The End Of The Beginning: 2023 In Review

With a few years of development history under our belt, 2023 has been Subsocial’s most important year so far. Never peaking, always moving upward and onward — that is one of Subsocial’s philosophies.

Let’s take a retrospective look back at the year’s achievements, feature releases, and notable announcements. We’ll start with the biggest and best first, and then look at everything else.

Moved to Polkadot

In a landmark achievement for 2023, Subsocial successfully completed its migration from Kusama to Polkadot, marking a major milestone in our platform’s evolution.

It cannot be overstated how big of a move this was for Subsocial, both in terms of interoperability, economic security, and marketing! Life on Polkadot has been quite nice for Subsocial compared to life on Kusama, and we look forward to more opportunities to collaborate with other teams building on Polkadot.

Creator Staking

One of the biggest developments for Subsocial in 2023 was the successful launch of the Creator Staking beta. This innovative feature has revolutionized the way creators are supported and rewarded on Subsocial. Since its inception, over 57 million SUB has been staked across the ten initial Creators, plus MAD CRIPTO, PolkaWarriors, and Filippo from the Web3 Foundation, demonstrating the community’s enthusiastic engagement and support.

The Creator Staking system not only incentivizes high-quality content creation, but also empowers users and token holders to actively participate in the curation process, ultimately growing the network. First teased in August with a thread about incentive structures in Web3 social networks, This development has significantly contributed to a vibrant, interactive community, fostering a more dynamic and rewarding social media ecosystem on Subsocial.

The upcoming Active Staking system was also outlined, showcasing how stakers can boost their rewards by up to 3x by actively engaging with content on Subsocial, on top of allocating extra rewards to great authors.

Additionally, stakers can now easily transfer their stake between Creators without needing to wait on the unbonding period, and Creators received personalized staking links to help them onboard new fans.

The SUB Token

2023 was a year of expansive growth and interconnectivity for Subsocial, marked by significant partnerships and integrations. A key development was the opening of HRMP (Horizontal Relay-routed Message Passing) channels with both Moonbeam and HydraDX, allowing Subsocial to communicate with them. This strategic move set the stage for seamless token transfers between our networks.

Following the opening of these channels, token transfers were enabled for SUB, and shortly afterwards became available on two prominent decentralized exchanges: HydraDX, and StellaSwap (on Moonbeam). These integrations increased the availability of SUB, allowing new members to get SUB, join the community and start using Subsocial.

Next, both CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko added support for Subsocial. This recognition has significantly increased Subsocial’s visibility in the crypto community, and will prove to be instrumental in attracting new users.

Moreover, in a gesture of gratitude and commitment to our early supporters, participants of the 2022 SUB public sale were rewarded handsomely. For every token purchased during the sale, an additional three tokens were distributed (subject to vesting), reaffirming our dedication to those who believed in our vision from the start.

With SUB now available to the public and rapidly gaining utility, Subsocial is on an excellent path to greatness.

FanFair

A highlight of 2023 was the initial reveal of FanFair, Subsocial’s upcoming “superapp” set to launch in Q1. This reveal has generated immense excitement within the Polkadot ecosystem, as FanFair promises to bundle all the best features of Subsocial’s ecosystem under one roof, optimized for creator monetizations and community interactions.

Featuring a gamified points system, FanFair will incentivize users and communities to interact on the platform, powering network effects and ecosystem growth in an unprecedented manner. FanFair’s reveal has set the stage for what is expected to be one of the most significant milestones for Subsocial in the coming year.

Subsocial’s Landing Page

Our website at subsocial.network received a major overhaul, emphasizing Subsocial’s role as a cutting-edge creator monetization platform. This refresh spotlights Creator Staking, FanFair, and SUB, showcasing our commitment to empowering creators and enhancing user engagement in Web3.

Subsocial Usernames

Subsocial’s username system underwent significant changes, marking a major step forward in enhancing user engagement with the platform. These improvements streamline the user experience, making usernames more flexible and registration simpler. This not only aligns users more closely with the Subsocial protocol but also paves the way for accelerated user onboarding, facilitating a significant increase in our community size. This upgrade is a testament to our commitment to evolving and enriching decentralized social interactions, keeping pace with our users’ needs and our ambitious vision for the future of social media on the blockchain.

Grill.chat

April saw the launch of Grill.chat, a flexible Web3 chat application with a Web2 level user experience! Initially launched as a fully anonymous chatting experience, users could get started without any SUB tokens, and they didn’t even need a wallet.

Grill’s UX was validated in September after Subsocial partnered with ITC.ua, an IT news site that receives ~7 million views per month. ITC integrated Grill.chat as a side-panel on their website, in order to see if your everyday Web2 user could easily use Grill.chat, and the results were amazing — ITC users were able to seamlessly onboard and start chatting!

So far, Grill.chat has been integrated into a variety of apps, including Polkassembly, Zeitgeist, Polkadot.study, dotfinder.xyz, and PolkaVerse

Throughout the year, Grill has received tons of new features. In no particular order:

• URLs that will take you directly to a specific message
• Search for rooms and communities
• My Chats section, showing you all the chats that you have joined in one place
• Link your EVM account to your Grill account to use an ENS identity or donate ERC20 tokens, highlighted by CoinTelegraph
• Support for embedding images and NFTs from various marketplaces
• A Telegram bot to notify you when your messages are replied to
• Easily create your own communities on Grill about any topic
• Messages with URLs will now embed link previews
• Three AI Personalities were added for you to talk with
• Push notifications, unread message counters, and custom nicknames
• Support for logging in with Polkadot wallets, enabling Polkadot identities and donations with Polkadot ecosystem tokens
• Experimental off-chain posting, improving UX and lowering fees
• A complete moderation overhaul, giving chat owners full in-app moderation control

Grill.chat is built on top of the OpenComm technology, which utilizes functionality from Subsocial and Crust Network, as well as Polkadot, Kusama, and KILT Protocol.

Development of OpenComm is being handled by the DappForce team following a successful Polkadot treasury proposal.

Polkadot Decoded

The flagship event of the year, Polkadot Decoded, was held in Copenhagen at the end of June. Subsocial’s founder Alex Siman gave an awesome presentation about how Subsocial is unlocking a Web2 user experience in Web3 using the awesome powers of Substrate and Polkadot.

Sub.ID

2023 has seen some epic new features for Sub.ID, as Batch 1 of Sub.ID’s treasury proposal was completed, and Batch 2 was nearly completed. Sub.ID now contains an array of useful tools that have significantly enhanced the platform’s functionality and user experience.

Some of Sub.IDs new features include:

• Dashboard for Creator Staking on Subsocial, validator staking on Polkadot and Kusama, as well as parachain staking for Moonriver, Moonbeam, Bifrost (Kusama) and Zeitgeist
• Extended support for more blockchains, including Statemint, Bifrost, Pendulum, and Unique
• Full side-pane Grill.chat integration
• Dedicated page for transfers, whether on the same chain or between chains
• Token-centric view for viewing balances sorted by token, with an optional drop-down to see which chains those tokens are on
• Polkadot and Kusama identities shown on profiles

These updates reflect our dedication to providing our users with a more integrated, efficient, and intuitive interface, making Sub.ID the most comprehensive portfolio management tool in the entire Polkadot ecosystem.

FrenTube

Frentube, created as part of the Polkadot Europe Hackathon, launched on May 23rd, becoming the first decentralized video platform on Polkadot.

Built utilizing Subsocial’s technology, FrenTube provides the tools needed for video creators to get started on Subsocial, and be able to benefit from our network effects and monetization incentives, like Creator Staking.

Spacers NFT Collection

The Spacers NFT collection was minted in July, airdropping Spacers to everyone that had purchased a Spacer Pod in 2022. All 10,000 Spacers now live on the Moonbeam Network, utilizing the RMRK NFT standard, allowing these NFTs to own, equip, and unequip other NFTs. With this technology, the Spacers collection is one of the most comprehensive, customizable, and complex NFT collections ever created, and owners of Spacers can customize them to their hearts’ content.

As we reflect on the remarkable journey of 2023, it’s clear that Subsocial has not just grown, but truly evolved. Each milestone, from the strategic migration to Polkadot to the groundbreaking innovation of Creator Staking and the anticipation surrounding FanFair, represents our unwavering commitment to innovation, user experience, and community. We stand at the cusp of a new frontier, one where decentralization and social media converge in never-before-seen ways. Our heartfelt thanks go out to our dedicated community of users, creators, and supporters who have been with us on this journey.

Looking ahead to next year, we feel truly fueled by the achievements of 2023 and are more driven than ever to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the decentralized social space. Together, let’s shape a better future that is more connected, creative, and empowered, and with that, we’ll see you on-chain!