If the current market attention is divided into several hotspots, the social track in recent period undoubtedly has gained the most attention and liquidity in the market. Not only is the Lens Protocol, which just announced its new V2 at EthCC, but also Friend.tech, a short-lived social platform similar to BitClout. Social networking remains the most imaginative product in Web3. Of course, there is also CyberConnect, which has been continuously vocal recently.

First, the public issuance of CYBER tokens was announced on CoinList and listed on Binance, followed by the release of the new version V3. CyberConnect aims to become a leader in Web3 social networking. To help readers better understand CyberConnect's ideas and advantages, BlockBeats interviewed Wilson, co-founder of CyberConnect, on August 14th.

TLDR：

CYBER Token's main functions currently include providing gas fees and governance voting. Several major functions will be available after upgrading to CyberConnect 4.0.

Upcoming announcement of collaboration with Animoca, the seed investor and lead investor of CyberConnect's Series A round.

Compared to Lens, CyberConnect's advantage lies in its deep team accumulation. CyberConnect not only works on the protocol layer, but also focuses on the application layer.

CyberConnect will decide whether to develop its own public chain based on market demand, but will prioritize the development of product use cases, including the development of Link 3 towards LinkedIn and the expansion into other scenarios.

Web3's future social form can be directly accessed using CyberAccount to log in to accounts, bind personal data, wallets, and accounts. This is the social form of the future Web3 native.

CyberConnect's Advantages

BlockBeats: Welcome Wilson to the Rhythm Live Room. Please introduce yourself briefly before we begin.

Wilson: Hello everyone, I am Wilson, co-founder of CyberConnect. I joined the industry early and bought ETH in early 2017. In the second half of the year, I created a decentralized social network called Lino Blockchain, which raised more than $20 million. After it went live, DLive.tv became one of the platforms with a large number of users, with MAU reaching tens of millions. In early 2020, the project was acquired and the team took a break for a while to adjust.

During continuous discussions with the team, we realized that there are still many infrastructure issues to be addressed in the entire social arena. This gave rise to the idea of establishing a decentralized social graph protocol, which is the prototype of CyberConnect. The first version was released in 2021, and the project has completed two rounds of private placement and one round of public offering, raising a total of more than 30 million US dollars. 

BlockBeats: CyberConnect has been developed for about a year and a half now, and has evolved to version V3. Can you provide specific details on what sets V3 apart?

Wilson: The V3 version mainly includes three parts: CyberAccount, CyberGraph, and CyberID.

This can be simply understood as a WeChat account system, but it is decentralized. There are several benefits to opening this account:  

The first benefit is that it is an intelligent contract wallet, which can save a lot of tedious steps and introduce the Gas Delegation feature. For example, when processing many transfer transactions on multiple networks such as Base, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Ethereum mainnet, various different tokens are involved, and paying gas fees can be simplified into one step, which is a great improvement in user experience.

Why do we call it the Account System instead of a simple wallet? Because it also stores user identity and social graph information. Social graph information and identity-related information are very important, and this part is CyberGraph. For example, a user's friend data or having 1 million followers on Twitter are all very important data assets. Currently, whether it is Tencent, WeChat, or companies like Twitter/X, they only treat these assets as their own platform assets. 

For example, Tencent allows users to bring their friend relationships and avatars into other Tencent-owned applications (such as Honor of Kings) when logging in with WeChat, because they all belong to Tencent internally. CyberAccount and CyberGraph, on the other hand, allow users to have their own identity system and data storage, which is decentralized and can only be accessed and written by the user's private key. With these, users can bring their identities and monetizable relationships, such as fans, from one platform to another. Additionally, if I am certified in CyberConnect, I can issue an additional credential to prove that the person behind the Wilson account is affiliated with CyberConnect. In short, CyberConnect can be compared to something like WeChat or Gmail login, but with differences in underlying wallet and data structures.

BlockBeats: CyberConnect's biggest competitor, Lens, has also upgraded to V2. What are the advantages of CyberConnect compared to Lens?

Wilson: First of all, their version 2.0 may be similar to our version 2.5. Overall, the 4337 smart contract system is more harmoniously matched with other products as an account system. Although we were one of the earliest teams to do social networking, we are happy to see more excellent entrepreneurial teams joining in the construction of decentralized social networks and social graphs.

First of all, the backgrounds of the two teams are different. The Lens team comes from the DeFi industry, while our team has been working on social media since 2017. We may not only focus on the protocol layer, but also on the application layer, including our Link 3 application, which has already reached over one million monthly active users this month. All-in-one-profile has more than 2,600 different institutions, including some VCs. Many large projects or institutions have directly used Link3 as their Verified Profile on Twitter, so the team and its genes are very important.

Next, the development paths are different, and there are some differences in underlying technologies. We often see that Massive Adoption encounters user login issues, and we will think about how to solve these problems as a whole. This may have significant differences, and we focus on product capabilities.

Web3 Creator Economy Feasibility

BlockBeats: Regarding the creator economy, V3 has also launched corresponding features. Can the creator economy really work on Web3?

Wilson: The creator economy is definitely a good thing, and Twitter's recent move to pay creators is a great attempt and start. Web3 just makes this more transparent, open, and fair. It doesn't require too much trust in any individual and is sustainable in the long term. As a Web2 platform, Twitter may not continue to do this if their financial situation worsens in a few days. Of course, there are other ways to play, as there are still many novel ways to explore.

Our focus for the second half of this year and next year will be on creator economy-related projects, and there will be some exciting specific scenarios. However, it's a bit too early to reveal them now, so we'll show them to you directly when the time comes. We have previously worked on DLive, which had over one million daily active users and over ten million monthly active users. At that time, it was ranked in the top ten entertainment applications in North America, and game live streaming was a place where tipping was very common. In the future, we will also explore some interesting application scenarios in the entire ecosystem, which is something we are better at than other teams, and we will make a strong effort to do so.  

BlockBeats: When communicating with a mainstream social project, they said: "Web3 has no content and needs to bridge from Web2." What do you think of Web3 social/content creation? And how do you stimulate Web3 originality to generate more consumable native content or make more content stay on the chain?

Wilson: Generally speaking, a social media platform needs some time to settle down. During this process, the platform accumulates a certain atmosphere and "culture", as well as a certain amount of content. Only after adding particularly interesting economic mechanisms or token models at this stage, it will truly explode. Otherwise, the vast majority of them may just be a flash in the pan.

BlockBeats: What's your take on friend.tech? This project is also in the social networking space and generated a lot of buzz last weekend, providing KOLs with profits and some wealth effects. Its approach is different from CyberConnect and is similar to BitClout. 

Wilson: I think friend.tech may be an attempt without much innovative significance, because their model has been played by everyone before, and they have not done much optimization and improvement, just rehashing the previous model, which is not very meaningful. I hope to see them use this as a way to warm up the market and really launch more innovative, scenario-related, and practical products later. The overall market is like this, with people constantly coming out with various attempts, but I prefer to see more practical innovation.  

CYBER Token's Use Cases

BlockBeats: After the release of CYBER Token, will there be any new gameplay or empowerment for CyberConnect?

Wilson: Of course there will be. We have been in this industry for 6 years, and this is the only token we have issued. We have made a lot of preparations for this. The rationality of this token is very strong because the CyberAccount logic is particularly smooth: Cyber serves as a multi-chain gas fee payment method, which is really important for user experience. Normal people don't want to switch networks frantically when doing a click action. At the same time, there must be gas fees on this network, which is too troublesome. If we can solve these problems well, it is the foundation for truly popularizing Web3 infrastructure. After that, CYBER can perform various incentive applications in it.

 BlockBeats: Is its main function to provide Gas fees?

 Wilson: Currently, what we can publicly disclose are Gas and basic voting. There are actually several major features to come in the future.

BlockBeats: CyberConnect is approaching the level of "public product" to some extent. However, mainstream products like Uniswap's Token seem to have little effect, which can also be understood as the team's unwillingness to make more empowerment.

 Wilson: There are significant differences in the token economics between us and Uniswap. Gas fees are one of the most useful application scenarios recognized in the industry. CyberAccount has been online for two weeks and has already attracted over 400,000 accounts, with gas fees totaling over $1 million. Users have paid over $100,000 in gas fees through smart contracts.

Our next upcoming partnership announcement is related to the Animoca brand. At Massive Adoption, we will fully leverage the support and network of our investors. Animoca has been an investor since our seed round of financing and also led our Series A round, providing many resources for Massive Adoption.

To make a product successful, it is crucial to have as many users as possible. When comparing CyberConnect and Uniswap, there are still many differences. 

BlockBeats: CyberConnect's Token may play more roles in the future. What are the important roles that Wilson thinks the Token will play in?

Wilson: The most important and useful thing is to provide Gas. Over the past two weeks, more than $1 million has been charged, which is a very impressive number. In addition, there is something that can only be revealed when CyberConnect 4.0 is upgraded. Regarding Token-related matters, we cannot disclose too much expectation before the specific functions are officially launched, as it may involve some legal issues.  

BlockBeats: Many projects are now following various Layer2 or scalability narratives to create their own public chains. Will CyberConnect consider this direction after its launch?

 Wilson: This depends on market demand. We do not rule out this option, but my priority is not this matter, but the scenario, including the development of Link 3 towards LinkedIn. There are also other scenarios to expand, directly connecting with large applications. Landing scenarios will have a slightly higher priority than developing a new chain.  

Web3 The Future Form of Social

BlockBeats: It was mentioned earlier that CyberConnect has been involved in social networking for a long time, starting from the earliest Web3 resumes, to personal badges, and now developing into the CyberAccount combined with AA, as well as a social graph. During this period, how did you think about it and what were the different changes in cognition?

Wilson: Our main focus is on application scenarios and considering which products can achieve large-scale applications in reality. For example, in the development of Link3, after observing users and the latest technological trends, the most difficult problem is actually the account system itself, which is not user-friendly. It is unrealistic to require a newcomer who wants to enter Web3 to create a MetaMask account first. We need to consider specific application scenarios for the future. For example, in recent years, we want to see large-scale native applications that can achieve tens of millions of monthly active users, just like before. This is our main concern. Our technological development path revolves around this theme and does not simply focus on which technology is popular or what is more sensational and marketable.

BlockBeats: What is your vision for the ultimate form of Web3 social networking? Why do you think Web3 social networking has not taken off yet and what is still missing?

 Wilson: I think the ultimate form is that everyone has an account system, similar to Gmail. Currently, in Web2, we use Gmail to log in to our accounts. In the future, we can directly use CyberAccount to log in to our accounts. After logging in, there will be two additional functions compared to now. One is your personal database, and your data can always be bound to your account. The second biggest difference is that after logging in, your wallet is also bound to your account. This means that you have payment capabilities and will bring your assets and identity to another APP. This experience is a form of social interaction that will be seen in the future as Web3-native, and it is more like a login system.

BlockBeats: Although we can take the content from Web3 social applications, how can the content of different applications achieve mutual compatibility?

Wilson: Taking Twitter as an example, if you want to bring Twitter content to TikTok, the most important thing to transfer is not the content you usually post, but your fans and members. If you have 50,000 fans on Twitter, you will also have 50,000 fans on TikTok. The main thing that can be "carried" is social capital. Bring what you think is valuable because each scene is different and requires personalized customization. However, the difference is that you can bring what you think is valuable at the moment. For example, the certification of Cofounder of CyberConnect, which I brought from Twitter to LinkedIn, is actually very valuable. 

BlockBeats: What do you think is the most significant aspect of user behavior that Web3 social applications like CyberConnect will change?

Wilson: It depends on the specific application scenario. For example, in the Link3 scenario, some project parties and KOLs are more concerned about it being a verified profile because there are many links and this all-in-one profile can be forged. However, we have done audit work to allow the verified identity to be recognized on multiple platforms. For content creators, monetization is definitely a major concern, but in addition to monetization, what everyone may be most concerned about is growth mode and how to increase the number of listeners or viewers and fans. This is definitely related to incentives, but it must be done very carefully because it is also not advisable to overly emphasize incentives. 

BlockBeats: This is quite difficult, because Web2 relies on algorithms, but Web3 does not. Do you think Web3 needs an algorithm, or does it require other incentive mechanisms?

Wilson: Actually, Reddit has a good foundation, but this year they wanted to do an IPO and did some things that the community didn't like. This is actually the criticism of centralization, which will go against its original intention because he is the boss and we are the users. However, the status of Web3 is relatively equal. Reddit is a very interesting example. Its content discovery mechanism and management model are very decentralized, and it does not rely entirely on algorithms. Of course, algorithms will be used more and more after AI, but human factors are crucial. 

BlockBeats: What do you think is the biggest challenge or dilemma that CyberConnect is facing in terms of business right now? 

Wilson: There is no dilemma, but there are definitely challenges. The cooperation between our newly launched Infra and various scenarios and large-scale scenarios that will be launched in the future may also pose challenges once they are implemented. The biggest uncertainty is still the laws and regulations. Decentralization, including laws and regulations in the United States and many other countries, is not mature. However, I have a relatively optimistic view. I have seen that PayPal has launched its own stablecoin, which is a great progress. If similar things happen more in the future, the overall pace should accelerate.

BlockBeats: When facing regulation, which part of decentralized social applications do you find most challenging?

Wilson: Taxation and KYC. The regulators are mainly concerned with two issues. One is the various profits you make on the platform. If the platform earns less but the creators earn more, you need to make them pay taxes. This is a very tricky issue. The other is KYC, which is important for anti-money laundering. Both of these issues need to be carefully considered when doing Massive Adoption. This was also a problem I discovered when I was doing game live streaming in the United States. It takes a lot of effort to do these things, and dealing with legal regulations is always difficult. Another major difficulty is the fear of not being able to create useful products, whether you do it yourself or work with other excellent teams.

BlockBeats: An application in collaboration with CyberConnect. If an Apple app is released in the future, will there be any issues regarding fees and other aspects on the app?

Wilson: This is actually not too bad, just pay taxes. All Apple applications are like this. But this shouldn't be a big problem, after all, Apple has a large user base.

BlockBeats: Will you organize any events in the future regarding CyberConnect's future direction?

Wilson: We now have CyberTrack, which is an ongoing activity that is equivalent to opening an account and experiencing the entire process of the smart contract wallet. We encourage everyone to try it out. Although this product is in its early stages, it will iterate very quickly in the coming months, and this activity may be the most worthwhile one to participate in.

BlockBeats: It has always been difficult to create content in the social field, and monetizing content is becoming an increasingly challenging issue. How do you view this problem?

Wilson: Actually, I'm quite optimistic. I've been in this industry for more than 6 years, and the monetization environment is getting better and there are more monetization tools available. People's willingness to pay has also increased, except for being affected by macroeconomic factors. I don't think this is getting worse.

It is obvious that in the past 5 to 10 years, the industry has been moving in a positive direction, and there is increasing respect for content creators. The current concern is the potential for monopoly if one platform dominates, but overall, I am optimistic about the industry's future.

BlockBeats: Does Web3 have a greater role in promoting users to pay for content by changing their habits?

Wilson: Web 3 can enable super micro-payments, such as tipping or monetizing with amounts as low as 0.01 or 0.001. Due to the involvement of bank cards and transfer fees in Web 2, it is difficult to achieve micro-payments unless you are completely centralized and licensed, which is not the case for the majority of platforms.

Web3 makes it easy to achieve this: if my account is my wallet, with Gas fees and a small amount of pocket money already in it, why can't I give you a like that is equivalent to tipping you 0.01 yuan? This is actually doable. The on-chain Gas fees will become lower and lower, and we are working on an upgrade to make this operation very cheap and P2P.

There are many economic chains that can be developed here. For example, I can help you forward your creative content, and if my friends see the forwarded content, they may also support it. Maybe I can even upgrade. The entire economic chain can be activated, but activating the economic chain requires transparency and trustworthiness.

Audience Questions 

Encryption veteran Lei: What is the difference between CyberConnect and Lens in the social track?

Wilson: For example, our CyberID is different from Lens in terms of approach. Currently, Lens still uses profiles to create an overall NFT account. We directly use ERC4337 to create a smart contract wallet and account system, which is a significant difference. CyberConnect is a more fundamental entry point.

Encryption Lao Lei: Besides products like Link3, what other products will CyberConnect release?

Wilson: Currently, there are about fifty to sixty applications in the community, including those in collaboration with Animoca. In fact, we will focus on promoting several larger applications. We cannot reveal too much at this time, but we will definitely promote several major applications in addition to Link3.

GSW: Recently, CyberConnect launched an airdrop and users who received it are wondering about your opinion on the CYBER token. Can we hold it for the long term?

Wilson: I cannot provide any financial advice, but I can state that I am a long-term holder because I have locked up my tokens. Our team has been in the industry for 6 years, including the acquisition of our previous company. This is our first token issuance, and we will be very cautious. I cannot disclose too much information as this is a sensitive issue, but I hope my stance is understood.

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