NEAR always had an idea to create a user-centric Open Web. Where the users are in control of their data. The data is not siloed in a single instance. The developers don't have to rely on someone else's API permission to integrate with the services. Where the applications themselves are open and can be improved and modified towards one's needs.
Blockchains deliver this idea with smart contracts. An always on services that can be used by anyone. But front-end applications are stuck at web2. They are centralized and controlled by a single entity. And smart contracts were mostly designed for financial applications. This was mostly a technical and monetary limitation of legacy networks. The operations were too expensive to be used for anything else than commercial transactions. Each transaction had to have a monetary value to be worth submitted.
But with creation of NEAR, this limitation was removed. The scalability allowed creating new types of applications. Where the value of a transaction is not a monetary value, but a social value.
Widgets are the building blocks of the Near Social framework. They are reusable open-source components that can be used to build applications on top of the SocialDB contract. A widget can be a small component, like a button, or a large component, like a profile page, or even a whole application like a social network.
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