TL;DR

• 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 CyberNetwork, 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. 

• Using a hybrid scaling model that uses both on-chain and off-chain storage, CyberConnect's platform mitigates typical scalability issues, as seen in other decentralized social media platforms.

Decentralizing Social Media

The idea of "decentralizing social media" has been floating 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 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 content 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 CyberNetwork, which together abstracts away the network complexities for easier user onboarding and provides experiences that rival web2. 

Core principles of CyberConnect

According to CyberConnect, there are four 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 CyberNetwork. CyberConnect orchestrates its entire workflow around these updates.

• CyberAccount: CyberAccount’s primary goal is to provide the perfect platform to onboard web2 users in a web3 environment. 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.

• CyberNetwork: CyberNetwork is a data layer that scales up on-chain data recording.

CyberConnect smart contracts

CyberConnect’s smart contracts utilize tokenization to offer web3 alternatives to traditional centralized social media. The two smart contracts used here are EssenceNFT and SubscriptionNFT.

EssenceNFT allows users to own their favorite creator's content as a collectible. This is beneficial for both creators and users. Users can forge a closer relationship with the creator since they collect the content instead of just consuming it. On the other hand, creators can directly connect with their audience and leverage various monetization opportunities.

Upon creating a CyberAccount, users can issue SubscribeNFTs to allow other profiles to "follow" them. Users can configure their SubscribeNFTs to offer creative subscription options such as pay-to-subscribe and hold-to-subscribe.

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. CyberConnect’s "Scalable Storage Modules (SSM)" was specifically designed to circumvent this issue.

CyberConnect's SSM

Scalable Storage Modules (SMM) provides CyberConnect with a storage system to cache and batch upload users' actions. It uses off-chain storage like Arweave, BNB Greenfield, etc., significantly increasing overall throughput. 

Currently, SSM supports four types of social actions: Follow (similar to subscribe), Like, Post, and Comment. Whenever a user takes one of these actions, the new state generated is stored locally on a central server. The operation log is then uploaded to storage, where anyone can check to verify data integrity.

An efficient storage system allows CyberConnect to create a scalable and usable DeSoc protocol.

What is the CYBER Token?

The CyberConnect ecosystem operates using the CYBER token. CYBER has a total supply of 100,000,000. CYBER fulfills the following roles in the CyberConnect ecosystem:

• Governance: CYBER token holders are responsible for voting on CyberConnect Improvement Proposals to drive long-term growth.

• CyberID minting fees: 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.

What is the CyberConnect Ecosystem?

As per RootData, the CyberConnect ecosystem currently hosts 35 projects. Here are some of the main projects in the ecosystem.

• Link3: Link3 is a web3-native social network platform designed for building communities and discovering content in the decentralized web. It provides an avenue to feature posts, events, and loyalty programs. 

• Galxe: Galxe is a web3 credential data network allowing for the creation and utilization of NFTs representing on-chain achievements. It focuses on constructing a robust Web3 DID system, providing users with a multi-chain identity linked to their past credentials and interactions.

• Phaver: Phaver rewards its users for creating and sharing quality content. It empowers users by granting ownership through an innovative NFT-based social graph.

• Atticc: Atticc is designed to foster growth in NFT communities. It serves as a hub for decentralized identities to connect, build profiles, establish communities, and engage in commerce.

• ReadON: ReadON is a Web3 content aggregator app offering social and read-to-earn features. It incentivizes consumers, curators, and creators through a unique topic-bound NFT design, enabling users to access quality content efficiently and freely while breaking information silos.

What’s next for CyberConnect?

Having successfully launched V3 and CyberWallet, the CyberConnect team has ambitious plans for its ecosystem for the rest of 2023. Per their official roadmap, CyberConnect aims to reach 120+ ecosystem dApps and >1.5 million CyberAccount owners by the year-end. CyberConnect will launch a grant 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, CyberNetwork, 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.