CyberConnect V3 is a series of powerful upgrades to the CyberConnect social networking protocol to move the web3 social networking into a new, multi-chain future. It will power the next phase of hyper-scalability for web3 social dApps and provide users with a social networking experience that feels familiar to web2.
In the coming weeks, we will officially roll out the upgraded CyberConnect social network to multiple L1 and L2 blockchain networks through a special launch campaign with Link3 called CyberVoyage. We invite web3 teams from all ecosystems to join us. More details will be shared soon.
Collect this post and unlock limited early backer benefits to commemorate this massive upgrade to CyberConnect and move web3 social into its new, multi-chain future. More details on benefits will be announced next week, along with more information about CyberVoyage. The main goal of Web3 social is to create a digital renaissance by giving back ownership of identity, content and social data to users.
Inspired by the goal of decentralizing social networks on the internet, our team behind CyberConnect has been at the forefront of developing new web3 social primitives, empowering users to maximize the potential of their digital social identities, and enabling developers to boot their innovative social products.
As we have developed and expanded CyberConnect V2 over the past year, we have learned invaluable lessons in understanding the challenges that lie between where we stand as an industry and truly achieving the original purpose of bringing web3 social to more than one billion users worldwide.
We’re excited to share the breakthroughs our team has made to pave the way for the next phase of web3 social: hyper-scalability and a social networking experience that feels familiar. We are honored to present CyberConnect V3 – a powerful set of upgrades to the CyberConnect social networking protocol to move web3 social into a new, multi-chain future.
Our Journey So Far
CyberConnect leverages blockchain technology to empower users with ownership of their identity, content and social data. In doing so, we enable both users and developers to experience an exciting new set of social networking principles that are interoperable, censorship-proof and decentralized.
When we introduced CyberConnect V2 in August last year, we added a fundamental upgrade to the original CyberConnect social networking protocol that uses a hybrid (EVM + Arweave) scaling architecture for web3 social apps. This scaling solution has enabled dApps in the CyberConnect ecosystem to pull over 1.6 million profile records and enable new content tokenization primitives on networks outside the Ethereum Mainnet such as BNB Chain and Polygon. Using this hybrid solution, dApps can store users’ high unit-value social data such as profiles, content, and collections on-chain, while using decentralized storage systems like Arweave for the rest. This important design practice enables web3 social dApps to support a variety of use cases without being constrained by limited block space.
In the last 11 months, these upgrades have helped more than 1.3 million unique wallets interact to process 14.7 million on-chain transactions on the CyberConnect protocol. Link3, Phaver, ReadOn etc. Over 1.6 million unique content has been created, in addition to 2.5 million follow actions, 5.8 million likes, and over 10.5 million NFTs in our rich social dApp ecosystem, including Thanks to our dedicated community of users and developers, their engagement over the last few months has propelled CyberConnect into the top 10 on DappRadar across all networks and categories.
CyberConnect V2 has also laid the groundwork for spirit-linked tokens on web3 with W3ST (web3 status token, pronounced west) and has supported CoinMarketCap, PoolTogether, Maverick, etc. It has enabled more than 2,400 organizations to recognize and reward their most engaged and loyal supporters as proof of participation in these communities.
Inside a Flexible Web3 Social Network
Because we’re building publicly, the challenges we face are visible from far away. This also helped us learn publicly and iterate the CyberConnect protocol in real time to meet the demands of web3 social users and developers.
Although CyberConnect V2 is used on Ethereum Mainnet, BNB Chain and Polygon, it is not possible to operate on multiple chains simultaneously due to the risk of user identity fragmentation. On top of that, switching between blockchain networks as a user is still quite complex. It is important to note that even if they somehow progress and become an experienced web3 user, they must acquire native tokens for each blockchain via a fiat launcher, CEX or a bridge!
With these challenges in mind, we went back to the drawing board and re-engaged with the first principles of decentralized social networking protocols.
A resilient web3 social networking protocol:
protects a user’s holistic identity;
multi-chain;
abstracts the complexities of network switching; And
is scalable.
Current Challenges
The main challenge of introducing CyberConnect to multiple chains is to separate the different functions of a “user identity” to maintain a holistic identity.
The word ‘identity’ is often overused but widely misunderstood. At first glance, it is a unique identifier that distinguishes one person from another. However, in the additional context of social networks, identity serves two important functions: authentication and authorization. Just as a username/email and password in web2 help authenticate a user and account ownership, a web3 identity relies on a private key/seed phrase and cryptographic signatures to do the same thing. Also, a social identity is like a database of a user’s social journey and generates significant social events/actions, such as the content they create and interact with. In Web3, the ID must also have a unique human-readable identifier (abhi.cyber or abhir.eth) attached to it. Finally, users’ public information such as their display name, bio, and avatars are also part of the same identity. While these are all different components of a web3 identity, they all have very different functions and features.
CyberConnect V2 has combined them into an all-encompassing, inalienable ‘CyberProfile’. Although CyberProfile owners could change their public information such as bio and avatar attached to their profile, they could not change their authentication method (EOA wallet) or username/username after obtaining their identity.
However, just like updating your username, email or phone number on web2, users on web3 should be able to change their authentication ID to improve security or when their original credentials are compromised. Not only that, users should also have the flexibility to change or swap premium usernames without losing the rich history of their social journey.
Unfortunately, this is a much more difficult challenge to overcome. Add to that the challenge of expanding a modular identity infrastructure to multiple blockchain networks, and the complexity of that challenge increases exponentially.
Fortunately, we found a solution.
The Multi-Chain Future of Web3 Social
CyberConnect V3 consists of a series of powerful upgrades to the CyberConnect social network to move the web3 social network into a new, multi-chain future. This upgrade will empower the next phase of hyper-scalability for web3 social dApps and provide users with a social networking experience that feels familiar to web2.
V3 has three key components: CyberAccount, an ERC-4337 compliant identity infrastructure; CyberGraph, a censorship-proof database for recording users’ content + social connections; and CyberNetwork, a gas-efficient and scalable network to bring CyberConnect to the world.
CyberAccount
CyberAccount is a suite of smart contracts that collectively represent a user’s self-sovereign digital identity and link it to their content and social connections. This web3 account infrastructure consists of 4 key components, each with a different purpose:
Authentication and Authorization
CyberAccount is tasked with defining the workflow for user authentication and authorization in the CyberConnect protocol.
Each CyberAccount is controlled and managed by one or more cryptographic key pairs, thus providing a clear distinction between a user’s account and their web3 wallet. Through our collaboration with ZeroDev, we have included this important design practice that lays the groundwork for powering several powerful primitive tools. This includes social recovery for identity/private key loss situations, as well as email, social or phone sign-in options for a seamless and familiar onboarding experience without the need for seed phrase management.
Our team at CyberConnect is passionate about strengthening users’ privacy rights. That’s why we’ll be offering an additional upgrade to CyberAccount in the coming months using zero-knowledge proofs and privacy computing.
ERC-4337 Compatible
CyberAccount is ERC-4337 compliant, meaning it removes the complexities of network switching and gas payments for end users. We worked closely with StackUp to deploy an in-house packager and payment manager solution that allows us to improve the cumbersome user experience of Web3 wallets and implement third-party designed mechanisms to pay for users’ transactions. These types of transactions can also be called gasless transactions and are very important for maximizing the end user experience. Without a packer and payment manager, users would have to manually switch networks every time they interact with a profile or content from another blockchain and acquire the blockchain’s native token in their account to pay for transactions.
Paymaster opens a whole new level of possibility for mass user engagement and platform booting by allowing the CyberConnect protocol, core network or any web3 dApp to pay for transactions on behalf of users.
In CyberConnect, users will also be able to top up their gas credits from a network of their choice and use that credit on any other chain where CyberAccount is deployed, to truly use the web3 social multichain.
And yes, $CYBER will eventually be used as a protocol-wide gas token.
CyberID
Like your Instagram or Twitter username, CyberID is an ERC-721 token that represents a unique identifier for your account on the CyberConnect social network.
Unlike most ERC-721 tokens, registering / minting a CyberID does not imply permanent ownership. CyberID operates on a demand-based recurring fee model. If you forget to renew your promoter’s registration, it will be put into an auction process.
During the growth phase of the CyberConnect social network, a portion of CyberID registration fees will be returned to CyberAccount as $CYBER tokens in the form of gas credits.
Organization Account
Web3 social is not just for individual users. It’s also for teams, organizations, and brands to connect with their audiences and create meaningful, contributory communities. Link3, a web3 social network for creating and exploring new communities, is the largest dApp within CyberConnect by user activity. It is loved by web3-specific teams on blockchain networks for their community management needs. To further the potential of CyberAccount, we designed a powerful new way for organizations to start their web3 social journey. Organization account is a special type of CyberAccount that provides advanced account management features such as multi-sig and customizable access control rules.
In addition, the CyberConnect social networking protocol provides a robust authentication infrastructure that allows any third party to verify external accounts (e.g. Twitter, Discord) associated with the organization account.
CyberGraph
In Web2, social graphics represent connections between users, their content, and interests. It is an important data set that social networking platforms use to attract attention and increase user interaction. But social charts have become more of a limitation for users and developers lately due to their widespread centralization by big tech. To provide an alternative, we introduce CyberGraph, a decentralized, censorship-proof and user-owned alternative to powering the next generation of social networking platforms on the internet.
CyberGraph is a set of smart contracts that connect user identities (CyberAcconts) to their content and social links, and allow this rich social data to be recorded on multiple EVM-compatible blockchains. Thanks to CyberGraph’s unique, customizable middleware design, storing users’ high unit-value social data in blockchain databases unlocks many new social networking and community building principles, including monetization through tokenization.
Contents
Every user with a CyberAccount is already equipped with creator capabilities and can publish monetizable content. When a piece of content such as a post, image, or video is first created on a dApp in the CyberConnect protocol, it is uploaded to a decentralized storage system such as IPFS or Arweave, and then the link between the URL of the content and the creator’s account is recorded in the CyberGraph smart contract. Linking to content from this decentralized account is essential to guarantee genuine user ownership and remove centralized control from any platform. A critical step in facilitating online communication on the open web, this system prevents a corrupt/non-deterrent platform from monopolizing and manipulating content distribution.
CyberGraph also paves the way for the next growth phase of the creative economy, empowering artists and creators to collect their content and bring new experiences to their fans/viewers. Each collection represents a fan endorsement of a particular piece of content or creator with a permanent record on the blockchain. Using this engagement information, creators can identify their oldest or most engaged backers and tailor their rewards or growth campaigns accordingly.
In addition, whenever a user comments on a piece of content on the CyberConnect social network, a link to the original content is established in the smart contract, ensuring the dominance and origin of the content. Users can also share posts, images, videos, etc., just like on web2. can strengthen the original content by sharing it.
W3ST
One of CyberConnect V2’s most loved features by the community is W3ST (Web3 Status Token, pronounced West). This is a non-transferable NFT with an on-chain issuer reference that acts as a digitally verifiable indicator of a user’s status in their community. It is a powerful tool for users to find their tribe on web3. Organizations use W3ST to recognize their most committed and loyal supporters, thereby creating a digitally verifiable, immutable, and contextually meaningful contribution-based value system in their communities. W3ST is also instrumental in the growth of communities as it helps identify potential members with similar interests, connections and past experiences.
We are excited to share that W3ST is now even more gas efficient and even more discoverable. Instead of each W3ST’s unique ERC-721 contract, organizations will now use a single ERC-1155 smart contract to save gas and empower their members with better discoverability on NFT platforms.
subscription
Connections are the fabric that weaves social networks online; content creators should be able to monetize their content and social capital from the relationships and friendships they generate. In the CyberConnect protocol, subscriptions are designed to allow creators’ communities to monetize themselves.
In V3, users must set up their subscription logic with a predefined monthly fee to activate subscriptions. When your audience subscribes to you, they must prepay at least one monthly subscription fee. With a subscription, creators can easily monetize their exclusive content that they pay to publish.
Medium Software
CyberGraph follows a middleware architecture to create more design space for customized logic. Middlewares are plug-and-play custom execution logic codes that run before and after an action trigger to extend default behaviors on social networks.
CyberConnect provides a middleware repository for developers to use by generalizing common computing models. For example, suppose dApp A wants to create a social network for the Bored Ape Yacht Club by specifying that only BAYC owners can print their app-specific ContentNFT, and dApp B wants to do the same for RTFKT’s CloneX owners. The basic model here is the same; The only difference is the gated ERC-721 contract address.
We invite the developer community to contribute to this repository and help us create a wide variety of reusable middleware together. Dapp developers can pick and choose the relevant ones to easily add to their dApps.
CyberNetwork
Blockchains are designed as a decentralized, transparent, secure and immutable system for recording and verifying information. However, storing data on existing blockchains is expensive. So while representing social data on the blockchain is good for programmability and interoperability, high gas costs are an incredibly formidable bottleneck for scaling web3 social networks to one billion users. In the last 11 months, over $2 million has been paid in gas fees by 1.3 million users on CyberConnect V2 alone. Users need a better alternative that can scale significantly without sacrificing their data ownership.
In the coming months, we will introduce additional upgrades to the CyberConnect social network to make all social interactions/transactions much cheaper.
Road map
CyberConnect V3 will be available in the coming days, starting with Link3.
In the coming weeks, we will officially roll out the upgraded CyberConnect social network to multiple L1 and L2 blockchain networks through a special launch campaign called CyberVoyage with Link3. We invite web3 teams from all ecosystems to join us. More details will be shared soon.
Get this post and unlock limited early backer benefits to commemorate this massive upgrade to CyberConnect and move web3 social into its new, multi-chain future. More details on benefits will be announced next week, along with more information on CyberVoyage.
Additional developer toolsets including an updated indexer and API server will be available in August.
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