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SocialFi transforms social media: an overview of key technologies, challenges, and opportunities of the future generation of social media

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Abstract

In Web 2.0-based social networks, users suffer from authorities of service providers and politicians, such as revoking users, removing content, and selling users’ sensitive information. The concept of decentralized finance (DeFi) as a blockchain-based technology is one of the most popular achievements of blockchain, involving digital assets, smart contracts, protocols, and applications. In the present study, a new subgroup of DeFi is identified known as social finance (SocialFi). It states that social media components can be presented as blockchain-based tokens and SocialFi can be a solution to the definite problems of centralized social media. Therefore, this study addresses the related technologies of SocialFi (e.g., peer-to-peer networks, Web 3.0, decentralized autonomous organizations, and Metaverse) and describes the challenges and opportunities of the next generation of social media. Some main SocialFi challenges reviewed in this study are scalability, regulation, and fake news detection/prevention. Finally, the future direction of this new field in social and computer sciences is discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We as authors appreciate anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments to improve this work.

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  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Yadegar -e- Imam Khomeini (rah), Shahr-e-Rey Branch Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Azadeh Imani Rad

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Saeed Banaeian Far

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  1. Azadeh Imani Rad
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AIR is the study’s contributor, and she wrote the first of the manuscript draft. SBF is the supervisor, and he has reviewed the final version before the submission.

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Correspondence to Saeed Banaeian Far.

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Imani Rad, A., Banaeian Far, S. SocialFi transforms social media: an overview of key technologies, challenges, and opportunities of the future generation of social media. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 13, 42 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01050-7

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