Key Takeaways
- CyberConnect seeks to address the challenges of centralized social media by offering a self-sovereign and interoperable experience, giving users and creators complete control and ownership of their data and content.
- CyberConnect introduces innovative features like CyberAccount, CyberGraph, and Cyber L2, enabling seamless interactions and empowering developers to build diverse applications within the ecosystem.
- With its native CYBER token, it facilitates governance and various transactional functionalities, aiming to create a holistic, user-friendly, decentralized social environment.
Decentralizing Social Media
The idea of “decentralizing social media” has been around for quite some time. Unlike centralized platforms, a decentralized social media (or “DeSoc”) platform offers an open, fair, and censorship-free environment, aligning with the principles of free speech. So far, developers have been hindered in their ability to create robust DeSoc platforms due to limitations in technology. However, with sophisticated scaling mechanics and wider Web3 adoption, it is now possible to develop powerful DeSoc platforms with the help of blockchain-powered protocols like CyberConnect.
What Is CyberConnect?
CyberConnect embraces the ideals of DeSoc by placing the reins directly into the hands of creators and their communities. They supply appropriate tools for developers to build innovative apps and provide a platform where creators can directly interact with their audience without going through an intermediary.
Release history
Here is a brief overview of CyberConnect’s release history:
- CyberConnect V1 was launched in Q3 2021 as a decentralized social graph protocol. It provided developers with a shared data layer to construct their apps.
- V2 launched in August 2022. While V1 was tethered to Ethereum, V2 broadened CyberConnect’s horizons and welcomed chains like BNB and Polygon. V2 also deployed a hybrid scaling model and provided more smart contract flexibility.
- V3 was launched in July 2023, introducing three important upgrades – CyberAccount, CyberGraph, and Cyber L2, which together abstract away the network complexities for easier user onboarding and provide scalability that rivals Web2.
Core principles of CyberConnect
According to CyberConnect, there are five core principles that their ecosystem strictly adheres to:
- Self-Sovereignty: Users own their data and have total control over its use. Developers can access this data only with users’ consent.
- Interoperability: Users can access multiple platforms using one social identity and bring along their social data.
- Composability: Developers can effortlessly integrate CyberConnect’s protocol into their Web3 stacks to leverage pre-existing connections between users and its social graph’s network effects for their specific use case.
- Programmability: Developers can effortlessly create custom logic for various user actions, such as making profiles and posting. Content creators can also set up paid subscriptions or gated content if they wish to.
- Scalability: DeSoc is usually hampered by scalability requirements. Creating new, innovative experiences that match or exceed the user experience in centralized platforms requires tremendous data and resources. CyberConnect’s hybrid scaling solution utilizes off-chain storage to circumvent scalability limitations.
How Does CyberConnect Work?
As mentioned above, CyberConnect’s V3 introduced three main upgrades: CyberAccount, CyberGraph, and Cyber L2. CyberConnect orchestrates its entire workflow around these updates.
- CyberAccount: CyberAccount is an ERC-4337-compatible smart contract wallet solution with the primary goal of providing a seamless onboarding experience for users. It allows users to create decentralized, transferable digital identities through NFTs.
- CyberGraph: CyberGraph is a set of smart contracts that links user identities (CyberAccounts) to their content and social connections and enables the recording of that rich social data onto multiple EVM-compatible blockchains. Developers can customize the middleware used as per their requirements.
- Cyber L2: Cyber is a modular Ethereum L2 specifically designed for social applications and optimized for mass adoption.
What Makes CyberConnect Unique?
By providing a solid DeSoc platform, CyberConnect fills up a much-needed gap in the market.
The problem with centralized social media
Centralized social media platforms have long been criticized for the following reasons:
- Censorship: Centralized social media platforms exercise control over content, leading to censorship and shadowbanning of controversial voices or opinions.
- Profit over free speech: Companies that are more concerned about the bottom line will always be driven by profit optimization rather than principles of free speech.
- Limited creator compensation: Content creators on various social media platforms receive only a minuscule share of their revenue. The centralized nature of these platforms limits the ways creators can monetize their content and engage with their community.
- Loss of social capital: Since users do not have self-sovereignty and any control over their connections, they could potentially lose social capital when leaving the platform.
- Restricted innovation: The centralized social media sector is ruled by a handful of major players. As such, users are confined to the experiences and innovations these platforms offer.
- Data control: When you use a centralized platform, you don’t own your data. The platform owns all your data and uses it at its discretion.
A decentralized social media platform can easily fix these issues. However, the scalability issues and high gas fees often seen in Web3 have prevented developers from creating a viable solution. Powered by OP Stack, Cyber L2, with its modular architecture, addresses these issues by utilizing Eigenlayer AVS as well as EigenDA to provide a censorship-resistant storage solution along with a highly scalable infrastructure for social app developers.
What Is the CYBER Token?
The CyberConnect ecosystem’s native utility and governance token is CYBER. It has a total supply of 100,000,000. CYBER fulfills the following roles in the CyberConnect ecosystem:
- Governance: CYBER token holders can vote on CyberConnect Improvement Proposals to drive the long-term growth of the protocol.
- CyberID minting fees: CyberAccount holders can mint unique handles like alice.cyber or bob.cyber. Users must pay with CYBER when purchasing a CyberID with a premium username.
- Gas credits in CyberWallet: The CYBER token will be used as gas credits for transactions across all different chains within CyberWallet – CyberConnect’s Smart Contract AA wallet solution launched in V3.
- Securing Cyber L2 network: The CYBER token will be used to secure Cyber L2’s node network.
What Is the CyberConnect Ecosystem?
CyberConnect ecosystem currently hosts 35 projects. Here are some of the main projects in the ecosystem.
- Link3: Link3 is a Web3-native social network of verified identities that focuses on value-based communication. It utilizes the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) for on-chain verifications of employment or affiliation and has a novel pay-per-reply pricing model of paid messaging.
- Phaver: Phaver rewards its users for creating and sharing quality content. It empowers users by granting ownership through an innovative NFT-based social graph.
- Mocaverse: Mocaverse is an NFT project from Animoca Brands that brings together the company’s portfolio projects, and partners. The collection features 8,888 Mocas that serve as a membership pass for Animoca Brands team members, investors, partners, and certain token holders.
What’s Next for CyberConnect?
Having successfully launched V3, CyberWallet, the CyberConnect team has ambitious plans for its ecosystem for the rest of 2024. Per their official roadmap, CyberConnect will be introducing its Ethereum L2, Cyber L2 mainnet later this year. Cyber Staking is introduced with Cyber L2. It aims to reach 120+ ecosystem dApps and >3 million CyberAccount owners by the year end. CyberConnect will also launch a grants program for developer onboarding and ecosystem development to facilitate this.
Closing Thoughts
CyberConnect has positioned itself to not only be a leader in the DeSoc landscape but also the gateway for mass Web3 adoption. Its innovative features like CyberAccount, CyberGraph, Cyber L2, and the integral CYBER token empower creators, developers, and users by fostering self-sovereignty, interoperability, and scalability within its ecosystem. With ambitious plans moving forward, CyberConnect is poised to redefine social interaction and content creation in the decentralized web, offering a dynamic, inclusive, and open alternative to traditional social media platforms.
