The internet is having an identity crisis.
Recent infrastructure collapses, from the AWS outage that knocked Snapchat offline to Snapchat’s sudden pivot toward paid storage tiers, have exposed an uncomfortable truth: we’ve built the digital age on fragile, centralised foundations controlled by a handful of corporations.
Enter SocialFi, the emerging sector blending decentralised finance with social media, which is experiencing explosive momentum.
Interest has spiked 360% on Google Trends over the past year, with the market projected to hit $10 billion by 2030.
But what does this actually mean for everyday users tired of being treated as data commodities? And how can social wallets and decentralised platforms fundamentally reshape the way we interact, create value, and own our digital lives?
We spoke with Evgeny Yurtaev, Co-founder and CEO of Zerion, the infrastructure powering SocialFi’s backbone, to unpack the revolution quietly reshaping the internet, the real barriers to mainstream adoption, and what the digital economy looks like when users finally own their world.
Excerpts:
Invezz: What’s actually driving this big jump in SocialFi interest and adoption around the world right now?
Evgeny Yurtaev: SocialFi’s rise is part of a broader shift in how people think about ownership and resilience online.
The recent AWS outage, which took down platforms from Snapchat to Slack, exposed how dependent today’s internet remains on a handful of centralised providers.
Just weeks earlier, Snapchat announced it would begin charging users who exceed 5 GB of “Memories” storage, raising questions about who really controls our digital lives.
SocialFi offers an alternative – blending decentralised finance and social media to give users direct ownership over their content, identity, and value flows.
As a result, it has seen a 360% spike in interest on Google Trends in the past year, and the sector is expected to reach USD 10 billion by 2030.
Protocols such as Farcaster and Lens are leading the way, offering decentralised, user-owned alternatives to traditional social media.
Many of the SocialFi apps are powered by Zerion’s wallet data infrastructure to deliver real-time positions and transactions, showing users what they own on-chain.
Invezz: How is blending social networks with DeFi changing the way people interact online and create value?
Evgeny Yurtaev: It’s changing consumption behaviour. By blending DeFi mechanics into social media, engagement becomes a tangible financial asset, where every like, follow, or comment can trigger on-chain value flows.
A post can sell as a limited-edition collectable, a follow can unlock access to token-gated communities, and social interactions can automatically distribute rewards to creators and collaborators.
About 25% of creators with 10K to 100K followers already report earning via crypto tipping or NFT sales alone, showing realised benefits of SocialFi’s monetisation model.
This changes the psychology of online participation.
Users are no longer passive consumers of content – they’re stakeholders in digital ecosystems where attention, reputation, and ownership hold measurable worth.
Invezz: What are the biggest hurdles keeping SocialFi from going fully mainstream, especially when it comes to scale and user experience?
Evgeny Yurtaev: Every new technology goes through a phase where the potential is clear, but the experience is still catching up – and SocialFi is right there.
The building blocks exist – identity, wallets, and social layers, but they’re still coming together into something seamless.
The real opportunity now is refinement. Onboarding needs to feel as natural as signing into an app, and communities need better discovery and moderation tools to scale safely.
More than roadblocks, these are design and product challenges – and they’re being solved quickly.
What’s exciting is that the foundation is already in place: SocialFi has proven people want ownership and connection on their own terms. Fast and inexpensive transactions on Ethereum L2S and Solana offer a solid foundation to build on.
The next leap comes from making that experience effortless – something we at Zerion think about every day as we build the data infrastructure powering these new social layers of Web3.
Invezz: How are social wallets changing the way people behave on Web3 platforms, both socially and financially?
Social wallets are redefining how users interact online by merging payments, identity, and engagement in one place.
Instead of switching between platforms to chat, tip, or invest, users can now do everything directly from their wallet – from sending tokens in a DM to pooling funds for community projects.
This unified identity is turning wallets into social dashboards that combine messaging, payments, and reputation.
The result is a more fluid online economy where communities can behave like micro-DAOs, collaborating and transacting through shared trust and transparent systems.
Invezz: In what ways does SocialFi give users back control of their data and let them earn from their activity, something traditional social media never did?
Evgeny Yurtaev: SocialFi platforms are built around self-ownership. All social activity is intrinsically tied to a user’s wallet address, as opposed to a centralised server.
That means users can use the same identity in different apps, seamlessly bringing their assets with them.
On some platforms, creators can collect royalties on viral posts, sell ownership stakes in their content, or earn recurring revenue without intermediaries.
All this is on-chain. This is what sets SocialFi apart – it aligns engagement with ownership, making data a user asset rather than a platform commodity.
Invezz: Looking ahead to 2030, how do you think SocialFi could reshape the wider digital economy and the way the internet itself works?
Evgeny Yurtaev: By 2030, SocialFi could bridge digital identity, finance, and communication into a single wallet layer. Imagine chatting, investing, subscribing, and earning within one ecosystem – without being locked in to a single provider.
Communities could function like self-sustaining economies, circulating their own tokens for services and rewards. And because these systems are decentralised, they’re resilient by design.
The demand for more decentralised social networks is only growing.
Ultimately, SocialFi represents a return of agency, reinventing the internet with a shift from platforms owning users to users owning their world online.
The post Interview: Social media made you the product, SocialFi makes you the owner, explains Zerion CEO Evgeny Yurtaev appeared first on Invezz
