Pixie, the world’s first functional Web 3.0 based Photo and Video Sharing Social Network, was studied by a research paper published by Technovation, a world leading academic journal. It’s very encouraging to see top academic journals now start to look at Web 3.0 applications.
Pixie is a SocialFi project combining social network with NFT and token incentive scheme. In their article A conceptual model and case study of blockchain-enabled social media platform, scholars from the University of Birmingham, University of Surrey and University of Liverpool thoroughly examined the concept the Blockchain Social Media(BSM) through Pixie to understand how projects like Pixie can impact the world. Technovation is currently the highest impact factor (11.46) academic journal in the world that focusing on technology innovation.
While social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram dominate the market and people’s daily life, the development of blockchain technology has given birth to a new form of social media platform that is going to change the landscape.
BSM – blockchain based social media, utilises blockchain to execute smart contracts and build applications. The birth of BSM is revolutionary: not only it makes social media faster and safer, but it also grants users to become the true masters of their identity and data.
Social media should not become a lawless land where false information is spread without any consequences. Because of the use of blockchain, Pixie enables user to interact with authentic content with validated forms. The immutable nature of blockchain means that all the transactions are recorded honestly on chain and malicious behaviours can be held responsible. Furthermore, Pixie adopts the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) system which means that the project is entirely governed by its community. Considering its purpose as a social media platform, it’s easy to understand why it makes sense to let the community to decide how they want to interact with others on the platform.
Moreover, Pixie empowers users to become the real owner of their data. On traditional social media platforms, content creators and distributors do not have the ultimate control over their content and are rarely compensated for their contribution. BSM changes this: on Pixie, users are stakeholders in the community and shareholders in the business. The fair infrastructure allows users to retain relevant rights and ownership of the data, as well as make a share of the profits along with the social media network.
The implementation of this fair infrastructure grants what is considered the most revolutionary achievement of Pixie – a sustainable new crypto-based creator economy. On Pixie, every time an authentic piece of information is shared through posting, reposting and liking, users are rewarded with PIX tokens which incentivise them to provide more interactions on the platform. By rewarding tokens to active users, Pixie creates a win-win situation where both users and social media network can mutually benefit from the mechanism. With the expansion of the social network effect, Pixie’s business model will become more and more profitable via targeted advertising. Nonetheless, unlike traditional social media networks that usually monopolise advertising profit, Pixie shares the majority profit with its users via tokens to further encourage them to generate, collect, and promote high-quality content. This will be a positive reinforcement cycle that benefits all participants involved with Pixie.
BSM is still in its infancy and inevitably indicates challenges, but the current success of Pixie demonstrates the appeal of this new concept and provides a direction in which research and practice can integrate. The innovation of BSM like Pixie has already attracted a wide base of users and thus gives us enough reason to believe: the mass adoption of blockchain applications in every aspect of our life is coming.
