In the race for Web3 mass adoption, the most significant hurdle hasn't been a lack of technology, but the difficulty of moving users away from the social ecosystems they already trust. It's also not the lack of innovative efforts. After all, Layer 2 scaling and innovations like account abstraction were designed to re-engineer the frontend, solving for the technical hurdles that once made crypto inaccessible to the average user. In this exclusive interview, Olayimika Oyebanji sits down with UXLINK CEO Rolland Saf to discuss the architecture of the first social-optimized Layer 2, the security of on-chain reputation, and why the future of Web3 will be built on the power of social connections rather than speculative trading. Rolland Saf Rolland Saf How can decentralized applications leverage familiar Web2 social dynamics—specifically group chats and community management—to onboard the next billion users? To successfully ease the transition of users to a Web3 world, I feel the way to do that is by meeting users where they are already set up, and to do so, provide a seamless transition into the Web3 world instead of making it feel cumbersome or disruptive. The leading Web2 platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp, X, and Discord have effectively mastered the frictionless use of group chats, shared media, roles, and community management. We take the same concepts of a group chat, shared media, roles, and community management, and connects them through on-chain technology. Users will have the ability to import and duplicate their current Web2 groups and add to those groups an additional layer of decentralization and tokenization into the group, all while continuing to utilize the same types of invite links and chat flows that they are already familiar with. By doing so, users can easily create or join on-chain groups and add new Web3 components, such as shared wallets, on-chain reputation, and assetized relationships, to their groups as they continue to expand and create new relationships with other users. This helps to break down both the technical and psychological barriers for users in transitioning from Web2 to Web3 by introducing a familiar interface to new Web3 applications and then slowly adding Web3 functionalities to those applications as their user base grows. I believe that by starting with social utility and then gradually introducing economic utility (for example, earning from relationships or participating in governance of a group) we can convert passive Web2 users into active Web3 participants. This model is how we see over a billion users entering the Web3 space—not through speculative trading but rather through building social connections that users already highly value. What are the architectural and performance challenges that necessitate building a dedicated Layer 2 solution optimized for high-volume, real-time social networking and community applications? General-purpose L2s optimize for financial throughput, not social graph synchronization. Social interactions generate massive volumes of small, frequent, interdependent state changes:user reactions, reputation updates, and graph traversals (e.g., "friends of friends"). The main challenges include high-frequency,low-value interactions,real-time state updates, massive concurrency at group level, extremely low latency, bursty traffic patterns: Because viral events can spike activity 100x in minutes, requiring elastic scaling. A dedicated, social-optimized L2 is built specifically for social workloads. It uses custom execution layers for social graph operations and parallel state updates for group actions. It also applies data availability designs tailored to social data. This delivers truly real-time, planet-scale social experiences that general-purpose L2s simply can’t match. How critical is the transition of non-transferable, real-world social relationships into verifiable, on-chain, assetized social identities for building truly resilient and trustworthy social applications? This transition is absolutely foundational. Current social platforms suffer from fake accounts, bot networks, and disposable identities because relationships have no cost or verifiability. By turning real-world social connections into non-transferable, on-chain assets we embed social cost and social credibility directly into Web3. This enables stronger resilience, deeper trust, and lasting identity continuity. These are capabilities that purely financial mechanisms can never achieve. In a decentralized group environment, what are the primary security and governance hurdles associated with managing and utilizing shared, on-chain community assets for the collective benefit of the group members? The core challenge is aligning collective ownership with accountable execution. The main hurdles would include permission abuse, governance capture, low-participation voting, privacy vs transparency. This is because balancing on-chain auditability with member privacy is something we have to deal with very often. We address this through group-native account abstraction(with OAOG protocols), role-based permissions, social recovery, and execution thresholds tied to user reputation—not just token weight. We believe, governance must reflect social consensus, not capital dominance. When bootstrapping a new decentralized social ecosystem, what are the most effective token distribution models and incentive designs to reward collective action and ensure long-term and sustainable community activity? The most effective models prioritize contribution quality over raw volume. We use the Link-to-Earn model where value is first earned collectively(based on acquaintance), then distributed based on contribution quality. This discourages farming and encourages coordination, continuity, and long-term participation. Pure individual mining or trading rewards attract mercenaries.The social graph adds peer accountability, and organic growth. This, coupled with non-transferable reputation resources, makes genuine users, who build instead of extract, to form flywheels of sustainable activity. The UXLINK Protocol Stack is defined as a modular L2 infrastructure. How does its technical architecture address the scalability and latency needs of group social interactions better than a general-purpose L2? By allowing for the separation of Social Logic from Financial Settlement and specifically optimising execution of Group Interactions, we reduce state contention and latency to a much lesser degree than possible without this architectural approach. This enables real-time social interactions, with scalability, to take place on-chain – an area where the General Purpose Layer 2s usually struggle to deliver the required level of performance. What a focus on converting social connections into onchain asset, what security and anti-sybil mechanisms are used to verify the authenticity and "real-world" value of this asset to prevent farming or bot activity? We use a multi-layered approach consisting of Proof-of-humanity signals (phone verification, Web2 account binding), Social proof scoring (meaning, links from high-reputation users weigh more),Time-based relationship persistence and rate limiting and cost. The system might ask a user in certain circumstances, to pay a small gas or points whenever there is suspicion. We also leverage community flagging and AI for flagged patterns. Progressive unlocking - with interaction accumulating for new links progressively gaining value. Using these features we can guarantee the integrity and the real-world value of the Link-to-Earn/RWS is reflected in the real relationships that are being established, and not in the ones that were merely farmed. What objective and quantifiable metrics does UXLINK use to assess the "quality" or "contribution" of a user, to ensure fair and sustainable incentive distribution? Our UXUY and Link-to-Earn model are driven by objective, quantifiable signals instead of hype: we score users on measurable contributions such as the quality and consistency of their interactions, retention over time, verified network growth they bring in, real economic value generated on-chain (including usage of products like Fuji Pay, or Social club cards), and constructive participation in governance or community work. These signals are normalized, weighted, and combined into a transparent quality score that determines each user’s share of rewards per epoch. And this goes along  with strong anti-Sybil checks, rate limits, and vesting to prevent abuse. The goal is simple: reward real and sustained value to the network, not short-term farming. With UXLINK’s group infrastructure, what is the strategy for the group layer and the overall UXLINK ecosystem, beyond basic token incentives? The primary goal of UXLINK in the short term isn't to monetize groups but instead to scale real usage/economic activity within the network. We plan to do this by creating value through PayFit, developing more developers using the UXLINK Protocol Stack, and integrating social identity into on-chain payment applications. Ultimately, revenue will come from growth services provided to the Web3 community and the growth of the Ecosystem rather than taking away from the user/community experience. We are confident that, through the establishment of large-scale social and payment usage, monetization will naturally occur as long as we maintain a positive user experience and continue to grow. With the emphasis on Real World Social (RWS), what is the long-term vision for linking a user’s in-real-life identity and reputation to their on-chain identity in a privacy-preserving and secure manner? The vision is a world where your real-world reputation becomes portable digital capital without sacrificing privacy. We will achieve this through Zero-knowledge proofs for selective disclosure. For instance: prove you have X real friends or Y reputation without revealing who. Users will control exactly what reputation data is shared with which applications, enabling trust-minimized lending, hiring, dating, and collaboration based on real human history, while keeping sensitive details private. This bridges the offline and online self into a unified, user-owned digital identity.This way, we are positioned to remain a key player in crypto mass adoption and industry growth. And lastly, Web3 won’t scale through better speculation.It will scale through better social coordination.

Between Two Computer Monitors: This story includes an interview between the writer and guest/interviewee. 

UXLINK CEO Rolland Saf on Scaling Web3 Through Real-World Social Coordination

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