When we think of social media, web2 juggernauts reign supreme. Facebook, Instagram, that thing formerly known as Twitter. As the list goes on, a throughline emerges: Frustration. Frustration over data ownership, over openness and transparency and frustration over optimism.

DSCVR, the social network for crypto communities, projects and enthusiasts, aims to change the narrative with its web3 community that is now the social home on the Solana blockchain.

With over 200,000 users, DSCVR’s platform is expanding its tokenized communities to the users who are building, engaging and transacting on Solana.

“We’d been doing decentralized social [prior to the Solana launch] for about two and a half years and have built up a community that is very web3 native and has been very much about integrations,” Rick Porter, chief executive officer and co-founder of DSCVR, said to me in a recent conversation. “It’s been about how we integrate with different ecosystem applications, bring them into DSCVR and let the community interact with them.”

DSCVR, which boasts a host of investors—including Polychain Capital, Upfront Ventures, BDMI, Shima Capital, Tomahawk VC, and Fyrfly Venture Partners—wanted to choose an ecosystem where they had the widest breadth of applications for its users to access. 

A DSCVR screen shot

“Solana constantly sat at the top of our matrix because they have many different types of DeFi [decentralized finance] applications, many different types of NFTs [nonfungible tokens], marketplaces, and experimental applications,” Porter said. “We needed an ecosystem that was moving as quickly as web3 social was moving.”

Helping propel the transition from web2 social to web3 social are DSCVR’s alpha integrations like Magic Eden, FamousFoxFederation, Blocksmith, and SharkyFi, which allows NFTs to be bought from the DSCVR feed, within communities and through user-curated galleries. 

“Web2 social had twenty-plus years of evolution to get to the point where it’s at. Web3 social will move faster, but we’re still trying to decipher where our consumers fit in,” Porter said. “We’re just scratching the surface for those types of integrations.”

Many web3 social users are incentivized to make money while others are creators who are looking to expand.

“Any web social platform solves the human need of being seen and heard,” Porter said. “Now with web3 social, the user is able to have a financial incentive more quickly than they would amongst a traditional web2 platform.”

The incentive Porter is referring to is a user’s ability to transact within the DSCVR feed, a feature that speaks to consumer’s increasing desire to have their social and financial activities housed under one platform. So much so, Porter said DSCVR saw 7,000 new Solana wallets created within their user base after the launch.

Launching on Solana lets users connect to their Phantom wallets, receive airdrops, view and transact assets, display verified profile pictures and create token-gated communities. Those communities can then utilize social and asset graph targeting, which can help foster further growth. The company will also feature a different daily launch partner with airdrops, giveaways, and other promotional activities.

“We are committed to growing crypto communities and expanding our users’ access to a wide variety of web3 projects through new collaborations and integrations,” Porter said. “By partnering within the Solana ecosystem, we’re able to support the millions of existing Solana projects, users, developers, and creators who want to use the DSCVR platform to build communities, engage and increasingly transact.”