WeChat in the Web3 Era, May Be Like This

Some people say that Discord has inadvertently invented the future.

It is the most popular social product after Facebook and Twitter. It is also a communication tool that can compete with Zoom and Slack. It is also an all-encompassing pan-interest community. It is reported that Microsoft is spending tens of billions of dollars to acquire it, but it was rejected.

Ten years after its establishment, the gaming community Discord has already "broken the circle", with a valuation approaching $20 billion, becoming the focus of the next-generation Internet wave. It has more than 140 million monthly active users, one million communities, millions of members in the largest community, more than 500 million total app downloads, and more than $100 million in in-app purchase revenue.

If you don't join Discord, in any circle about Web3, Metaverse, and currency speculation, you won't be able to get involved.

Discord, what are you doing?

The rigid needs of gamers can be summed up in one word: open black. Discord is actually an audio chat tool using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

In the VoIP field, the earliest king was the Danish software Skype in 2003. As long as the broadband network quality is excellent, users can make free online calls.

For players, the choice of voice chat services is plentiful. If you choose to chat outside the game, you can use TeamSpeak, Mumble, Ventrilo; some games have built-in chat options, such as MMO (massive multiplayer online games), FPS (first-person shooters), RPG (role-playing games) that require teamwork, etc. Chat has become an integral part of gaming.

Game console companies Microsoft and Sony will also be equipped with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network audio channels to facilitate users to hack.

But each of these chat software has its own flaws. In-game chat is limited to specific games. Chat outside the game is restricted by the quality of the network. Sometimes, hardware devices such as microphones and headphones are incompatible, and the lack of connection will affect the mood.

Discord combines the best of all voice chat software with the icing on the cake with the "community" feature, which is what makes it stand out.

Whether the product is good or not depends on the function first. Discord's voice chat quality and efficiency far surpass the competition. Skype or Teamspeak needs to get a friend code or username. Discord only needs to get a link to a Server (server) and click the voice "room" to use it. At the same time, other users can join and quit at will. Players can hang out, play games, watch others play games, chat, and have a high degree of freedom.

Discord is available in both PC and mobile versions, and users can use it in any environment. This design lays the foundation for the "multiplayer social" feature.

Meanwhile, the charm of "Server" is Discord's special "advantage". Server is like a large chat room, users can create topics at will. The server can be divided into "channels" to discuss specific topics.

When a user creates a server, he or she can set different roles for members - no imagination can be set to "administrator" and "moderator", and a little imagination can be set to "Ultraman", "Godzilla" and so on. Assigning member roles is very helpful for the development and growth of the server - it is beneficial to personnel management, rewarding active roles, and providing different access rights for different personnel.

It is worth noting that Discord's social networking is completely anti-traditional: there are no fans, no algorithms, users can have different avatars, choose whether to pay for "skins", and there is no "system built-in" for "gaining influence". means. Coincidentally, everyone has long been tired of "gaming eyeballs" on social media.

In 2019, Tyler Lorenz reported in The Atlantic magazine that many celebrities have entered Discord. Many celebrities have opted to stop using Facebook and Twitter as "middlemen" to "manipulate" their relationships with fans with algorithm-based feeds, so they joined Discord.

Today, the average daily active user (DAU) of Discord is twice as long as that of Twitch, the live game streaming platform, and more than twice that of top social platforms such as Facebook Gaming, TikTok, Reddit and Snap.

At the same time, more than 30% of Discord users did not hack. They are hosting book clubs, sending memes, and running companies. Discord has become the "third space" of the Internet.

Everyone loves robots

Discord's bot ecosystem is quite interesting.

Bot means "robot". Users only need to "invite" the Bot robot to the server and enter relevant instructions to allow the robot to operate various functions such as real-time song ordering, canned message reply, voting, and group hosting. If you can write code, you can also write a Bot yourself.

There is more than one type of popular Bot. Like Tatsumaki, it can help users with many commands, send welcome messages and alert signals, and adjust settings on the dashboard. It can also help users swipe Reddit and remind RSS to keep up to date.

RuneScape, which allows users to play the popular MMORPG RuneScape on the Server, RuneInfo provides a collection of 113 game commands.

MEE6 has served 14 million servers. Users can set different commands to automatically grant or remove roles, send messages on the current channel, send welcome messages, build upgrade programs, and more. You can also set limits for multiple infringements, vet users who spam your site, fine them, and assign points to active characters.

The more creative IdleRPG, which guides community members to participate in a "Dungeon and Dragon"-style role-playing game, and then coordinates the characters through chat commands, gamers especially like this bot.

The bot ecosystem has also entered the world of cryptocurrencies. Collab.Land bot that allows holders of unique tokens or NFTs to access private channels. In the segment channel, others can use Tip (accept cryptocurrency tips) and Piggy (RPG game with cryptocurrency rewards).

Discord's bot ecosystem may seem ordinary, but the power of "gadgets" is not only to expand the functions of the community, increase the sense of game, but also to form greater stickiness through user participation (such as creating bots by yourself). , leaving plenty of room for creativity and diversity.

There is currently no official bot store on Discord, and users can either search or visit Top.gg created by a third party to see the catalog. Just like the iOS and Android systems rely on the built-in store, Discord should not give up the huge business opportunity of the bot store. All bot creators, similar to App developers, can make money in the "store".

Web3 is inseparable from Discord?

Discord's spiritual appeal comes from its "third space" properties.

In the 1970s, as traditional public realms such as parks declined, shopping malls became the new play space for Americans. The shopping mall itself is spawned by consumption and experience, which is different from the public nature of the park's "relaxation". In this context, Ray Oldenburg analyzed the concept of "third space" in his book "The Great Good Place" (1989).

He believes that the home and place of residence are the "first space", and the place of work is the "second space", rather than public gathering places such as streets, cafes, bars, community centers, shopping centers, and libraries. , church, etc., it is called "third space". The "third space" gathers a large number of voluntary, informal, and socially-needed people, which are very important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement and building a sense of place.

In the physical world, the commercial value of "third space" has been verified by countless well-known brands, such as Starbucks, a chain coffee shop worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In the virtual world, whether it is BBS in the past or Discord today, online communities often interact with certain characters/avatars/logos through "hobbies" and "interests" to achieve user equality and agglomeration. The new "third" space” to create a new way of life.

The "third space" needs to be neutral, not to exclude anyone, and also to be accessible, without physical, policy or monetary barriers, and its main activities are communication and information sharing. The "third space" of the virtual world can only be regarded as a "third space" when the mobile Internet matures and the instant audio and video technology matures. BBS is only a "cut version" to some extent.

Discord has become the best tool for forming DAOs because of the attributes of "third space". At present, most DAOs are established following this model: first, contact some like-minded friends through Twitter and Telegram; then come to Discord, maintain dialogue, communicate in real time, and make plans; then bind wallets, raise funds on the chain, and Officially operate on platforms such as Snapshot.

Discord can be used to initiate discussions and vote, which can not only achieve off-chain democracy, but also better facilitate the completion of on-chain products. In addition, Discord can also be combined with various management tools used by DAOs to coordinate multiple situations.

In addition to DAO, Discord first had a close relationship with Web3 because of the "liver whitelist". At that time, many NFT projects used Discord to create group discussions, publish activity tasks, and allow members to get whitelist qualifications. "Liver whitelist" is to spend a lot of energy to obtain priority purchase qualifications, and many early projects rely on chat to upgrade to get the whitelist. However, chat upgrades take a lot of time and physical strength, which is a liver-injuring behavior, so it is called "liver white list".

For example, the option project lyra.finance on the second-layer network can get 2,000 tokens after chatting for more than 6 sentences. However, these are the early "airdrops" of Daqiankuai, which are almost impossible to see now.

In fact, Discord itself is "centralized", but it behaves very "decentralized". It is already one of the largest user communities on the Internet, and users are full of creativity and passion, and they continue to provide them with content; it also presents users with all the rich content, and users do not need to spend money or watch any ads. Its "promise" is to launch Nitro -- $99.99 a year to re-skin, send more emojis, store larger files, but doesn't get in the way if you don't buy it.

Discord will also issue coins soon to form some kind of smart contracts, which is already equivalent to entering the Web3 world.

Discord's ambition is not limited to Web3, it also has the strength to impact the metaverse. Last year, it announced the hiring of AR startup Ubiquity6. At that time, everyone said that what Meta can't do, will be done by Discord.