Navigating the Current Dynamics of CyberConnect
Recently, Binance announced the listing of CyberConnect’s governance token CYBER on Launchpool. As a decentralized social protocol, CyberConnect aims to offer users enhanced privacy, data sovereignty, and a diverse content economy model, among other features. Since its inception, the CyberConnect protocol has undergone continuous iterations. This article will outline the development journey and current state of CyberConnect.
I. Development Updates for CyberConnect
CyberConnect was established in 2021 with the objective of creating a decentralized social graph. The foundational architecture of CyberConnect emphasizes data sovereignty, implementing a user-centric data flow system based on Ceramic and IPFS storage layers.
In 2022, CyberConnect launched its v2 version, deploying a hybrid expansion architecture (EVM+Arweave) for social applications. Using this mixed solution, dApps can store more user social data on-chain. Additionally, v2 adopted an SBT-like scheme, associating a series of social data with W3ST (non-transferable and adhering to the ERC-721 standard) to restore a user’s Web 3 identity. Link3 is a flagship product that utilizes CyberConnect v2.
On July 14, 2023, they announced their v3 version, and plan to complete deployments across six EVM-compatible networks in the next two months. The essence of v3 is to develop CyberConnect into a comprehensive, chain-wide social protocol. Core components include: the identity infrastructure CyberAccount compatible with ERC-4337, the anti-censorship database Cyber Graph recording user content and social relationships, and the multi-chain solution CyberNetwork.
CyberAccount is a set of smart contracts. Its associated components can largely align with web2 user habits, reducing the migration threshold. Specific features include:
1) Identity verification and authorization, including account recovery through emails or phone calls in cases of identity/private key loss. The team will also enhance privacy features in the coming months.
2) Compatibility with the ERC-4337 standard to achieve account abstraction, effectively allowing protocols like CyberConnect, underlying networks, or any specified web3 dApp to pay transaction fees on behalf of users. This enables seamless switching between wallets in different ecosystems. The product layer is termed CyberWallet.
3) CyberID.
4) Organizational accounts.
Cyber Graph particularly underscores the linkage between user identities and their social data, aiming to record social data across multiple EVM-compatible blockchains. This data linkage has also become a vital foundation in the CyberConnect creator economy. Correspondingly, v3 will further emphasize the creator economy. The ERC-721 standard token W3ST from v2 has been transformed into an ERC-1155 standard token, further reducing gas fees.
The team did not elaborate on CyberNetwork details. However, both ERC-4337 compatibility and Cyber Graph lay a solid foundation for a superior multi-chain user experience. The team has stated that they will introduce additional upgrades in the coming months to reduce social interaction costs.
II. Protocol Data
The explosive growth of user data on CyberConnect occurred in mid-to-late March, June, and late July of 2023. The corresponding events were:
1) CyberConnect lowered the threshold for Profile creation. During the CyberConnect and BNB Chain hackathon, users could register usernames (Handles) of 12 characters or longer for free and abolished the registration invitation mode. Additionally, on March 16th, Arbitrum announced an airdrop of ARB tokens, the windfall effect of which spurred users to interact with top projects that had not yet issued tokens.
2) The token public sale on Coinlist concluded.
3) Binance Launchpool announced the listing of CYBER.
Currently, the total number of CyberConnect Profiles is 1.258 million, with about 11,000 daily active users. The weekly active users are 82,000, a 45% decrease from the previous week. After Binance announced the token listing on Launchpool, users interacted on-chain in anticipation of airdrops, but the number of active users declined afterwards. Historical data shows that since March 2023, the number of consistent daily active users was around 40,000. After conducting the token sale via Coinlist, it was confirmed that a snapshot for the airdrop to early adopters was completed by the end of April, reducing the long-term daily active users to 30,000. Since some tokens were still reserved for community rewards, on-chain activity saw intermittent growth. Currently, the number of continuously active users has further reduced to 10,000–20,000, which is closer to the actual user count.
III. Financing Situation
Financing: A total of $30.4 million was raised.
In the third quarter of 2021, a seed round financing of $10 million was completed, led by Multicoin and Sky9 Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, Draper Dragon, Hashed, Zoo Capital, Smrti Lab, and Mask Network.
In the first quarter of 2022, Series A financing of $15 million was completed, led by Animoca Brand and Sky9 Capital, with Delphi Digital, Protocol Labs, IOSG Ventures, Tribe Capital, GGV Capital, Spartan Group, Amber Group, Polygon Studios, and SevenX Ventures participating.
In 2023, $5.4 million was raised through a public offering on Coinlist, with a public sale price of $1.80. 25% was unlocked at TGE. For users who participated in the public sale, the price of Cyber needed to reach $7.20 at TGE for them to recover their costs in one go.
IV. Economic Model
The total supply of CYBER is 100,000,000.
Token distribution:
Ecosystem distribution details:
Token Use Cases:
1) Used as the means of paying Gas fees for all transactions within CyberWallet across EVM-compatible chains, applicable to Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Base, and Polygon networks.
2) Community governance voting.
3) Payment for minting CyberProfile.
V. Roadmap
Q3 2023: Release v3 and deploy on more EVM-compatible chains; launch the CyberWallet beta version compatible with ERC-4337 and the CyberGraph model; upgrade [.cyber] to an omni-chain domain.
Q4 2023: Enable login/recovery of CyberWallet via web 2 methods; release the CyberConnect Grant; achieve over 120 ecosystem projects and 1.5 million profiles.
VI. Competition
The core competitor for CyberConnect is the Lens Protocol.
The core content of Lens Protocol V2 is a composable social network, allowing external smart contracts to access the Lens Protocol; implementing a more open economic model, achieving shared value among platform users, algorithms, applications, and other roles; introducing the ERC-6551 token standard, allowing value linkage to individual Profile NFTs rather than the owner’s address.
Compared to the Lens Protocol, CyberConnect v3 emphasizes user operational experience and building a multi-chain universal identity network.
From the data perspective, Lens Protocol has 360,000 users, about 1/3 of CyberConnect. However, the daily active user activity pattern is consistent with CyberConnect; explosive growth usually isn’t sustainable and lasts only about a week. The current number of daily active users is around 20,000.
Conclusion
CyberConnect is a very noteworthy project in the decentralized social track. It aims to gradually bridge the habits of web 2 social app users to web 3 apps through various versions, while further lowering the barriers to decentralized social interaction by reducing interaction costs.
However, from the data, it appears that the current active users of decentralized social protocols are more driven by the expectation of token airdrops. Moreover, due to user habits and social relationships, traditional social apps have high user stickiness and high migration difficulty. Thus, the development of decentralized social protocols still faces significant challenges.
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