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Celestia Mammothon App Breakdown #8: Xora Social
@xorasocial is “a hybrid social network with an experimental approach”. It is designed to look & feel exactly like a traditional social media app, but built entirely with web3 infrastructure under the hood, allowing for an easy gateway into the web3 ecosystem, and more specifically, a more seamless gateway into modular apps.
Their hybrid approach aims to make the platform more accessible by abstracting away the complexities that usually come with web3 apps. Mainly, onboarding. That said, let’s take a closer look at some of the problems Xora aims to solve.
The Problem
Xora Social aims to solve issues found in both web2 & web3 social apps.
Web2 problems:
➡️ Users have no real ownership over their data, leading to constant exposure to security risks:
➡️ Centralization & Censorship: traditional apps are, as we know, centralized & controlled by corporations who can censor content, suspend accounts, or manipulate algorithms without transparency.
Web3 problems:
➡️ Centralized elements across web3 alternatives, accepting the “sufficiently decentralized” path.
➡️ Complicated UX that alienates crypto natives even, as seed phrases, private keys, & wallet extensions are intimidating for most people.
➡️ Clunky UX: Many apps feel slow, complex, or unfamiliar compared to web2 counterparts like Twitter or Instagram.
➡️ Lack of real incentives: It’s not clear why average users should switch to these platforms beyond ideology. This is the one I am most excited to see Xora tackle, as not only do I agree with this sentiment, but I also think it provides the clearest opportunity for real growth & adoption.
Xora's Approach
🔷 Seamless Onboarding
Xora is built using the @chopinframework, meaning no external wallet is required to interact with the app, only an email address. Once you register using your email, a Multi Party Computation (MPC) wallet is automatically assigned to you, eliminating the need for seed phrases & complex wallet setups.
& as a reminder, MPC just splits a private key into multiple pieces and distributes them to multiple (usually three) parties, ensuring no single entity can compromise the wallet. It’s more secure and removes the need for users to manage a seed phrase.
🔷 “Centralized Elements”
According to the Xora founder, “Farcaster’s protocol is built to be “censorship-resistant,” but this largely refers to the base layer (your identity and the ability to publish a message).”
In other words, while Farcaster is designed to be censorship-resistant at the protocol level, meaning anyone can create an identity & publish a message to the network, this doesn’t mean every app built on Farcaster has to show that message. So, even if a message exists on Farcaster, individual apps can choose to filter or hide content from certain users, which introduces a form of “application-level censorship.”
Plus, every post on Xora is published to @celestia DA layer, ensuring content can’t be hidden, deleted, or lost. & as the Xora founder, @yigitcan mentioned, this guarantees a level of permanence & accessibility that not only protects users' content, but also unlocks new opportunities for developers to build tools & features around what Xora calls "social hooks”.
🔷 Social Hooks
Social hooks are similar to how hooks are used in defi, such as Uniswap v4 hooks, which allow developers to build new products directly on top of Uniswap using hooks. Here’s an example the Xora founder used, describing how social hooks can be used to build targetted polls:
“Imagine you want to run polls. But you want to target specific groups and make the poll more engaging or well-known. Since our data is stored on-chain and we’re already integrated with blockchain tools, we could plug in something like The Graph in the background. This would let you create polls for specific groups. For example, a poll that only people with more than 100 $TIA can vote in. That kind of poll could be built as a separate app on top of XORA.”
🔷 “Clunky UX”
The Xora app is designed to look & feel exactly like a traditional social app experience. It’s structured with familiar panels & sections, while still including crypto-native features like NFTs.
Here’s some initial screenshots of the UI:
Future Plans:
➡️ Xora intends to enable cross-chain asset trading soon, where users will be able to buy & sell assets directly from the app, via @hyperlane / @union_build
➡️ Embedded web3 apps, similar to what we are seeing within the Farcaster ecosystem. Build an app, launch it directly on Xora, and get immediate access to the app’s entire user base, without requiring any new wallet onboarding.
➡️ Social hook stack framework: while we can expect the initial set of social hooks to be built in-house, Xora is also working on a framework that will allow external builders to create new social-driven experiences.
So what do you all think about Xora Social? Let us know in the comments below!
& remember, we’re hosting a JokeRace contest this week to let you, the community, vote for your two favorite mammoth apps. Thread below that lists all 11 app breakdowns that you will get to choose from👇
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