Building Blockchain Social Networks with Subsocial

About this Episode

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Polkadot Integration Specialist, Parity Technologies) is joined by Subsocial’s founder and Polkadot Ambassador Alex Siman, and Zachary Edwards, Subsocial’s content lead and community manager. Subsocial is an open protocol for decentralized social networks and marketplaces, and this episode explores the world of social networks on blockchain, through the eyes of the Subsocial team.

They provide an overview of their platform and its architecture and discuss their growth strategy, targeting the non-crypto-native masses by creating a better user experience than Web 2.0 versions like Facebook. This means tackling censorship and moderation, prioritizing user sovereignty, and decentralized marketing. Finally, they consider what the metaverse could look like, and Subsocial’s part in it, and future plans to integrate with Polkadot and Kusama projects.

Links
Subsocial’s website
Blog article about Social Finance
Subsocial on Twitter

Highlights
1.30 Overview of Subsocial
06:20 Consensus algorithm to secure Subsocial
11:00 The architecture of Subsocial
15:00 Potential for (over) sharing on a blockchain social network
19:00 Separating personal identity from on-chain data
24:00 Storing content on blockchain
28:15 Addressing the issues Facebook created
35:50 Voluntary ads mechanism
38:40 Growth strategy and encouraging users to join
41:40 Account compatibility across Substrate-based chains
43:15 Targeting the non-crypto-native masses
48:50 The Subsocial mobile app
50:15 Rewarding Subsocial ecosystem contributors
52:40 Evolving social networks with blockchain
54:00 ‘Social Finance’
59:30 Integrations with ‘DotSama’ projects