In this era of unending social networking and connectivity, many of our online activities have come to revolve around content creation, distribution, and monetization. But despite the booming creator economy, many creators are not being compensated enough for their hard work. Centralized platforms largely dictate what content gets shared, who gets to see it, and what percent creators get to earn from it. And since users don’t fully own their social profiles or the content they upload, platforms can arbitrarily restrict content, ban accounts, or sell private data to third parties without explicitly asking permission.

Fortunately, new Web3 solutions are being developed to help social media users reclaim control over their online presence. Among these is Frequency, a Layer 1 Polkadot parachain that allows creators to truly own their content, data, and the communities they build.

Building a Comprehensive Digital Identity Through Frequency

One of the main challenges of using social media is that everyone’s online presence stays compartmentalized across different centralized platforms. There’s almost no way to directly transfer follower count or social reputation from one platform to another. Frequency addresses this by letting users integrate their entire social graph—followers, friends, connections, and content—with any new experience within the network, be it social apps, forums, or other online communities. Besides making it possible for creators to build a more cohesive online presence, Frequency also makes online interactions more trustworthy by letting users create decentralized identities that can easily be authenticated via blockchain.

Frequency uses a novel decentralized identity management system made up of three main components:

Message Source Accounts (MSAs): Unique identifiers for users within the Frequency network. They allow users to integrate their social graphs and content across the ecosystem. MSA provides a persistent digital identity—meaning even if a user's cryptographic keys change, the identity associated with the MSA remains consistent and secure. This is crucial for maintaining long-term social connections and content ownership.

User Handles: Easy-to-remember names to identify each MSA. They function like user names on X, Tiktok, and other social media.

Control Keys: Cryptographic keys controlling the MSAs. They act like digital signatures and allow users to approve and perform actions. Control keys ensure that any activity from posting content to engaging with others’ content is directly linked to the user’s unique identity. Users can have multiple control keys connected to a single MSA account.

Frequency has its own crypto token, FRQCY, which is designed for:

Content Purchases: Fans can use Frequency tokens to purchase content directly without the need for third party platforms to facilitate the transactions.

Community Building: Developers can create custom tokens for fan communities that grant the audience exclusive benefits from merchandise discounts to early access to upcoming content.

Automated Payments: When a fan purchases a creator’s work using Frequency tokens, the smart contract automatically releases the funds to the creator.

Royalty Distribution: Smart contracts can be programmed to automatically distribute royalties every time content gets streamed or resold.

Governance: Token holders may vote on decisions regarding the future of the platform, turning them from passive users to active stakeholders in the ecosystem.

Rewards: Users can stake FRQCY to earn rewards or support their favorite applications. FRQCY can also be staked to generate Capacity, a means of payment that lowers message publishing costs while preventing the likelihood of spam messages. In traditional social media, sending messages is nearly free of cost, but the downside to this is how easy it is for bad actors to send spam messages. Capacity works to balance the two, creating a win-win situation for Frequency users.

How Frequency Empowers the Creator Economy

Frequency has several unique features that differentiate it from other blockchain platforms. Here are some of them:

1. Frequency lets users tokenize their content in the form of NFTs, creating verifiable proof of ownership that protects work from being duplicated and sold without consent. These NFTs also allow the community to directly support and even invest in their favorite creator’s content. 
2. Frequency lets users choose how much data they’re willing to share with connected apps and how this data will be used. It gives users more control of their digital identities by ensuring  the privacy of their data.
3. Through Frequency, apps can enjoy the benefits of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). Instead of storing user data on centralized servers, DSNP offers users distributed storage of social connections and interactions across multiple platforms.
4. Unlike traditional platforms, Frequency does not take a fixed cut from creator’s earnings. Instead, it connects fans and creators directly, allows creators to set prices over their content, and gives them more control over how they generate revenue. Even if the creator’s social media presence and audience size scales in the future, Frequency is designed with the capacity to keep up with the added content.
5. As a parachain on the Polkadot network, Frequency benefits from the interoperability and shared security provided by Polkadot. Users can easily integrate their Frequency accounts with other blockchains in the Polkadot ecosystem. 
6. Frequency’s economic model includes mechanisms like Message Batching and staking tokens for recurring network capacity. These are capable of handling a high volume of transactions and data exchanges typical in social applications—while remaining cost-effective for users.

These features make Frequency a more user-centric platform for social networking applications. It has a lot to offer to creators who seek full ownership and fair compensation for their efforts, as well as the chance to build deeper connections with their audience. The future of the creative industry is ready for another round of innovation, and with the help of decentralized Web3 solutions like Frequency, we finally have the tools we need to create fairer and more productive online experiences for everyone.