In the world of Web3, a new social infrastructure called ECHO is emerging. As the first cross-chain social infrastructure of Web3, the emergence of ECHO signifies a new chapter in the deep application of blockchain technology in the field of social interaction.

What is ECHO? What makes it special?

ECHO is the first cross-chain social infrastructure of Web3. Its core product is an embeddable commenting widget that provides users with a channel to interact with their own identity and content within the platform, without the need to go back to Twitter or Discord. ECHO also provides a management platform for projects and content creators to review, analyze users, and incentivize user participation. As ECHO is 100% blockchain-based and compatible with web2 social networks, it enables web3 projects to attract web2 users without any social barriers for the first time.

Discord was not designed for community engagement, and Twitter does not accept Web3 identities, but within the ECHO platform, communities can directly socialize with each other. Social data is permanently stored on the blockchain, across chains and platforms. Participation can be aggregated based on the same NFTs, articles, proposals, etc. And with no Gas fees, this will lead to higher user conversion rates, retention rates, and transaction frequencies for projects.

Features

ECHO's widget has three main functions: commenting, reacting, and rewarding. These three functions are essential components of social interaction, helping content creators better engage with their audience, while also providing a platform for the audience to express their opinions and feelings.

1. Commenting: Allows people to leave feedback, ask questions, and provide their own perspectives.

2. Response: Increase visitor engagement and gather their feedback.

3. Tipping: Accepting support from visitors without the need for coding.

In addition, ECHO also provides a JS SDK for embedding a "Like" button. The ECHO extension allows you to have a richer browsing experience in your browser. You can easily embed ECHO into Mirror, freely comment on NFTs, and aggregate comments in one place.

Interoperability

Another important feature of ECHO is its interoperability across different chains. ECHO supports EVM chains and Solana, and will soon support most major chains. This means that regardless of which chain users are on, they can use ECHO for social interactions. This design undoubtedly increases ECHO's user coverage, enabling more users to enjoy the convenience brought by ECHO. ECHO has multiple partners, including Arweave, .bit, Everpay, Mirror, PermaDAO, Planet, 4EVERLAND, Mail3, Bress, cc0, ArConnect, Permafacts, and MogulsDAO.

Storage

ECHO's data storage utilizes Arweave, a decentralized solution that enables permanent data storage. All comments and reactions are stored on Arweave, meaning that users can access their data anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, this data is resistant to censorship, as it cannot be erased or modified.

Core

ECHO aims to make our perspectives everlasting. Personal viewpoints are often overlooked in the annals of history. However, history should not solely revolve around events; it should encompass thoughts as well. Our perspectives are a part of those events. Permanently preserving our viewpoints, emotions, preferences, and dislikes is akin to capturing that moment forever. With the advent of the internet and blockchain, the experiences and ideas of our current era have the potential to transcend into the future. In other words, while time may pass, viewpoints will endure.

To achieve this, the initial idea was to build a more reliable commenting widget using Arweave, which would ensure data reliability, decentralization, persistence, and resistance to censorship. Now, we have witnessed the rapid growth of Arweave. Arweave's vision is to permanently store documents and applications, while ECHO is here to preserve users' viewpoints on anything in the world.

The team emphasizes that when we comment on something, it's called an echo, and when someone responds to a comment, perhaps with a like, it's also an echo. In Shell and PHP, "echo" is also used as a command to output a string passed as a parameter. The word "echo" represents sound and response. We hope that ECHO can record all of these echoes.

With the internet and blockchain, the experiences and ideas of our current era have the potential to transcend into the future. In other words, while time may pass, viewpoints will endure. That's why our slogan is "Long live our viewpoints."

Distinction

There are already several popular widgets available in the market:

- https://disqus.com

- https://giscus.app/ (Github discussions)

- twikoo.js (self-hosted)

- https://utteranc.es/ (GitHub issues)

- https://github.com/gitalk/gitalk (GitHub issues)

However, these tools have some evident issues:

Data does not belong to the individuals who comment or retrieve the data.

And ECHO is designed to address these issues:

Features

Decentralization encompasses three aspects: decentralized authorization, decentralized data, and decentralized front-end.

Users can log into ECHO using a decentralized wallet. This means you can sign and upload data to Arweave with or without using the front-end interface. The relevant SDK will be released as open source later on.

Arweave is a decentralized solution for archiving data. We will provide multiple official gateways and open source our code repository. We also encourage the community to establish their own gateways. Any gateway will synchronize valid data uploaded by other gateways.

Technical Operations

The front-end code of ECHO has been deployed on IPFS. Users can access the widget using any IPNS gateway.

In addition to web3 products, ECHO encourages the use of its widget by non-web3 or non-dweb products.

Improvements

ECHO uses target_uri to identify the target of comments. A set of URL patterns has been designed to identify different objects. Users can comment on the same object, such as an NFT, on different websites and applications as long as the target_uri is the same, and the corresponding comments will be displayed.

Here are some examples of the best patterns:

Cost

According to the data from September 1, 2022, the price of storing data on Arweave is less than $2.5/1G, which is cheaper in the long run compared to the annual fee of Amazon S3. The data in ECHO is based on lightweight text. At the same time, Arseeding is used to regularly upload data to Arweave.

Solution

Embedding the iframe widget on the ECHO website is very simple and hassle-free.

The modules are configurable.

The theme color is configurable.

The DID to receive donations is configurable (.bit and ens are supported).

Conclusion

ECHO is composed of three Web3 nomads who are committed to providing better social tools for the Web3 community. They believe that everyone should have the right to express their opinions, and these opinions should be permanently preserved. To achieve this goal, they are developing more ECHO widget-based products to meet the various needs of the Web3 community.

The emergence of ECHO not only provides a brand new social tool for the Web3 community but also opens up new possibilities for the application of blockchain technology in the social field. Its success will contribute to the development of the Web3 community and provide strong support for the popularization and application of blockchain technology.

Overall, ECHO is a project with innovative awareness and a forward-looking perspective. Its emergence heralds a new chapter in Web3 social interaction. We have reason to believe that with the continuous development and improvement of ECHO, the Web3 community will become more active and prosperous, and blockchain technology will also play a greater value in the social domain.