Cutting through the noise: the resurgence of SocialFi
The start of 2025 already marks a SocialFi resurgence with apps like Tribe, Vector, Yapster, Frens, and Clout redefining what's possible in the space. Last cycle, Friend.tech was one of the first and only to introduce PWAs, embedded wallets, and Twitter account linking. Now, every developer seems to be doubling down on user-first designs, creating products that are both fun and functional, while building on top of new paradigms like composable social graphs and fully accessible transaction tracking.
ted
|Jan 30, 2025
SocialFi is where social media meets decentralized finance, empowering users to own their digital presence, trade assets, and actively participate in financial networks woven directly into their social experiences. Unlike Instagram or Reddit, where user-generated content primarily benefits centralized companies, SocialFi enables creators, traders, and communities to capture the value they create.
The start of 2025 already marks a SocialFi resurgence with apps like Tribe, Vector, Yapster, Frens, and Clout redefining what's possible in the space. We see four key categories emerging:
Social Trading: Merging social networking with investing, these apps make markets more transparent and collaborative.
Gamified Entertainment: Turning engagement into a competitive, entertaining experience, rewarding users for participation.
Creator Tokens: Tools that enable creators to build tokenized communities and earn directly from their audience.
Onchain content: Content and streaming platforms integrating monetization, direct tipping, and community-driven rewards.
Much of SocialFi’s promise lies in allowing users to engage deeply with their social graph while speculating on its financial elements. However, aligning incentives for sustainable, long-term growth has been challenging—hyperfinancialization often accelerates boom-bust cycles of virality, as many of us learned last year.
Despite these challenges, what's most exciting to us today is a fundamental shift in focus. Last cycle, Friend.tech was one of the first and only to introduce PWAs, embedded wallets, and Twitter account linking. Now, every developer seems to be doubling down on user-first designs, creating products that are both fun and functional, while building on top of new paradigms like composable social graphs and fully accessible transaction tracking.
To build a lasting SocialFi ecosystem, we must learn from past lessons, innovate thoughtfully, and prioritize genuine user engagement. Let’s take stock of what worked, what needs refining, and where we go next. Note: We view SocialFi and decentralized social as two different categories with plenty of overlap; SocialFi apps can integrate or build on top of decentralized social networks, like Farcaster or Lens, and those networks can integrate monetization and enable users to earn money as most SocialFi apps do.
Social trading: markets meet communities
Combining social interaction with investing has been a challenge historically. In Web2, apps like Public tried to blend social networking with investing but struggled because users had to build new followings from scratch rather than leveraging existing networks (like Twitter or Instagram), and there was no way to verify if someone actually invested in the stocks they promoted.
Crypto eliminates these barriers with public ledgers, portable social graphs, and built-in composability, making it easier to build truly social markets. Every trade, holding, and strategy is public and auditable, making it easier to follow trusted traders, discover insights, and execute trades—all within onchain networks. Here are some of the sleekest apps bringing “social trading” to life:
iOS app Frens turns trading into a group activity by embedding trading tools directly into group chats. Within one unified group chat interface, users can swap tokens on both Solana and Base, discuss memes and metas, and see one another’s trades and token performance in real-time. If you share a ticket in the group chat, a swap modal with the token’s price chart instantly pops up. This means that if your friends are early, you can be early too.
This blend of social and financial engagement is unique to crypto, where transaction histories and wallet activities are inherently public. Note: currently in beta; join the waitlist to gain access.
Mobile app Interface is anchored around one of the most user-friendly trading feeds in the industry. Imagine an X timeline where posts are replaced with a chronological feed of readable trades, swaps, mints, transfers from anyone you choose to follow.
With Interface, you can follow friends’ onchain activity, copy their trades, or get copy-traded yourself (and earn a portion of the fees!). Think of it as a transparent, ethical way to engage onchain while following a trusted social network.
Vector.fun, built by the Tensor team, is a Solana consumer app designed for Gen-Z and “normies” that mixes memecoin trading with friends – complete with a Weekly P&L leaderboard. With easy onboarding and great UI, Vector makes it easy for anyone to join the “trenches” and quickly reveal if they are a good trader or a bad trader. Note: currently in beta; join the waitlist to gain access.
Opportunities that excite us:
While we love this wave of social investing apps, there’s an opportunity to introduce incentives that reward sustained engagement and lightweight features that create compounding value over time.
Gamified retention incentives: we would love to see more incentives designed like Interface’s copytrade reward fee, which encourages users to maintain a consistent, strong trading presence. Consider introducing streak-based rewards, community- or group-wide incentives where users earn rewards or lower fees together
Create social artifacts: similar to Rodeo’s (see ‘Onchain Content’ below) “Top 9” graphic, encourage organic sharing by making in-product achievements highly visible and shareable (e.g. Strava workout summaries) or introducing free, user-generated marketing moments (e.g. Spotify Wrapped, BeReal’s post-to-share).
Integrate educational layers: build token pages or a link to a social feed displaying real-time timeline talk around tickers and contract addresses that can empower users to make more informed trading decisions.
Gamified entertainment: X-to-earn but actual fun
X-to-earn crypto apps are certainly not novel, but we’re seeing a new era of developers transform the basic concept into fun, competitive, collaborative experiences that work really well as mobile apps.
This wave of apps focus on dynamic, community-driven experiences in order for users to both earn and be entertained even when they are away from their computers.
Yapster, available on both iOS and Android, uniquely gamifies meme virality with a high-energy, HQ Trivia-style competition where users vote, compete, and even turn winning memes into real memecoins – making it the first mobile app where your meme game can directly translate into financial upside.
The app is a wild experience itself, combining haptic feedback, fast-paced rounds with plenty of sound effects, and press-to-vote mechanics to keep users engaged the whole way through. Unlike traditional social media, where follower count often dictates success, Yapster resets the playing field every day: every meme and voting round starts fresh, meaning anyone can win.
Note: the app is still in beta and slowly rolling out invite codes.
Moonwalk transforms fitness into a high-stakes, social game by letting users bet on their own step goals with real money and real people, creating a financially-backed accountability system that blends competition, community, and onchain incentives in a way no other fitness app does.
Built on Solana, users stake tokens like USDC or SOL into a shared prize pool with their friends or other users and commit to a daily step goal. If they meet their goal, they keep their stake. If they fail, they have to pay their stake to their friends. Users can buy in-app credits with Apple Pay or credit cards, making it easy for anyone to onboard without worrying about wallets or token swaps.
Fantasy gamifies creator tokens, allowing users to draft and trade creator cards and turning the timeline’s favorite PFPs into a high-stakes, interactive experience—akin to fantasy sports but for onchain creators.
Users can draft creators onto their “team” or “roster” by buying their creator cards. Then, similar to fantasy sports, users compete to build the best-performing portfolio, climbing leaderboards based on holdings and market movements of their creator cards. This is a great evolution of both creator tokens and traditional fantasy leagues, taking speculation and putting it onchain in a way that’s more dynamic and community-driven.
Ponder is a decentralized survey and prediction platform, most commonly used in a Farcaster frame, that lets users earn rewards for making accurate predictions on social and cultural trends. Instead of just answering polls, users bet on popular opinion: they choose the option they think will get the most votes from the community, like predicting the wisdom of the crowd. Once the poll closes (typically 24 hours), users that guessed correctly earn a payout in USDC or other onchain assets.
Ponder leverages the power of crowd sentiment, offering a decentralized, dynamic way to gauge real-time opinions on everything from crypto narratives to pop culture debates.
Opportunities that excite us:
Gamified SocialFi platforms like Yapster, Ponder, and Moonwalk all share a crucial but often overlooked value: they are fun.
In a space where many crypto projects struggle to define "utility," these apps offer something people actually want to engage with—entertainment, competition, and social interaction. Crypto The Game, an onchain Survivor-like game, absolutely nailed this.
We want more apps to lean into genuine, shared entertainment, not money, as the primary value proposition: add more social engagement loops like collective objectives where players must team up for bigger rewards, introduce cross-app composability, make challenges time-bound, etc.
Creator tokens: expanding beyond speculation
Web3 promises creators more control over their monetization, but previous cycle’s social creator token platforms—like BitClout—learned that prioritized speculation over real engagement risks longevity and sustainable growth. How are this cycle’s apps approaching creator tokens?
Tribe is a tokenized group chat-like app that combines creator tokens with premium experiences. Built on Solana, it lets a creator launch a “tribe” where membership and interactions–like AMAs and livestreams–are gated by token ownership. Members pay a recurring fee in SOL to stay in the group, providing creators with continuous income and a vested interest in maintaining engagement. Tribe’s retro, Windows 98-esque design adds a playful twist, turning tokenized communities into an immersive experience.
Built on Base, Stack tokenizes users’ online identities, letting anyone buy and trade “coins” representing creators or individuals. It’s similar to Friend.tech but works across multiple social graphs and identity verification, including Farcaster and ENS, rather than being tied exclusively to X. This reduces bot-driven speculation and ensures authenticity, which was a major flaw in earlier SocialFi attempts.
Clout is an iOS app that allows creators with 10,000+ X followers to issue personal tokens tied to their social presence. Unlike Friend.tech, which required users to stay within a closed ecosystem, Clout integrates directly with Solana DEXs (like Raydium), ensuring real liquidity from the start. Clout also introduces a pre-sale model where early buyers can access exclusive token launches before they’re publicly traded, helping creators bootstrap engagement and value early.
Opportunities that excite us:
The real challenge lies in designing apps that embed these tokens into meaningful, sustainable experiences. While some of these apps are still primarily driven by speculation, Tribe is instead shifting to offer real utility, like Tribe’s own-to-access functionality and subscription-based model, to give both creators and users meaningful ways to benefit beyond financial upside.
There’s still an opportunity for creator token apps to learn from what has already been tried across all creator platforms, like NFT subscription platform Hypersub where creators offer monthly raffles, early mints, limited edition collaborations, exclusive apps, livestreams, IRL events, and more to holds of their NFT.
Onchain content: reimagining web2 apps
Web2 social platforms have dominated the content scene for years, but they come with extreme limitations: opaque algorithms, centralized monetization, and platform-controlled distribution.
Onchain content platforms rethink these models by offering direct creator and user ownership, direct monetization, and interactive onchain elements that make fans feel like active participants. Instead of relying on ad-based revenue or restrictive platform rules, onchain content platforms will unleash new creativity from creators and users – and both can get paid.
Abstract Live is the native streaming platform built within the Abstract Portal, where creators can host interactive livestreams with built-in monetization, tipping, and rewards. Unlike traditional streaming services, Abstract Live allows streamers to earn XP (Abstract’s rewards system) and other crypto assets directly from their viewers, who can also earn XP from engaging with the stream.
By integrating streaming into a broader social and financial ecosystem, Abstract Live allows users to seamlessly transition between consuming content, engaging with creators, and participating in the Abstract ecosystem with their earned XP. Where else can you do this?
Rodeo is a sleek PWA that combines Instagram-like content sharing with trading, allowing users to showcase their creativity and earn from their curation. Instead of simply liking posts as you do on Instagram, you can mint posts as NFTs (for a small fee) within the first 24 hours of posting, earn referral rewards if any of your followers mint afterwards, and then make or accept offers on secondary for 2x, 5x or even 1000x afterwards.
Rodeo shifts social trading into curation-driven speculation, where reputation and taste become the most valuable asset. By tying social curation to real financial upside, Rodeo directly rewards early discovery and high-quality content creation, flipping Web2’s ad-driven model into one where users, not platforms, capture the value.
The team behind Drakula, a TikTok-like short-form video app that drove 1B+ $DEGEN volume in the Farcaster economy, is back with 10k. The goal of this revamped "crypto TikTok" is to incentivize long-term rewards for creators, where creators can build their own token community sustainably over their first 100 videos. Similar to Rodeo, 10k will reward users for minting high-quality videos through a curation mechanism; if people mint after seeing others mint it, they earn rewards. Once a video gets 10k mints, it becomes a token that becomes tradable on base–so only viral videos become actual coins.
Unlike TikTok, 10k lets users decide what content gains traction through direct minting and trading, turning engagement into actual ownership where early supporters can share in the upside of their favorite creator or viral video’s success.
Note: the app is set to launch March 1, so sign up for the waitlist or to become a launch creator here.
Sweep.gg brings the world of e-sports betting and fan engagement into onchain live-streams, allowing users to bet on real-time matches, participate in prediction markets, and interact with their favorite gaming communities in real time. This unlocks a new level of active participation for viewers that traditional livestream platforms like Twitch can’t provide.
Sweep transforms traditional livestreaming giveaways by building onchain, where onchain prize distribution and automated rewards are instant and transparent. The fully integrated incentives—where participation, engagement, and loyalty can be directly rewarded onchain—creates a stickier, more interactive experience compared to standard Twitch giveaways.
Opportunities that excite us:
Today, brands pour billions into centralized content platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—yet creators see only a fraction of that revenue and their fans see nearly none of it.
We’d love to see these apps continue to reshape the relationship between creators, fans, and brands and lean into more fan-focused models where both the creator and the fan can feel like the main character.
Brand involvement: engage brands to shift traditional ad spend toward direct creator payments, enabling instant, onchain rewards based on measurable engagement on platforms like Rodeo or 10k. With crypto rails, brands could even reward a creator’s most engaged fans directly – airdropping exclusive perks to loyal or early supporters.
Crowd-controlled decisions: if a streamer is interviewing a guest or playing a game, the audience can use onchain votes or micropayments to upvote an interview question or decide the next move – akin to Just Roll With It on Disney, in which the audience determines the outcome of certain scenes while the cast “just rolls with it.” This works really well because it is live, time-bound and specific.
Smart contract-triggered actions: certain audience milestones (e.g. number of views or mints, or amount of tips pooled together) can trigger real-time changes in a stream (similar to Nickelodeon’s surprise “Slime” moments on celebrity guests) or unlock brand experiences like limited-edition drops, discount codes, and more.
Looking Ahead
This cycle of SocialFi isn’t just about speculation—it’s about building products that people actually want to use. From seamless social trading to gamified experiences and decentralized creator economies, these platforms and apps are starting to prioritize engagement, entertainment, and long-term sustainability over fleeting hype.
But for SocialFi to succeed broadly, it must be accessible to everyone, not just crypto-native users. Whether a user is logging in with a crypto wallet or a standard email, Privy ensures any user can start exploring, trading, and engaging instantly.
If this new wave of apps can nail retention, social virality, and real utility – along with seamless onboarding – SocialFi might finally deliver on its promise to reshape how we connect, create, and earn online.
