We launched Roll in July 2019, with the first token we minted via our contracts, TING (Tingles). By November 2019, we reached a milestone of 1000 users on the app, one of the fastest growth in users for a crypto app. We were one of the only crypto apps on the Apple app store in 2019 after dozens of hours of calls with the Apple team about the app and the concept. By December 2019, we launched a social token exchange integrated with Uniswap, the largest DEX on Ethereum at that time and helped teams bootstrap liquidity. The vision was always to build open communities via social tokens.
Social tokens didn't catch a wave in 2020s unlike NFTs. Why I think that was the case is for another post. However, by 2024 the idea of social tokens morphed into primitives combined with DApps that executed well - first friend.tech and then pump.fun on Solana.
The idea of liquid communities in addition to open communities is a powerful, and one that we underestimated in hindsight. People want to enter and exit these communities with ease aka there should be enough liquidity at all times. Issues tokens on a bonding curve solved this issue, but also killed a bunch of other fun use cases we enabled with Roll such as giving away tokens for fun tasks the community does (everything from treasure hunts to plane rides).
But we need to build for our users, and not our highbrow ideas. SocialFi is the natural successor of social tokens at least in this market. I remain optimistic about some specific use cases of the original social token design space especially around DAOs and with better penetration of onchain social among the normies. But that will take time and the current zeitgeist is with SocialFi, not social tokens (yes, they are joined at the hip but have evolved along different paths).
By launching Form as an L2 with super low fees, we enable a lot of uses we envisioned in 2019. With curves as a suite of smart contracts, we enable a lot more innovation in the bonding curve design space than what we see today. In addition, with curves, we bring the best of both social tokens and bonding curves together, but we need to prove this out in the marketplace of ideas.
2024 is going to be an exciting time for SocialFi but also social tokens in their new form.