Crypto social? It's crypto commerce
It's closing the distance.
I was never enamored with crypto social. Social media but "decentralized?"
A terrible proposition, especially when social media is so, so interesting right now.
The rise of Tiktok's algorithm has led to a broad shift from personal curation to algorithmic curation. Which people herald as some artistic sin, but it's honestly just another way to curate.
And more efficient too. Thoughtfully engaging with Tiktok's algorithm has led to a never-ending content buffet, for me.
And with AI pinned so firmly on the horizon, it’s only going to get even more interesting. It's a miss for crypto social to not even think about the pros that keep people on social media, despite all its centralized cons (of which there are many).
But—
This is crypto and social.
And if there's one thing that's delighted me in that intersection1, it's improvements in crypto commerce.
Because with tokenization, it’s possible to sell anything. But there’s been so little innovation in the buying experience. Metamask is a terrible, clunky overlay that diminishes the entire crypto ecosystem.
So what if crypto allowed more users to make transactions directly where they already are—Telegram, Farcaster, mobile? What if the flow towards making on-chain transactions were a little more personalized?
Or simply, crypto commerce is about making transactions with an opinion. 2
Here are some examples:
Stepn
Stepn was a crypto game that rewarded you with tokens for running or walking.
The magical thing here was that it would create a wallet for you in-app, 12-word seed and all. And since the wallet was inside the game, users could perform crypto transactions right in Stepn.
For example, one crucial function was exchanging reward tokens for other tokens. These swaps used to be powered by the Raydium and Orca decentralized exchanges (DEXes), but a user didn’t have to know that3. It was simply presented as a part of the game.
Now, there was room for polish—requiring seed phrases is so 2022. But it was a notable start for app-specific wallets.
Phantom
A sleeper candidate.
Wallets are an under-explored social design space, especially when they’re the first port-of-entry to accessing the rest of crypto.
And even with the rightful rise of Rabby, the Solana experience is just miles better thanks to Phantom.
There was no better reminder of this than the Phantom notification of the Jupiter token drop.
No other wallet out there will tell me that I’m due to receive tokens! Normally, I’d have to use some airdrop tracking service or trawl X for the one legitimate announcement in a sea of phish bait.
But Phantom was shepherding users directly to the right website. And the experience was even more seamless on mobile, where it opened directly in the app. I claimed my tokens in two taps on my phone.
Smart wallets are super-apps in the making.
Telegram trading bots
Why does anyone need a TG bot to trade shitcoins? Speed.
A normal swap requires:
Going to a DEX
Logging into Metamask
Configure the trade - what tokens are you selling and buying? And how much?
Click the Swap button
Configure gas settings
Click confirm in the wallet
Repeat in case of failure
With the Telegram bots, everything was already streamlined for the shitcoin process. The process was simply:
Call a command
Paste a contract address
Select amount to buy
And it was genius to do it in Telegram. After all, so much of the trading game was social to begin with.
Group chats, call channels, all in Telegram. Why shouldn’t the trading happen inside Telegram too?
Farcaster Frame
But alas, consider the TG bots dethroned.
Farcaster Frames allow for far more range. From minting NFTs to buying cookies to checking your airdrop status to browsing NFT galleries to participating in prediction markets to reading full blog posts inside Farcaster to—
You get the picture.
It’s exciting, because unfortunately, I think a lot of people dismissed the Telegram bots.
But once you experience sliding from a message into making a crypto transaction, it’s transformational. It’s hard to go back to a one-size-fits-all experience.
With Farcaster Frames, a larger audience has been exposed to seamless transactions. More people are finally seeing the power of making transactions right where you’re already hanging out4.
Because we find new things on Twitter, we buy tokens because of friends, we wear NFTs to present a certain social status.
Social has long been the decision-making filter in crypto. And crypto social ultimately matters not in replicating social media on the blockchain, but when it closes the chasm from decision to a crypto transaction.
I will die on the hill that the killer financial crypto x social app will be a game.
I never dug into intents, so I am avoiding calling it that.
I couldn’t find a source in time, so trust me: when Stepn swapped things out to route through their own DEX, volumes cratered for Raydium or Orca. Boss move, really.
“Making transactions right where you’re already hanging out” is actually also happening with Tiktok Shop right now. Remember what I said about web2 social getting interesting? It’s the most natural extension to be able to shop on Tiktok, where I already go to research items.
And I just genuinely love this timeline where TT Shop is coinciding with crypto finally getting creative with how transactions begin. *chef’s kiss