Why Your Social Data Should Be a Public Utility

Social graphs are proprietary assets locked inside platforms like X and Meta. This data monopoly creates a winner-take-all network effect, preventing competitors from building better products because they cannot access the foundational social layer.

Decentralized social graphs like Farcaster treat connections as public infrastructure. This model, similar to ENS for identity, allows any application to plug into a shared social layer, shifting competition from user acquisition to product quality.

The current model is extractive. Platforms monetize your graph through targeted ads, but you receive no value. A user-owned graph enables new economic models, where you can permission access or earn from data licensing via protocols like Lens.

Evidence: Farcaster's Warpcast client demonstrates this. It's one of many clients on the protocol, proving that decentralized social graphs unbundle the app from the network, a concept pioneered by email (SMTP) and now applied to social.

Social graphs are infrastructure. They are non-rivalrous and gain value through network effects, making them classic public goods. Platforms like Facebook and X treat this infrastructure as proprietary real estate, creating walled gardens that lock in users and developers.

Data portability is a mirage. Projects like Solid or ActivityPub protocols offer technical portability but fail to solve the economic problem: the platform owning the graph captures all the value. True ownership requires cryptographic self-custody of identity and connections.

Open data enables combinatorial innovation. When social graphs are public and permissionless, like a blockchain's state, developers can build without gatekeepers. This is the Lego-like composability that defines DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Aave.

Evidence: The total addressable market for social apps is capped by platform APIs. Compare the 10,000 apps on Twitter's v1 API to the millions of smart contracts on Ethereum—a 100x difference in developer leverage.

Social data is infrastructure. It is a non-rivalrous good whose value compounds with access. Private silos like Meta and X capture this value, creating extractive rent-seeking that stifles innovation and user sovereignty.

Portable social graphs unlock competition. The Farcaster FID and Lens Protocol handle demonstrate that identity can be decoupled from applications. This shifts power from platforms to protocols, enabling a Cambrian explosion of client experiences.

Data availability is the bottleneck. Storing social interactions on-chain (e.g., Arbitrum Nova) is cost-prohibitive. Solutions like Farcaster's Hubs and Lens' Momoka use off-chain data availability with on-chain settlement, achieving scalability while preserving verifiability.

Evidence: Farcaster's Warps channel processed over 1.2M transactions in 24 hours, proving demand for on-chain social primitives when the data layer is correctly architected.

Social data is infrastructure. Treating user profiles and connections as a public good, like a blockchain, enables permissionless innovation. Developers build on open data without negotiating access, mirroring how Uniswap composes with any ERC-20 token.

Closed gardens create systemic risk. A platform like Twitter or Facebook acts as a single point of failure and rent extraction. An open social graph, governed by protocols like Lens Protocol or Farcaster, distributes this risk and shifts value to the application layer.

Composability drives exponential utility. Isolated data has linear value; networked data has exponential value. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) demonstrates this: a single on-chain transaction can trigger a cascade of interdependent contracts across Aave, Compound, and Chainlink.

Evidence: Farcaster's Frames feature, which turns any cast into an interactive app, saw over 5 million frames minted in its first month, demonstrating the demand for composable social primitives.

Social graphs are natural monopolies. Network effects create winner-take-all markets, making competition impossible and enabling predatory rent-seeking by platforms like Meta and X. A public utility model, akin to Farcaster's on-chain social graph, commoditizes the data layer and forces competition on the application layer where it belongs.

Users already pay with their privacy. The 'free' service model is a lie; the cost is surveillance and behavioral manipulation. A public data commons, governed by protocols like Lens Protocol, externalizes the cost of data integrity and portability, shifting the economic burden from the user's attention to the protocol's validators.

Spam is a subsidy problem. In Web2, platforms monetize spam via ads, creating perverse incentives. In a public utility model, spam imposes a verifiable cost (e.g., transaction fees on Base or Arbitrum) on the spammer, not the network. This aligns economic incentives with network health.

Evidence: Farcaster's 300,000+ on-chain signers demonstrate that users willingly pay micro-fees (warps) for a credibly neutral social graph, proving the public utility model is viable when the cost of exit (data portability) is zero.

Social graphs become public infrastructure. Platforms like Farcaster and Lens Protocol are building open social graphs, separating the data layer from the application layer. This allows any developer to build a client on a user's existing social identity, breaking the network effects of centralized platforms.

Data ownership enables portable reputation. A user's on-chain social history—posts, likes, follows—becomes a verifiable asset. This portable reputation creates a Sybil-resistant identity layer for DeFi, governance, and content curation, moving beyond simple NFT profile pictures.

The economic model inverts. Today, platforms monetize user data via ads. In the open model, users monetize their own attention and influence directly through mechanisms like Lens collect posts or tipping via Superfluid streams. The value accrues to the individual, not the corporation.

Evidence: Farcaster's daily active users grew 10x in 2024, driven by permissionless client development. This proves demand for open social primitives over closed gardens.