📚Preface

Over the past decade, the internet social and content industries have completely transformed the way humans connect. Web2 platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube have built vast social networks and content ecosystems. However, accompanying this development is the reality of users and creators being "imprisoned" by these platforms:

• User data is monopolized by platforms, with virtually no privacy or autonomy.

• Creators cannot truly own their work, and revenue distribution is highly unfair.

• In the content distribution chain, true value creators and connectors are rarely incentivized.

• Platforms enjoy the majority of economic returns while benefiting from traffic dividends.

The emergence of Web3 has brought disruptive hope.Mechanisms such as decentralized identity, on-chain ownership, and token-based incentives have laid the foundation for a “value internet.”However, current Web3 social platforms still face significant shortcomings:

User experience falls behind Web2, with high entry barriers and low traffic;They lack high-quality content, and their incentive models are short-term focused;Interoperability across platforms is weak, and social relationships remain fragmented.As a result, users struggle to find reasons to stay on these platforms, and the “cold start dilemma” of social apps remains unsolved.

Meanwhile, three major trends are emerging in the industry. These trends are shaping the direction of the next generation of social networks:

Trend 1: Content Assetization Becomes a New Consensus

More and more projects are attempting to bring digital content — articles, images, videos, audio, even code and AI creations — on-chain as verifiable and tradable assets. Protocols like Mirror and Lens have pioneered permanent storage of posts as NFTs, allowing readers to purchase and share in revenue, setting the precedent of “content as assets.”

Trend 2: Reinventing User Incentive Mechanisms

Traditional Web2 platforms have extremely imbalanced value distribution. Web3 platforms are trying to reverse this with token economies. But models like “Write-to-Earn” or “Like-to-Earn” are easily exploited by speculators and lack sustainability. A new direction is the assetization of user behavior: Every like, comment, or share is recorded on-chain, rewarded through reputation systems and incentive curves — forming a long-term positive feedback loop.

Trend 3: On-chain Identity (DID) Becomes Core Infrastructure

On-chain identity is more than just a login method — it’s the carrier of one’s reputation and value. DID combined with reputation credentials (SBTs, VCs) is becoming the standard across Web3 social ecosystems. It allows users to bring their “social capital” across different platforms, solving the fragmentation and data silos of the Web2 era.

These three trends sketch out a new logic for future social networks: Users are not just content creators — they are also value owners and network builders.

However, most existing public chains focus on DeFi or basic transactions, and lack fundamental support for content ecosystems, social relationships, and user behavior.

This signals the need for a public chain built specifically for content, identity, and connections —a chain that offers high performance, low cost, developer friendliness, and comes with native modules for content assetization, behavioral incentives, and identity management.

This is the “digital infrastructure” needed for the next generation of Web3 social networks and the creator economy.

PopChain was born in this very context.