research-article

Set in Stone: Analysis of an Immutable Web3 Social Media Platform

Authors:

Aravindh Raman,

Raul J Mondragón,

Gareth TysonAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '23: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2023

Pages 1865 - 1874

https://doi.org/10.1145/3543507.3583510

Published: 30 April 2023 Publication History

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the so-called “Web3” movement. This loosely refers to a mix of decentralized technologies, often underpinned by blockchain technologies. Among these, Web3 social media platforms have begun to emerge. These store all social interaction data (e.g., posts) on a public ledger, removing the need for centralized data ownership and management. But this comes at a cost, which some argue is prohibitively expensive. As an exemplar within this growing ecosytem, we explore memo.cash, a microblogging service built on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain. We gather data for 24K users, 317K posts, 2.57M user actions, which have facilitated $6.75M worth of transactions. A particularly unique feature is that users must pay BCH tokens for each interaction (e.g., posting, following). We study how this may impact the social makeup of the platform. We therefore study memo.cash as both a social network and a transaction platform.

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Balduf LSokoto SAscigil OTyson GScheuermann BKorczyński MCastro IKról MVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Looking AT the Blue Skies of BlueskyProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3688407(76-91)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3688407
Zuo WRaman AMondragÓN RTyson G(2023)A First Look at User-Controlled Moderation on Web3 Social Media: The Case of Memo.cashProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Open Challenges in Online Social Networks10.1145/3599696.3612901(29-37)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3599696.3612901
Hegadi RAkella SReddy KKumar C P(2023)Analyzing and Mitigating Common Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts in Web3 Ecosystem: A Comprehensive Study2023 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Data, Decision and Systems (ICDDS)10.1109/ICDDS59137.2023.10434537(1-5)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDDS59137.2023.10434537
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Index Terms

Set in Stone: Analysis of an Immutable Web3 Social Media Platform
1. Networks
  1. Network components

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cover image ACM Conferences

WWW '23: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2023

April 2023

4293 pages

ISBN:9781450394161

DOI:10.1145/3543507

Copyright © 2023 ACM.

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Published: 30 April 2023

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Presentation video - short version (3-min) https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543507.3583510#3583510.mp4

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WWW '23: The ACM Web Conference 2023

April 30 - May 4, 2023

TX, Austin, USA

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Cited By

Balduf LSokoto SAscigil OTyson GScheuermann BKorczyński MCastro IKról MVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Looking AT the Blue Skies of BlueskyProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3688407(76-91)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3688407
Zuo WRaman AMondragÓN RTyson G(2023)A First Look at User-Controlled Moderation on Web3 Social Media: The Case of Memo.cashProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Open Challenges in Online Social Networks10.1145/3599696.3612901(29-37)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3599696.3612901
Hegadi RAkella SReddy KKumar C P(2023)Analyzing and Mitigating Common Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts in Web3 Ecosystem: A Comprehensive Study2023 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Data, Decision and Systems (ICDDS)10.1109/ICDDS59137.2023.10434537(1-5)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDDS59137.2023.10434537
Bo HWu YYou ZMcConville RHong JLiu W(2023)What Will Make Misinformation Spread: An XAI PerspectiveExplainable Artificial Intelligence10.1007/978-3-031-44067-0_17(321-337)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44067-0_17

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