Market Background and Competitor Analysis

📊 Market background and competitor analysis

The global digital social landscape is at a critical crossroads. Web 2.0 platforms have abstracted physical reality, while Web3 decentralized social (DeSoc) is emerging.

🐢 Limitations of traditional DeSoc

Mainstream DeSoc protocols (Farcaster, Lens, Bluesky) achieve decentralization at the “application layer,” but they still are 100% dependent on the traditional Internet (TCP/IP protocols) for data transmission.

Project	Architecture model	Core limitation
Farcaster	Hybrid (L2 + P2P Hubs)	Relies on Internet transport; the physical layer is not decentralized
Lens Protocol	On-chain native (Profile NFT)	Depends on the Internet; hard to access offline
Bluesky	Federated (AT Protocol)	Depends on the Internet; only addresses account portability

Shared weakness: If the Internet is interrupted, cellular networks are cut off, or servers are physically (or network) isolated, these DeSoc applications will immediately fail.

⚔️ Comparison with offline communication and Mesh network competitors

Butterfly is positioned at the intersection with SocialFi and DePIN Early Mesh networks (like FireChat) faced the “tragedy of the commons” problem, where users lacked incentive to act as battery-consuming relay nodes.

Features	🦋 Butterfly (this project)	FireChat (discontinued)	Bridgefy	Briar
Tech stack	BLE + Wi-Fi Direct	Multipeer	BLE + Wi-Fi	Tor + BLE
Open-source status	Open source	Closed source	Closed source	Open source
Economic model	SocialFi incentives (PoC)	None (pure altruism)	None	None
Security	Noise + Ed25519	Not secure	Had serious vulnerabilities	High (Bramble)
User incentives	Relay-to-Earn	None (leading to free-riding)	None	None

Butterfly's breakthrough: By introducing a strong incentive layer ($Butterfly token), it solves FireChat's “incentive gap.” By treating smartphones as DePIN nodes, tokens compensate users for the battery and compute resources consumed while maintaining the Mesh network.