SocialFi makes its return on Solana

Crypto’s new viral app isn’t very new at all.

Solana-based social project Clout saw its downloads take off after launching an iPhone app that lets users buy tokenized versions of social media profiles. This is very similar to the premise behind the viral 2023 app friend.tech, which was itself a rehashing of BitClout, a Crypto Twitter tokenization app that went viral in 2021. Friend.tech’s founding team already stepped away from the platform, while BitClout’s founder was just charged with fraud by the DOJ and the SEC.

Clout hasn’t leaned away from its forefathers. The project posted a meme today riffing on Justin Timberlake’s famous line as Sean Parker in The Social Network: “Drop the ‘Bit.’ Just ‘Clout.’ It’s cleaner.”

“Integrity and healthy tokenomics!” was Clout founder Ben Pasternak’s reply when I asked him what sets his app apart.

At the time of writing, Clout was #34 on the App Store’s finance chart. The app is so congested that I haven’t been able to land a transaction all day. And Clout isn’t the only so-called SocialFi app grabbing Solana users’ attention.

Tribe.run — which is still in invite-only mode — has also seen some momentum for a tokenized X profile app that creates token-gated group chats called tribes. I managed to snag an invite and have been enjoying the app, which features a nostalgic Windows 98-esque design. Tribe comes with an airdrop feature built in where I was able to send some of my token to my group chat members. This feature is enabled by Solana zero-knowledge compression.

When I asked Tribe founder Bill Zheng why he thinks his app can succeed where friend.tech, for instance, failed, he said the former app had a “fundamental flaw” in that creators had no incentive to stay engaged. Tribe employs a subscription model where tribe members must pay a certain amount of SOL to stay in the group chat — giving the tribe creators a reason to stick around.

Outside of Solana, Kaito AI has seen success with its Yaps platform that doles out points for users who are active — or who yap a lot, in internet parlance — on Crypto Twitter.

SocialFi’s resilience underscores the resilience of Elon Musk’s social media platform. X remains the center of the online crypto world, and until that changes, crypto social apps will keep testing out new ways to monetize Crypto Twitter.

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