Do we need Social Wallets?
As someone with a builders mindset, we should be focusing on 2 goals:
- Lowering the barriers of entry for Noobs.
- ⬆️ ❤️ ⬆️ This might just be how.
There is a lot of change in the world of currency-based wallets. Big firms like Metamask, Phantom, and Rainbow are significantly advancing Web3 access by primarily addressing the money storage and transaction use case. The next wave of Web3 adoption, in my opinion, will be caught by democratizing community engagement. Social wallets could be one of several options.
Statement
Social tokens are a way to demonstrate community affiliation by acquiring on-chain ownership of digital assets. There are fungible ones and non-fungible ones.
At the moment, differentiation through feature set appears to be the go-to-market strategy for all platforms. To stand out, a positioning that hits the sweet spot of high difference x high demand must change. This, in my opinion, is the Social Wallet.
Market
We may use the number of wallets created each year to estimate the market we could potentially activate for the product category of Social Wallets. This provides us an estimate of how many users we can expect:
- TAM (100%) = 70million users.
- SAM (30%) = 21million users.
- SOM (10%) = 2.1million users.
Now that we've discovered our SOM, we can divide our addressable target audience into three distinct web3 groups: Noobs, Degens, and Legends, each with its own set of Problems and Motivations. I've seen that Noobs require the most assistance. Simply put, Noobs are high-intent newbies who want to get their hands dirty with fungible or non-fungible social tokens – they are badly underserved in terms of solutions and vastly overserved in terms of educational materials.
Unfortunately, most people miss the forest for the trees and devote all of their time and energy to developing complicated solutions for Degens and Legends. Great products address a fundamental problem and then follow up with education, not the other way around. There is a lack of Web3 products that are radically simple, dependable, and relatable.
Product
Knowing who we are serving, makes knowing what to build a lot easier. But why not just use any of the aforementioned mainstream crypto wallets? It’s still way too complicated despite Moonpay or Simplex being integrated with most wallets…. Crypto skeptics for some reason still can’t wrap their heads around the necessity of this onboarding flow for crypto wallets in web3:
A Social Wallet simplifies this by focusing solely on social tokens for the sake of participation and leaves out all other crypto coins. This lowers the barrier of entry drastically and allows for a reduced product spec sheet:
Yes:
- Custodial (optional)
- Sign, transact (mint/buy/sell)
- Cross-chain (ETH, SOL, XTZ)
- Holds (non)fungible social tokens
No:
- In-wallet Fiat
- In-wallet Crypto
- In-wallet swapping
- Send, receive or withdraw
In contrast to Metamask, there is a clear tradeoff. The Social Wallet is more secure because it’s heavily limited in capability so it can serve a unique use case: seamless token ownership. It is designed with the three laws of simplicity coined by Harvard Professor George Whitesides in mind:
- Predictable » is instantly easy to understand.
- Accessible » drastically shortens the crypto learning curve.
- Serve as a building block » uses familiar web2 authentication.
What's more, it offers up options for gradually introducing newbies into Web3 and accompanying them on their road to becoming true Degens and Legends. All through a popular digital product. The Social Wallet simplifies the formerly difficult user onboarding process for digital wallets:
Enter Web3 App → Custodial Login / Signup → Autoexchange Fiat~Crypto w. Credit Card → Interact w. social tokens → Repeat.
The social wallet's purpose is to make it easier to participate in web3 tokens, both fungible and non-fungible. What's more, its benefits extend far beyond the core target audience of noobs, who can now get tokenized without being a crypto specialist. Degens gain from a more secure manner to interact with web3 social. Legends benefit from increased user inflow and overall token purchase.
All parties benefit from this win-win-win arrangement.
In contrast to Metamask, there is a clear tradeoff. The Social Wallet is more secure because it’s heavily limited in capability so it can serve a unique use case: seamless token ownership. It is designed with the three laws of simplicity coined by Harvard Professor George Whitesides in mind:
- Predictable » is instantly easy to understand.
- Accessible » drastically shortens the crypto learning curve.
- Serve as a building block » uses familiar web2 authentication.
What's more, it offers up options for gradually introducing newbies into Web3 and accompanying them on their road to becoming true Degens and Legends. All through a popular digital product. The Social Wallet simplifies the formerly difficult user onboarding process for digital wallets:
Enter Web3 App → Custodial Login / Signup → Autoexchange Fiat~Crypto w. Credit Card → Interact w. social tokens → Repeat.
The social wallet's purpose is to make it easier to participate in web3 tokens, both fungible and non-fungible. What's more, its benefits extend far beyond the core target audience of noobs, who can now get tokenized without being a crypto specialist. Degens gain from a more secure manner to interact with web3 social. Legends benefit from increased user inflow and overall token purchase.
All parties benefit from this win-win-win arrangement.