Basic Comparison

Funding Background

The funding background often provides a good indication of how market institutions view a project. Strong financial backing can influence the development speed, competitiveness, and risk resilience of a project. Among the four projects, Farcaster and Lens have impressive funding support.

Lens was created by the team behind the leading decentralized lending protocol AAVE. It has completed three rounds of funding, securing investments from well-known institutions such as Faction, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, and IDEO CoLab Ventures, with a total of $46 million raised. In addition, there are rumors that Stani Kulechov, the founder and CEO of Aave, is seeking $50 million in funding for the Lens Protocol from U.S.-based venture capital firms. If successful, this would bring Lens Protocol’s valuation to $500 million.

Farcaster, on the other hand, completed a Series A round of funding last year worth $150 million, with a valuation reaching $1 billion. Top-tier institutions that participated in the round include Paradigm*, a16z, Union Square Ventures, and Standard Crypto.

In contrast, OpenSocial and DSCVR have relatively limited institutional backing. OpenSocial completed a $5 million seed round last year, led by SNZ Holding and Portal Ventures, with follow-up investments from OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, and others. It also secured a $6 million strategic investment, led by Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures. Meanwhile, DSCVR raised $9 million in a seed round in 2022, with Polychain as the lead investor.

User Data

In terms of daily active users, OpenSocial and DSCVR far outpace the other two projects. Although they lack the strong funding background, their user base is significantly larger than that of Farcaster and Lens.

OpenSocial, the newest of the four projects, has a smaller following on social media compared to the others, but its total user count leads the pack. This success can largely be attributed to its focus on the Southeast Asian market and community-building efforts, with Vietnam alone accounting for 32% of its users. OpenSocial has over 1 million on-chain users, with 550,000 daily active users.

OpenSocial User Distribution Data (Source: Dune Analytics)

Farcaster has 760,000 total users, with 40,000 daily active users.

Farcaster Data (Source: Dune Analytics)

Lens, one of the more established SocialFi projects, has accumulated over 1.87 million registered users. Its recent daily active users number around 5,000, with a significant surge on January 1, when daily active users approached 10,000. Although there has been a substantial rebound compared to the previous two years, there is still a considerable gap between the number of registered users and daily active users.

Lens Data (Source: Dune Analytics)

DSCVR has 750,000 total users, with 53,000 daily active users.

DSCVR Data (Source: Dune Analytics)

Technical Comparison

A social graph refers to a network of nodes (representing users) and edges (representing relationships or interactions between users), which reflects how users are connected to others. In the traditional internet, external parties cannot access user data, and platforms profit greatly from using this data. However, in the Web3 world, decentralized social protocols are rethinking digital identities and enabling users to control their personal data and social relationships.

OpenSocial, Farcaster, DSCVR, and Lens each have their own core frameworks, and due to the different focuses of each project, they have distinct technical approaches. The one thing they all have in common is that they store identity data on-chain, while various types of social data are stored off-chain.

Farcaster

Farcaster employs a hybrid architecture, storing identity information on-chain while keeping data off-chain. The on-chain system is based on Layer 2 (Optimism) and is deployed via smart contracts. Only a few operations are executed on-chain, including account creation, paying rent for data storage, and adding account keys for connected applications. The goal is to reduce on-chain operations to lower costs and improve performance.

The off-chain system of Farcaster consists of a peer-to-peer server network known as Hub, which is responsible for storing user data. Most user operations take place off-chain, including actions such as posting public messages, following other users, replying to posts, and updating profile pictures. These operations are typically performed off-chain when high performance and cost efficiency are required, especially in situations where consistency is not critically important. Nevertheless, off-chain operations still rely on signatures from the on-chain system to ensure security.

Farcaster Architecture (Source: Farcaster Docs)

Lens

Lens is an open social network that currently only supports users who hold Lens NFTs. There are two ways to obtain an identity on Lens: by directly minting an NFT or by purchasing one on the open market. Lens Protocol stores the content published by users on decentralized storage networks (such as IPFS, Arweave, etc.). It also allows third-party developers to build decentralized social applications based on the protocol. Through open interfaces, Lens fosters the growth of the decentralized social ecosystem, enabling developers to create a variety of social applications compatible with the Lens protocol.

An ideal Web3 social platform should be one where users have full control. In this perfect scenario, users would sign directly, data would be stored on-chain, and frontend data would ideally be queried directly from the blockchain, without relying on centralized intermediaries. However, achieving such an ideal platform faces significant challenges: the amount of data that can be stored is limited, blockchain indexing and querying capabilities are restricted, and every action requires user signatures and the payment of gas fees.

To overcome these limitations, Lens Protocol has upgraded and optimized its system. It now uses an intermediary service layer to act as a proxy, ensuring that users only need to sign critical operations when necessary.

Lens Basic Architecture (Source: Lens Docs)

DSCVR

DSCVR is a decentralized social content aggregator built on the Dfinity Internet Computer, which means that both the frontend and backend store, retrieve, and fully update data on-chain. The unique aspect of DSCVR is that it is a completely decentralized social network, and the future development of the project will be owned and managed by the community. Through a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), community members can vote on platform improvements, content moderation rules, tokenomics, and more.

As DSCVR has evolved, it introduced Canvas, a groundbreaking framework that represents another important step forward in the development of decentralized social platforms. Canvas provides developers with a powerful and flexible framework, not only helping them create innovative decentralized applications but also enhancing the functionality and user experience of the DSCVR social platform through seamless integration. With Canvas, DSCVR has strengthened its ecosystem and offered developers ample creative space, further driving the diversification and innovation of decentralized internet applications.

OpenSocial

The OpenSocial protocol is a multi-chain social infrastructure. It adopts a modular design, breaking down data and functionality to allow creators the freedom to build according to their needs, offering greater flexibility and customization for builders. OpenSocial serves as the execution layer for user interaction with decentralized applications (DApps), accumulating value from the on-chain and interoperable social data and social graphs created.

As seen in the architecture diagram, OpenSocial stores user-generated content and interactions either on-chain (such as OpenActions and OpenReactions) or off-chain (off-chain activities). All off-chain activities are stored on decentralized storage systems like IPFS or OrbitDB. The data availability layer of OpenSocial is built on top of OrbitDB and IPFS, leveraging the decentralized characteristics of both to provide a reliable and efficient solution for data storage and access in the social network.

OpenSocial Architecture (Source: OpenSocial)

Application Comparison

Farcaster has meticulously refined its product in the early stages, offering a smooth overall user experience. Additionally, its well-developed content moderation mechanism and anti-bot measures have successfully improved the platform’s quality. In contrast, Lens’s early user quality was more uneven, with many users primarily motivated by “farming” (earning rewards or benefits), leading to a somewhat chaotic community atmosphere.

For social products, the application itself is just a medium. The platform’s quality and user experience are ultimately determined by the community atmosphere. A good community atmosphere encourages users to actively participate in community activities, share high-quality content, and remain on the platform, thereby helping the social network gradually mature and form an active community ecosystem.

Farcaster: Warpcast

Warpcast is the official client for Farcaster, capturing 90% of the Farcaster ecosystem’s market share. It helps users conveniently manage their accounts within a single interface. Warpcast is a paid software, costing $5 to download, and it operates on an invitation-only basis, requiring an invitation link to register. Both the paywall and the invitation system help increase the platform’s entry barriers, ensuring a better community environment.

The standout feature of Warpcast is its Frames plugin system, which significantly enhances the social experience and scalability. This system allows developers and users to freely customize and expand their social experience on the platform. Through Frames, users can personalize their app interface, content recommendations, interaction tools, and functional modules. Users can mint and trade NFTs, purchase goods or services directly within posts, and even complete tasks to earn airdrop rewards.

Wrapcast (Source: apps.apple.com/us/app/warpcast）

Lens: Lenster

Lenster is a social platform built on the Lens Protocol, and it currently has the highest user base within the Lens ecosystem. It only supports users who hold Lens NFTs and is a paid app. Users can engage in social interactions, content publishing, following, commenting, and NFT digital asset collection and trading in a decentralized environment on Lenster. All of these actions are associated with the user’s NFT.

As long as your wallet holds an NFT that represents your identity, you can use that wallet to connect to all applications within the Lens ecosystem, with all your social data linked to the NFT. For Web3 users, the process is both convenient and smooth, but for those transitioning from Web2 to Web3, understanding and using wallets and NFTs can be a significant barrier.

Lenster Interface (Source: ETHGlobal Showcase)

OpenSocial

As a decentralized social protocol, OpenSocial aims to provide cross-platform interoperability of social graphs, allowing users to freely transfer and integrate their social relationships across different decentralized social applications. OpenSocial’s We-Space portal has officially launched, enabling users to now start, customize, and manage their unique spaces to connect and interact with like-minded communities. We-Space is an easy-to-start, monetizable, and fully customizable community DApp, where users can share, socialize, post, comment, and engage with everything they care about with people who share their interests.

Currently, We-Space supports two mainnets: opBNB and Base. Users’ social data (e.g., followers) remains consistent across all spaces on the same mainnet (opBNB and Base). Users can also decide whether their space is open to everyone or enable subscriptions, ensuring only the right people can access and post exclusive content. 95% of subscription revenue goes directly to the user’s wallet. The official team has also announced plans to launch the Me-Space portal and conduct $OS airdrops. Those who have not yet participated are encouraged to learn more and get involved.

We-Space Official Page (Source: OpenSocial)

DSCVR

DSCVR is a decentralized content discovery platform that focuses on decentralized content recommendations and social graphs. Currently, it does not have a unified, official application platform. However, the DSCVR protocol already supports the development of multiple applications and platforms. This means that, in the future, more third-party applications may be developed based on the DSCVR protocol. At present, there is no official, single app recommended by the platform.

Risks and Future Development

Farcaster faces two main challenges. The first issue is that Warpcast’s management is overly “authoritarian,” with unclear standards for user levels, among other unresolved problems. As a result, the product’s user experience is not yet smooth and requires further optimization and improvement. The second problem is insufficient decentralization. While it is a decentralized platform, it still handles a lot of content, which inevitably includes a lot of spam. This requires frontend handling. Farcaster’s off-chain system is composed of Hubs, which are servers that need to be operated at a cost. However, the protocol layer itself does not provide economic incentives for Hub operators. In some ways, this is one reason why Farcaster is considered less decentralized. Although Farcaster is still in its early stages, it has a large user base and high user engagement. Once the Hubs become open, the increase in frontend diversity and functionality will likely elevate Farcaster to new heights.

Compared to users of other platforms, Lens initially attracted a large number of “farming” users, resulting in lower user quality and a less favorable community atmosphere. Both the users and the project have been overly reliant on token incentives, which has led to slower ecosystem development. However, with the release of the new version of the Lens Protocol, which will be developed and launched on the Lens Network mainnet, Lens will add cross-chain protocol functionality. This upgrade will enable deployment on other networks as well, and with these new features, Lens is expected to see a resurgence in user engagement.

Rick Porter, CEO of DSCVR, shared that the platform faces challenges on two fronts: first, the Web3 social media platform is built on a new technology stack, and the team is much smaller than traditional Web2 giants. Expanding quickly to meet user demands is a challenge. Secondly, there are regulatory concerns within the ecosystem, such as protecting user data and privacy, as well as preventing the spread of misinformation. As DSCVR develops, they plan to launch the Social Fabric platform template, allowing users and developers to better create independent, self-managed community platforms, laying the groundwork for further ecosystem growth and providing users with more convenient tools.

OpenSocial is building the necessary open-source infrastructure to address three key challenges and realize the maximum potential of the multi-chain community economy: user retention, user growth beyond the crypto-centric audience, and spam/bot prevention. The core focus for user retention is user engagement and the community atmosphere. A high-quality user base and a positive community environment are crucial for keeping users engaged and attracting new participants to the ecosystem. OpenSocial also plans to launch the Me-Space portal and conduct $OS airdrops to provide users with a better community environment and reward mechanisms. Their goal is to become the best infrastructure, and they are planning to collaborate with more main chains to attract a larger user and developer base, bringing new energy to the ecosystem’s growth.

Conclusion

Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum’s founder) once mentioned in an AMA that he is most optimistic about the decentralized social media field. CZ (Changpeng Zhao) also tweeted that GameFi and SocialFi would become key forces in driving the growth of the crypto market. In terms of user numbers, SocialFi appears to be a promising contender to become the second-largest blockchain use case after GameFi. However, unlike GameFi, which has already seen the emergence of a few market giants, SocialFi still lacks a clear market leader.

In today’s era where everyone can be a content creator, SocialFi puts the control of content, data, and other information back in the hands of the creators. Not only does SocialFi use blockchain to decentralize and solve the issue of user data privacy, but it also introduces new reward systems that provide fairer and higher rewards to content creators, which, in turn, helps improve the quality of community content, fostering a positive feedback loop.

Currently, the four major decentralized social protocols—OpenSocial, Farcaster, DSCVR, and Lens—each have their own strengths in product design, user operations, and community building. Nevertheless, one thing remains clear: a great user experience and a healthy community atmosphere will always be the core driving forces for the growth of decentralized social platforms.