the first to vote VS last to vote gold mining efficiency is also different, forming a gamified social play, on the one hand, meeting everyone's needs for social communication and sharing. On the other hand, the returns brought by social communication are also unpredictable. Only by making contributions to community building can people get high returns, rather than simply token farming

Creators have no incentive to consistently produce quality content

The solution: Use dapp revenue to reward quality content creators, pledge original content to reward top-ranked creators, and get the majority of consumers to pay for it (this behavior is known as tipping in web2).

A large amount of content is difficult to filter and distribute effectively

Solution: Phaver allows users to vote with tokens by means of content pledge, helps the community select the best content information flow, and combines the algorithm to recommend and optimize the reading experience.

In the process of trying to solve these problems to design more scientific and effective tokenomics, we also have some experiences of our own:

Token 可以成为 GTM 和启动项目的一种很好的方式，但我们需要非常仔细地调整激励措施才能实现生态系统包容性和抗滥用之间的平衡。

The principle of minimal intervention. Listen to the community and the team is only involved in a supporting and guiding role, as the Ethereum Foundation is for Ethereum. The team provides the most basic principles of entry, allowing everyone to create on a level playing field, and ensuring that high-value contributors receive the revenue they deserve.

Entrepreneurship is not an idea on paper, but a combination of theory, art and practice. Successful entrepreneurs have their feet on the ground as well as their eyes on the sky, planning their products in the most practical way, and agile testing with the smallest viable products. Phaver still has a long way to go, but with a strong team and community, we are confident that we can build the most interesting and native web3 social media.