The web3 Social Layer - Web3 Social: the Next Wave of Innovation by Stani Kulechov

foreign [Music] okay and now for our next talk on the web 3 social layer web3 social the next wave of innovation by Stoney kulichoff stani is the founder and CEO of Ave companies he was studying law at the University of Helsinki when he first began learning about smart contracts and dust about the ethereum blockchain network this led to an exploration of how blockchain technology could impact the traditional Financial system please welcome Sony to the stage [Applause] Jim um who is feeling good nice um yeah so I want to thank the ethereum foundation for organizing uh Defcon it's been very very busy week um at least for me and probably for everyone else there's been a lot of good talks here and um and it's the last day so you know the the best talk is probably uh amongst here too um um don't want to brag too much but so okay today we're going to talk about web3 social um and as a next innovation see if we get this yeah perfect so something I want to talk about is that um The Innovation for the past um years or decades has grown quite substantially and has accelerated so um if you look at that for 100 years we have Technologies for example like telephone that has been invented or 100 years ago and it took decades to actually adopt uh automobiles cars for example took decades as well um and more recently for example um the television has got higher acceleration and and also uh the infrastructure underneath the internet the the computer and what we've seen different kinds of patterns is that the more we get infrastructure The More We Get compounding acceleration of innovation and this is one of the reasons for why for example the internet infrastructure has grown substantially um and if we look into the um I guess oh it's oh okay cool yeah perfect if you look into the actually uh recent Innovation what is happening in Internet um ecosystem is that we have a lot of adoption uh in a very high acceleration uh curve uh on line so what it means that when you have already a complete infrastructure it's very easy to innovate and have this compounding effect and recently uh we've seen for example um uh tiktok being one of the uh recent examples of of how we had a scale adoption from uh zero users to one billion users in uh about roughly um seven years since um the beginning um and I don't know where is this thing I need to point out what should I point out okay oh cool yeah so yeah so what I want to say is that the internet adoption um is global so we're dealing with technologies that are affecting everyone every single um human in the planet and there is a large-scale empowerment [Music] that is related to not only the internet but what we're doing here and the um ethereum community and across across the blockchain space um I mean even though with high amount of adoption and penetration there are still places where in some regions the adoption of the Internet isn't really in its fullest at the moment so for example if you look at the graph of uh sub uh the sub-Saharan Africa we have adoption of roughly 30 of population using the internet itself Colombia is at 70 so it's very Regional and and there's still places where we need infrastructure to to innovate um but regardless of the infrastructure um things are going to change quite a lot in the future so the way I see how Innovation Works and specifically um this particular chart the kind of like I I would say like a circle of different components um demonstrates uh what Innovation is for me like how I approach Innovation um and what are the ingredients to come up with a product and also get that product into a growth cycle so obviously you have the opportunity there so basically you recognize a a problem or an opportunity to solve having knowledge about the problem you're trying to solve expectations understanding what people actually need the talent the team members that you're building with and they actually craft and the craft is what I call the the product itself obviously there's things like funding related and also uh road now what's super exciting about uh web3 and innovation in web 3 is that we rely on open networks and open networks they create accessibility so they create access for everyone here today for example to contribute not only what we're building in the other team but any project in the ecosystem because they're relying in the open network idea and open source technology so yeah and one important component also is the the the culture aspect so culture equals for me also community so when you build open networks open infrastructures uh you're actually in a different kind of a dynamic setting then as if you will be building a product within a company or a service for example this means that when you have accessibility people across globally they need to find a way to connect share ideas and and build actually different kinds of Concepts and an actual Community around a product because accessibility also means that the users are the ones that are part of the um Innovation flywheel and in in an important part actually of making that Innovation um happen um one important thing I have realized in the past that web3 is something that's going to touch everywhere so it's not only specifically related to one particular area to solve and we've seen obviously with how web3 has borne so Bitcoin tried to solve the idea of how we can actually transfer value between humans across globally without intermediaries and create a public money as public goods and obviously with the innovation of ethereum and the ethereum virtual machine you could actually create programmable applications on the blockchain because we try to solve financial problems and opportunities in the beginning we started to actually continue solving those within our community and that's where DFI has been very successful so but to get actually beyond what we have today uh in our community and the user base we actually need something more um done for example the essential as Finance um and just an example is that these interests Finance um is uh incredible Innovation what our space has been able to uh create it means that every one of us has accessibility uh to a fair transparent market across globally um and decent just Finance doesn't look into your background what you are doing when you're actually participating in these markets or when you're building ah part of the community but to get into more bigger adoption we need to realize that we have to go beyond Financial applications and find more things that solve uh human problems and um feed their needs as well and I personally with my team uh think that social is the next uh or at least the killer app for web tree and the reason is that we currently have almost 5 billion users on social media and it's growing constantly we also have equal amount of almost equal amount of internet users um social media users then we have Internet users so there's a big opportunity in social media and we also see that it's Global phenomena and effectively if you look at this chart here we see a lot of social media usage in Southern America but also in Asia compared to for example the regions of Europe and North America and we could actually ask ourselves why do we have social media why their why social media is important um in in the first place so what I have been looking into is that there's definitely a need for people to connect with each other uh for particular different reasons and there's also need for create so humans has have always had the um idea of being a Creator so here's a picture of one of the oldest findings of creativity um back in a long long time ago um so um social media it allows us to connect with people uh one-on-one basis create relationships and also in groups coming together and forming a community um on topics that we care about care about it and social media is very vital to our lives because with internet and being able to connect with each other we are able to learn from each other directly from the people rather than example from institutions we also have the sense of belonging when we can create communities and part of the adoption also is that we can actually do this connectivity in scale across the globe and I really love this particular slide because um there is this concept of Six Degrees of Separation uh which means that we all people here um and everywhere are connected to each other across uh six hops of uh friends of friends so um to any person um in the um uh planet and there's actually recent studies as well um that this hope distance actually is becoming even more narrow and we see that it's roughly 4.7 degrees so almost every fifth person you are connected with in the planet and part of that is because the connectivity is more easier we have access to Internet we can connect to anyone any person in the planet on the topics that are interesting uh for us so what happens when we are actually using social media is that we create Social Capital social capital is something we all have regardless of the technology so we have social capital when we are forming friendships uh when we are connecting with people when we are sharing ideas uh or sharing news the big problem at the moment is that we create a lot of this social capital actually online and we're using uh platforms such as the bigger social media platforms where we are creating this networks and connectivity and at the same time we're publishing uh content and these platforms are designed um to thrive as a as a basic platform instead of actually striving to preserve your social capital or aligned with your own ideas so what I see is that the web to social is at the moment a zero-sum game for many participants that create uh social capital and one of the issues is that all of the users are actually locked in a particular platform so you can't actually take your social capital and do a digital exit and transfer transport it to a a new platform or a new venue where you might find uh interesting ways to connect with your peers and share ideas Traders at the current state lack of distribution and for the same reasons you are locked in into these particular platforms and also it's very hard to actually monetize Beyond um sharing the traffic of what you're getting to maybe your home page and for the developers there is actually lack of freedom to come and and build and innovate um ways to how to connect with people innovate on the experiences as well and create new applications and and new Networks so I believe that web2 social is right for disruption at the moment and I think pep3 social is something that creates the positive some value so it builds the value for the users and it builds builds the value for the community and what I want to introduce here is the web free social layer the components that are actually and the ingredients that bring that bring these benefits for for all those three parties the users the creators and also the Developers so why web3 is a game changer especially in the social space is because the creators are getting ownership of their content distribution so you as a Creator can actually decide how you uh distribute content to your audience you also own that relationship between you and your peers and it's not locked into a particular platform and because you're not logged into a particular platform as a user you have the choice to actually select the experiences and the algorithms that serve you the most and are aligned with you the most and for developers it means also when all of the web3 is built by on top of the open networks you have the accessibility to improve these networks and actually develop them further so you have access to develop the networks and web3 space I mean it's still growing quite a lot there's more investments in the region we also have locally here in Colombia 6.1 percent are owning um cryptocurrency and we also see here in Colombia that it's one of the countries that are getting um accelerated adoption at the moment including uh some of these countries in Asia like Vietnam also India turkey and and amongst others so we're uh in this perspective we're in the right place to talk about web3 as a an open networks and and how it could we could build them further so we see web3 social has a green field of opportunity there are ingredients that are very valuable when you build web tree social so the networks must be open meaning that anyone can actually compute on the data that is on web3 social can actually use these components smart contract libraries and also take what is already existing improve it and make it available to people um and also one key point is the decentralization so what makes web3 social very valuable is the architecture and the architecture is where you as a user uh owned your profile on chain and you own your social graph and connectivity which means that you own your social capital and here's the social layer where individuals they have their identity you have social verification when you are connecting with the peers and for the groups uh what you can do is that you have community-owned interest graphs open algorithms so when we take the base layer and give the ownership to the users and what it allows us to do is that first time ever anyone can actually build new algorithms and these algorithms do not need to be black boxes they can actually be transparent algorithms where developers are explaining what kind of algorithm and what data points that algorithm is using and that brings alignment between developers the users and the communities and for creators it means that actually when you own your distribution Channel it also unlocks your you a new ways of actually creating content and creating experiences based on the web3 social footprint and also monetization is key part so monetization is and financialization is something that is part of the web tree value proposition and with with the idea of opening the identity at the same time it means that um you can actually own the way you monetize and you don't have to be relying on the platforms but actually find a venue with your social graph and with your profile and actually distribute the content and monetize the way you want so web3 social um it unlocks the power of creativity connections and it brings more Innovation so what we did with financial applications we can actually do the same for non-financial applications and the reason why it's important for us is that this is this is the path how we can bring more users into the space it means that um people who don't necessarily have that Financial Capital but they're rich on Social Capital can actually have their ownership of that and enter into the space and use non-financial applications and also generate value for them and what's interesting about social capital compared to financial capital is that Financial Capital you can spend but social capital is something that you can carry through your whole life and this is why we need actually people to come uh to the web tree space to also non-financial applications and building more uh utility so one big question for us is that um who will build this new generation social media applications and we have a perfect answer for this one it's you since you are here at Devcon and it's a developer conference I'm pretty sure that there are people here that can take the opportunity and build some very interesting applications and use cases and Empower um the users and empower the the the creators and other developers and even create social media applications that have better values transparency and are aligned with with different user bases as well last thing is that if you don't have a lens profile yet you can scan this QR code and later you can claim a lens profile and you can actually test drive web3 social um as well thank you everyone [Applause]