SuperEx Education Series: SocialFi — When Social Becomes an Asset

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Social interaction can generate tremendous economic value — a fact now widely acknowledged. The clearest examples are X (formerly Twitter), Meta (formerly Facebook), and Telegram. In 2024 alone, Telegram’s annual revenue exceeded $1 billion; X generated over $2.7 billion; and Meta’s numbers were staggering — $164.5 billion in revenue, surpassing Ethiopia’s GDP and nearly equaling that of Qatar or Ukraine.

The massive economic potential of social activity has driven institutions worldwide into a frenzy. With the advent of Web3, the integration of blockchain technology, the rise of data ownership awareness, and the boom of the creator economy, more and more players are linking social behavior directly to finance — giving birth to a new concept: SocialFi (Social Finance).

In simple terms, SocialFi gives social behavior financial value, allowing influence itself to be quantified, traded, and circulated. Posting, liking, sharing, interacting — all can generate real income. In other words: your attention, network, and expression are assets.

From Twitter and Instagram to Friend.tech and Stars Arena, the logic of social finance is being validated: “Traffic is currency, and influence is an asset.

 

The Essence of SocialFi: From the Attention Economy to the Ownership Economy

1. The Web2 Dilemma: Attention Monopolized by Platforms

In Web2, platform power lies in traffic distribution — whoever controls user attention controls advertising revenue, brand discourse, and commercial dominance.

Over the past decade, giants like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube have built vast data empires. Every like, comment, share, and second of screen time is captured, analyzed, and monetized by algorithms. Users, though creators of content, never share in the profits. Your engagement becomes ad click-throughs; your time turns into ad inventory. Users are harvested for data, not recognized as co-creators of value.

Worse still, this attention monopoly fosters content homogenization and creator burnout. Algorithms, optimized for retention, push extreme or sensational content. Creators chase algorithmic favor, not authenticity. Platforms profit, users feed the system, and social interaction becomes fully commodified.

That’s the root of the Web2 problem: attention belongs to you, but profit does not.Users supply data passively while platforms extract value actively. The gap widens; creator incentives weaken. Unless you’re a mega-KOL, monetization is elusive — even top creators depend on opaque algorithms and brand deals. And when platforms tweak distribution or revenue-sharing models, income can vanish overnight. There is no decentralized revenue safety net, no transparent ownership record — the essence of centralization fatigue.

Users are asking:

• Why don’t we own the content we create?
• Why are our social connections locked inside apps?

The answer lies in Web3.

2. Web3 Reconstruction: Returning Value to Individuals

Web3 isn’t patching Web2 — it’s rebuilding value relationships. If Web2 was an attention economy, Web3 is an ownership economy.It shifts platform ownership to user co-creation, using blockchain for data rights, transparent rewards, and shared value.

In SocialFi, users are not mere consumers but value nodes in the ecosystem. Every post, interaction, like, share, or invitation can be tracked, settled, and rewarded by smart contracts. Behavior becomes quantifiable, tradable, and monetizable.

For instance, on some SocialFi platforms, community engagement earns tokens — tradable, stakeable, or usable in governance. Your social activity now carries financial attributes — turning you from a passive contributor into an active value participant.This is the essence of “Participate to Own.”

It means:

• You hold your own data keys;
• Your content is on-chain, immune to deletion or tampering;
• Your followers are portable, not trapped by platforms;
• Your revenue is transparently distributed by protocol, not opaque algorithms.

Most importantly, Web3 turns social relationships into sustainable asset ecosystems. Whereas traditional fan economies were one-off exchanges — creators post, platforms earn — SocialFi creates lasting value cycles. Fans can buy your creator tokens or NFTs to share in future growth; creators can reward supporters via buybacks, airdrops, or community governance. It’s not just “likes” — it’s mutual profit.

Ultimately, SocialFi rebuilds the power structure of social interaction:

• power returns from platforms to users and communities.
• Platforms become tools — not judges.
• This is the true user-sovereign Internet.

The Core Logic of SocialFi: Three Layers of Assetization

The real innovation of SocialFi isn’t “token incentives.” It’s the financialization of human interaction — turning relationships, content, and reputation into tradable assets. This can be broken into three layers: identity assetization, relationship assetization, and content assetization.

1. Identity Tokenization

Identity assetization means the individual becomes a quantifiable asset unit. In SocialFi, your identity is independent of any platform — a digital identity package (DID).

It includes:

• DID (Decentralized Identity): ensures uniqueness and security.
• Social NFTs: represent reputation and community rank.
• Creator Tokens: reflect market influence.

This structure redefines how we value people. On Friend.tech, even an ordinary user can attract community investors through high engagement. When someone buys your “shares,” they’re voting on your future influence — a financial expression of social trust.

DIDs can also bind to multi-chain ecosystems. For example, a user’s reputation score in SuperEx could serve as a social credit reference across other platforms. In the future, as this “personality asset” merges with Web3 finance, your on-chain reputation may affect loan rates, airdrops, or collaboration eligibility.

In SocialFi, reputation is collateral, and trust is currency.

2. Network Tokenization

The core value of social networks isn’t content — it’s connections. Relationship graphs are Web2’s deepest moat. But SocialFi uses blockchain to make them open, transferable, and even tradable.

For example, Lens Protocol records every relationship on-chain — followers, interactions, and networks are encrypted and portable, not siloed in databases. This allows users to carry their social graph anywhere, even enabling “social asset leasing.”

A well-known KOL could, for example, lease their network for promotions via smart contracts. Fans earn airdrops, creators earn profits, brands gain exposure — all transparent and traceable.

CyberConnect introduced “social graph NFTs,” turning each interaction into a visualized, ownable NFT — proving influence across communities and breaking Web2’s walled gardens.

3. Content Tokenization

The third layer is content. In Web2, platforms capture content value. In SocialFi, content itself becomes an asset — NFTized, fractionalized, tradable, and royalty-bearing.

Mirror.xyz pioneered this by allowing authors to mint posts as NFTs, earning perpetual royalties. Farcaster ties content to on-chain identities for direct tips or sponsorships. Now, every post is not just “information” but a monetizable asset — each read, share, or remix triggers value flows. Some projects even experiment with content fractionalization — splitting an article or video into tradable “shares.”

Creation becomes investment, attention becomes votes, and distribution becomes shared profit.

Global Trends: Three Paths of SocialFi Evolution

1. United States — Creator Economy-Centric

American projects focus on creator monetization:

• Friend.tech — influence tokenization
• Lens Protocol — social graph standards
• DeSo — decentralized social blockchain infrastructure

All aim to reshape creator–platform relations, from monetization to data ownership.

2. Asia — Community Economy-Centric

Asia (especially Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan) blends SocialFi with GameFi and airdrop mechanics to form powerful community economies:

• Korea’s BORA integrates music and KOL ecosystems.
• Japan’s BitClout variants explore community autonomy.
• Singapore and Hong Kong focus on data liquidity and DID convergence.

3. China — Dual Track of Compliance and Application

While crypto finance remains restricted, China’s application-level innovation is thriving. SocialFi ideas already manifest in digital avatars, content NFTs, and fan economies. Once policy relaxes, China could become one of the richest SocialFi markets.

Challenges and Risks

1. Speculation & Bubbles：Friend.tech’s boom-and-bust cycle in 2023 exposed the danger of over-financialization — when speculation outweighs genuine social interaction, user retention collapses.
2. Privacy & Data Security：SocialFi must balance transparency and privacy.DID standards, encrypted storage, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) are key enablers.
3. Sustainability：Token incentives alone are unsustainable. Projects must build real economic loops and intrinsic value mechanisms.

Conclusion: When Influence Becomes an Asset

SocialFi is not a Web2 remake — it’s a financial reconstruction of human relationships. It turns expression into economic activity and social interaction into productivity. In this new order, value is co-created, not platform-defined.

Just as DeFi democratized finance, SocialFi is democratizing social capital— realizing the vision of: “Your influence, your ownership.”

Appendix: Key Terms

• SocialFi — Social Finance; integrates social activity with financial incentives.
• Creator Token — tokens representing an individual’s social influence or value.
• DID (Decentralized Identity) — ensures user data sovereignty and privacy.
• Lens Protocol — decentralized social relationship framework.
• Mirror.xyz — Web3 publishing platform for NFT-based content and royalties.
• Friend.tech — SocialFi app built on influence tokenization.
• ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) — cryptographic method for privacy protection.
• SuperEx — the world’s first Web3-based decentralized trading platform