Introduction to the Clover.Protocols
Last updated
Last updated
Clover introduces a novel suite of Web3 social protocols that are decentralized, AI-driven, and modular. These protocols are crafted to enhance the autonomy of social organizations by implementing a Social Infrastructure Layer and establishing Sovereign DAO governance while tackling key Web3 challenges around social dynamics, including linking digital assets with social interactions. By setting standards for universal digital social assets and enhancing mechanisms that promote community trust and transparency, Clover aims to redefine the landscape of digital social interaction.
The Clover Protocols focus on four main areas:
These innovations collectively aim to empower future Web3 social product developers with the tools and frameworks necessary to create more open, trustworthy, and engaging social products.
Some of the main problems plaguing legacy Web2 social platforms today include user privacy concerns, unfair distribution of revenue, censorship concerns, and a lack of trust in governing organizations. Clover believes that decentralizing social governance can resolve these incongruities.
User Privacy: Users' concerns about their data privacy often conflict with platform revenue streams, such as advertising and user data sales. Governments and other regulatory bodies have also passed legislation on this conflict, normally siding with user concerns over platform income.
Unfair Revenue Distribution: Users are concerned that the value they create through their social accounts or social interactions is not being fairly distributed to the creator by the platform. Larger platforms that can guarantee more social exposure may provide an unequal split of earned income. Take a streamer, for example: A follower who donates to a streamer would have a percentage of their donation taken by the platform and not distributed to the value creator.
Content Censorship: Users' desire for free speech is contradicted by a platform's need for effective moderation. Content policies across a platform may be rigid and inflexible, which stifles nuanced discussions or free expression.
Lack of Trust in Governance: Currently, users must trust social organizations or platforms for their financial transactions, which have no requirement for transparency. Someone using a specific platform to make a charitable donation, for example, must trust that the platform and donation recipient are who they say they are, without the opportunity for further verification.
Multiple Web3 social protocols have been proposed that have mainly focused on the following aspects:
Data Storage Decentralization: Several Web3 social media projects have attempted to solve data storage issues through decentralization of the storage of user-generated content and data. Their solution to decentralize data storage is to either place user data on-chain or use off-chain third-party agents, but this solution only works for simple social scenarios and also introduces additional complexities, especially around data validation, identity, authentication, interoperability, and usage costs. Although users may be concerned with how or where their social data is stored, they are more likely to be price-conscious and unwilling to bear the high cost of use that accompanies these storage methods.
Capitalization of User-Generated Content and Social Connections: Some protocols tokenize every piece of user-generated content, turning user profiles, posts, comments, follows, etc., into tokens or NFTs. This, however, does not directly lead to user purchases since there is no incentive to purchase a piece of content that would otherwise be free on traditional Web2 platforms. As social interaction is diverse and the logic governing human-human and human-machine social interactions is complex, simply tokenizing user-generated content is not the panacea to these complex problems.
While suggested solutions are promising, there has not been a large-scale adoption of existing Web3 social protocols. The Clover protocols solve these problems from a different angle, focusing instead on social organization governance. This focus on governance aims to give social organizations more sovereignty while addressing the relationship between people, assets, and governance in a social environment.
Solving these identified problems should be done by abstracting a Social Infrastructure Layer on top of the existing framework, which will provide solutions to social organizations that are suitable for realistic social scenarios. We must think philosophically about the relationship between social interactions and digital assets, the governance of social organizations, the configuration of user and platform rights, the need for trust in social financial interactions, income distribution, asset versatility, and meeting the innate social needs of users.
Current social media titans operate on a centralized model. User data, profit models, rules governing social interactions, and income distribution are monolithic and rigid, which forces users to sacrifice what may be in their best interest in order to use the platform. To abide by a platform's rules, a user may need to relinquish their freedom of expression, pay a high percentage of income to the platform, or agree to measures that strip them of privacy. Our protocols seek to make social organizations more sovereign by decentralizing these monolithic social platforms.
To achieve this, we introduce a new social paradigm: the Social Infrastructure Layer. The Social Infrastructure Layer is an abstraction layer that contains social scenarios and other supporting services, transforming traditional social platforms into social scenario providers. This becomes the modular social infrastructure upon which users can build their social graph and formulate the specific rules and policies governing their social interactions.
Traditional DAOs require smart contracts to enforce governance, but this mechanism is limited in function, inflexible, and inefficient, and therefore impractical for real-world social organizations. Clover recognizes the effectiveness AI and humans can provide to organizational governance, and aims to create a more realistic and practical DAO that is applicable across more social use cases. Our proposed Sovereign DAO leverages smart contracts, AI Agents, human input, and DApps to govern a wide range of social scenarios. For ease of use, we also provide templated governance setups that cover the most popular scenarios, which can be further fine-tuned or customized. To increase the transparency and credibility of governance processes, governance records are stored on the blockchain using Zero-Knowledge Rollups. Through a Governance Bulletin, every user can clearly view the enumerated rules of a Sovereign DAO Social Organization, without having to understand the complex code of the associated smart contract.
Cross-platform connectivity includes the exchange of digital social assets that contain social elements. Our goal is to ensure that users' social elements (such as avatars, emojis, profile frames, etc.) can be displayed or used consistently across social scenarios or applications. When this interconnectivity is possible and a social element is not limited to a singular use case, the value of the element and any linked asset is increased. Many social elements, especially those concerning user identity or creative content, may not hold inherent transactional value but hold high social value. Clover's protocols ensures a consistent user experience for social assets and social elements across social scenarios, social organizations, social scenario providers, or applications.
Social organizations have multiple channels of generating income and spending revenue, but traditional social organizations are not transparent with either their income or their expenditures. Clover's proposed governance structure creates transparency, which builds and maintains trust among users and their associated social organizations. This trust is built when financial transactions are associated with auditable on-chain information that can be verified. Blockchain transactions currently contain limited information, but we see a need to allow additional auditable information, such as the identity of that party or the nature of the transaction, to be attached. The Clover Protocols develop a set of standards, verifiable by third parties, that allow social organizations to use their DAO practically to achieve transparent and trustworthy financial operations. As attached transaction information may be sensitive, our protocols support encryption to protect privacy.
For builders, we provide underlying API services to support development needs. For end users, we provide the framework to build sovereign social organizations, including tools and AI facilities for organizational governance, support for social scenarios, templated and adjustable governance configurations, and revenue stream options.
Existing Web2 social platforms contain numerous inherent contradictions due to their centralized operating models. Clover recognizes the problems these contradictions create and seeks to disrupt the monopoly that traditional Web2 social media has on human interaction. Our initiative introduces groundbreaking, decentralized, AI-driven, modular protocols aimed at revolutionizing the way we socialize. The heart of our approach is the establishment of a new paradigm designed to give greater sovereignty.
Central to our strategy is the deployment of a , a shift away from traditional monolithic models towards a decentralized ecosystem that accommodates a variety of and . The Social Infrastructure Layer is complemented by a that transcends the limitations of traditional DAOs overreliant on smart contracts by incorporating AI Agents for swift decision making and off-chain governance mechanisms for enhanced flexibility and operational depth.
The Clover protocols pioneer the association of with blockchain transactions, forming digital social assets that work to fulfill users' social interaction needs and foster community trust. Our protocols outline a set of universal standards for these digital social assets so that social interactions are assured a seamless utility and a consistent experience across various social scenarios. In addition, organizational transactions can attach auditable information to further bolster community trust and transparency.
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Current social protocols either tokenize pieces of social content or lack any tangible connection between an asset and a social element, meaning current social protocols are fundamentally transactional and void of social interaction. Without connections between assets and social elements, users cannot fulfill their basic social needs (validation of personal identity, recognition, respect, pride in one's own content, a sense of belonging, etc.) or build trusted relationships with other users. Integrating digital assets and social interactions with native Web3 functionalities remains a key challenge for any social protocol. Our innovative solution redefines how tokenized assets are linked to social activities. As most social interactions occur off-chain, we introduce , an extension of Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), to bind social elements to on-chain assets or transactions. SEIs support both on-chain and off-chain subjects or entities to better support cross-platform integration and attach social content to assets. This approach enhances Web3 user engagement by giving blockchain transactions a social purpose, fostering a more interconnected and dynamic digital ecosystem. Binding social elements to a transaction or asset could be mandatory or optional depending on the governance rules of a specific social scenario.
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