Category: NFT News

Is SocialFi Dead? – The Defiant

By Published On: March 9, 20245.9 min readViews: 5930 Comments on Is SocialFi Dead? – The Defiant

SocialFi is like a Shakespearean play: idealistic, momentous, and ahead of its time, yet never out of favor among the masses. Seemingly dystopian at times, the thought of monetising your social network, even if it’s just a few hundred followers, equals financial freedom for many — the financialization of people, as some like to call it.

In this regard, 2023 marked a rather successful year for SocialFi with significant investments. But while the interest seems real, the numbers do not necessarily reflect the sector’s true state. The sharp drop in users recently across major platforms, including on the runaway hit of 2023 Friend.Tech, has put proponents of SocialFi on the backfoot.

Present trends make it seem that SocialFi platforms are being visited more for airdrops and other one-way incentives than actual social interactions. This is, in turn, affecting the haloed loop of user interest, engagement, and retention that makes Web2 social media a dopamine stash.

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Seamless UX, another major success of mainstream social media, hasn’t found its mark yet in dApps. Issues around interoperability and the inability to fully translate DeFi theories on-chain continue to additionally hurt the sector’s relevance.