RSS3 — RSS Rebirth in Web3
Author : @!0xWang1, @RealResearch_DAO
What is RSS?
RSS is called Really Simple Syndication, which translates to Really Simple Syndication. In general, it is a simple open source program that allows users to subscribe to content on their own initiative. By adding RSS feeds to web content developers, users can subscribe to different blogs, news media and other web content according to their personal preferences. The RSS program can automatically and instantly aggregate the latest content for users without any platform review.
However, as the platform giants providing centralized content services expanded rapidly and gained more data and users, RSS, with its consistent open source specifications, was unable to meet the development needs of individual developers. Because of internal divisions and splits within the open source community, it gradually became unable to compete with centralized platforms. It also began to gradually refuse to comply with RSS’s open specifications and adopt their own technical specifications to expand the competitive advantage of closed platforms.
WEB2-based social media did once meet the core functions of RSS yet provide additional services, thus completely eliminating the need for RSS usage. Now with the prevalence of Web2 platform algorithms, social media in turn cannot access the basic functions of RSS, aggregating user-initiated subscriptions to information content, and this type of basic autonomous information aggregation function is absent from the Internet.
“Do you need centralized platforms with algorithms to help you filter information?”
Program Introduction
RSS3：RSS in Web 3 Era
What is RSS?
As co-founder DIYgod says, the “RSS” in RSS3 stands for a tribute to history (RSS), while the “3” stands for Web3.
RSS3 puts the ownership and subscription of content in the hands of the users themselves, and aggregates and presents content in a way that does not rely on a centralized platform. It also decentralizes at the storage level, allowing users to enjoy control over their content.
This is a step-by-step “To 3” process.
The first step is to attempt to map user-created content from a centralized platform to RSS3, freeing it from the absolute control of the WEB2 platform.
The second step is to aggregate information into an independent portal.
The third step is to build a decentralized network of content that can be subscribed to and associated with each other.
Team background and financing
The development team behind the RSS3 project party, Natural Selection Labs Natural Selection Labs, is a distributed organizational type similar to an open source community with some hacktivism overtones.
According to previous media reports, founder Joshua claimed to have initially worked on RSS-related work in 2018, during which he discovered the famous RSS project RSSHub on Github, but did not make much of a splash at the time.
In the second half of 2020, Joshua recalled RSSHub and wanted to “take the best from it” and got in touch with its creator, DIYgod. With the help of Mask Network founder Suji, Natural Selection Labs Natural Selection Labs completed a seed round of funding with the help of Mask Network founder Suji. In addition, Joshua says Suji was the first to suggest changing the project’s name (formerly “AIR”) to “RSS3”.
DIYgod is an open source god with over 43,000 stars (favorites) on GitHub. All 11 team members visible on GitHub have a track record of actually making technical contributions to the project, even if there is no way to know the actual identity. From the perspective of “Talk is cheap, show me the code “**, the development strength of the team is trustworthy.
In June 2021, RSS3 completed a seed round with participation from Sky9 Capital, Mask Network, ByteDave, Hash Global, Yutian Chen, Xinjun Liang, SPT Capital, and Variable Capital, raising millions of dollars.
In December 2021, RSS3 announced the completion of a new round of funding led by CoinShares Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Mask Network, HashKey Group, Arweave, Dapper Labs, Youbi Capital, Headline VC, Formless Capital, imToken Ventures, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, and other prominent investors.
Project Boards and Implementation Mechanisms
Focus on data value and user autonomy
RSS3 allows users to store data on a decentralized network, where the ownership and private keys of information are entirely in the hands of users. It also combines the advantages of the traditional scaled decentralized network of RSS to effectively scale and aggregate information based on user preferences and choices.
Unlike traditional RSS, which ignores the commercial potential of information aggregation, RSS3 focuses on the value of data and is expected to enable users to effectively use their personal network data to generate additional economic value.
Reinventing the social function of Web2 in the spirit of Web3 decentralization
Unlike traditional RSS, which has declined due to a lack of social interaction, RSS3 reinvents the social functions of Web2 in the spirit of Web3 decentralization.
In short, think of RSS3 as Twitter and Facebook without censors or algorithmic filtering, where information appears as users subscribe to whatever information.
RSS3, of course, does not stop there. For example, its information aggregation scope is oriented to the entire Internet, and as long as there is a centralized or decentralized application equipped with support for RSS3, RSS3 can automatically aggregate information according to user preferences and publish it to the RSS3 feed.
Application
● Mapping of RE:ID Web2 application
Content in Web2 can be mapped directly to RSS3 through RE:ID, jumping off the algorithm-constrained platform. However, only the more open Twitter has supported for this feature among the current centralized social platforms.
● Cheers: Creation of personal files on Web3
RSS3 imitates the personal pages often found on Web2 social networking platforms. Users can use Cheers to freely set RNS domain names, edit their personal profiles on it, and present their activities on decentralized networks, such as NFT collections.
The current Cheers also has corresponding problems, such as not providing a page similar to the “square” of the Web2 social platform in Cheers, the communication surface between users is narrower, and the speed of information dissemination and communication is restricted.
In order to break the centralized monopolistic data silos formed by Web 2.0 and give users data privacy and ownership, RSS3 builds a high-performance and scalable decentralized network architecture and integrates different modules that can give users real control over their content. The RSS3 network is composed of a service node group and a global indexer, where the service node group is composed of several relay nodes, which are mainly responsible for the security, governance and performance management of the RSS3 network. Of course, in order to realize decentralized governance, the service node group and global indexer are elected by RSS3 DAO, and the maximum number of nodes, penalty for evil, incentive mechanism, module upgrade and treasury will be decided by RSS3 token holders’ votes.
As an open protocol designed for Web 3.0 era content social networks, RSS3 allows users to generate RSS3 files based on Ethernet to store their on-chain assets and social media content information. Unlike the RSS protocol where different files are stored in sub-data centers, RSS3 files are saved and managed by dynamic random service nodes, which can greatly avoid the emergence of data monopoly giants. At the same time, the RSS3 network also allows users to not have to worry about the loss of their own content due to blocking on similar centralized platforms. Since its release, RSS3 has created over 10,000 RSS3 files. Developers, on the other hand, can filter and display different information according to the characteristics of the application with the permission of the user, and build decentralized social products based on RSS3 after retrieving the content published on different platforms by different API interfaces, no longer subject to the monopoly of traditional Web2.
Economic and Governance Model
Blockchain technology not only enables a decentralized information aggregation protocol, but also introduces a self-sufficient and effective economic model with sufficient economic incentives to treat the open source community and users as Stakeholders of the project, to recognize the value of user data and to encourage non-Shareholder members to contribute to the community with sufficient economic incentives.
According to the white paper, the RSS3 DAO is designed to manage all transactions related to RSS3 and its network, and its governance token is called RSS3.
According to the latest disclosure, $1 billion of $RSS3 will be issued, all of which will be generated immediately upon creation, with no additional mining mechanism. In addition to public offerings and airdrop rewards, most tokens will immediately enter a one- to five-year lockup and slow release period, with the following distribution details:
Seed round investors (4.6%)
Their $RSS3 cost is 0.04 USD and will have a 12 month lock followed by a 24 month linear unlock.
Private round (10%)
Their $RSS3 cost ranges from $0.06 USD to $0.15 USD and will have a 12-month lock-up followed by an 18-month linear unlock.
Natural Selection Labs (5%)
Natural Selection Labs, the company that initiated the RSS3 project, will be granted 5% of all tokens, followed by a 12-month lockup period and a 24-month linear unlock.
Team (15%)
The current and future staff of RSS3 will be allocated approximately 15% of all tokens, which will be unlocked linearly in 36 months after a 12-month lock-up period.
Advisors (1%)
Given to those who have helped RSS3 during the start-up phase of the project, with a 12-month linear unlock.
Community (64%)
5%, public offering. Unlocked immediately after the end of LBP.
10%, early rewards. 2% will be airdropped to existing users of the RSS3 ecosystem 1 month after the end of the LBP, and the rest will have a 12-month linear unlock that will serve as a reward for various stakeholders (e.g., active users, ecosystem application developers, and test network node operators).
2% by partner programs and organizations. 12 months of lock-in followed by 36 months of linear unlocking.
47%, managed by RSS3DAO for future development, including the initial liquidity pool on Uniswap from which the funds are derived. There will be a 12-month lock-up limit before the 48-month linear unlock.
Operation Situation
As of May 17, 2022, the price and stock of RSS3’s governance token $RSS3 token has been declining under the influence of the general bear market environment, but the number of token holders has been relatively stable.
At the same time RSS3’s user base is close to 77,000 with a link metric of 237,305, which shows that RSS3 has a certain user base.
Competitor Analysis
Lens Protocol
Lens Protocol is the tool used to build the platform ecology, and developers are free to use this set of tools to build a web3 social platform that meets their needs. The community has the freedom to develop the features users need and the platform interfaces they want to link to; each user has access to the entire ecosystem nourishment.
Lens Protocol defines the concept of a few key features, but Lens allows developers to build their own social applications using modular components at will. Developers are encouraged to develop new components that enhance the product experience; other external applications can also access Lens and share the benefits of the Lens ecosystem.
Compared with Lens Protocol, RSS3 protocol opens the connection between non-identical sources and different levels of information, which is more suitable for developing the structure of products than Lens. Lens Protocol can also be used to develop structures, and also provides tools for operating DAO, which is more suitable for opening products with strong interactivity than RSS3.
Cited from “Lens Protocol：Powerful Weapon for Building Web 3 Platform”, by Will Jiang
Summary and Prospect
RSS3 combines the use of early Internet open source applications with blockchain technology to introduce new economic models and technologies, which considerably solves the economic incentives and other development problems faced by open source applications such as RSS while allowing users to retain full ownership of data.
RSS3 introduces a more social and extensive integration of multiple centralized/decentralized application information aggregation applications. The development team has excellent programming skills and ideals, and has recently received funding from several top VCs and ecosystems. Currently, in addition to Ether, RSS3 is partnered with and supported by public chains such as Arweave, Polygon, BSC, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Flow and xDAI.
How to rationalize the use of funds and technology to build the RSS3 grand narrative support and make the project itself gradually fleshed out is an important direction for the development of the RSS3 project. At this stage, there are many detailed issues that need to be solved by the project and developers.
Faced with the problem of the high technical threshold of RSS and the difficulty of getting started leading to a limited range of users, the project also needs to optimize the universality of RSS3 and to bring the application closer to the original purpose of the Web3 infrastructure in order to give greater play to the potential contained in RSS technology itself.
In the initial stage of Web3 development, RSS3 is also in its infancy, once its wings are full, and will become an important part of the Web3 field of information flow processing.
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