Original Title: Why Social Trading Is The New Financial Infrastructure Layer
Original Author: Boaz Sobrado, Forbes
Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note:

From the retail trading frenzy sparked by GameStop to Robinhood's announcement of a "financial super app" vision, social trading is evolving from a fringe phenomenon to part of the financial infrastructure. They are not replacing brokerages but are building a new layer of discovery and discussion on top of them.

This article delves into how emerging platforms like Blossom, AfterHour, Fomo, among others, are reshaping the behavioral path and market structure of retail investors through real holding data, community interaction, and trading integration. As this infrastructure takes shape, those who understand their users will define the future financial gateway.

The following is the original text:

On January 23, 2025, the famous "dogwifhat" meme dog Achi appeared at the opening bell ceremony of the New York Stock Exchange.
Dogwifhat (ticker symbol WIF) is a dog-themed meme coin based on Solana, launched in November 2023, with its mascot being a Shiba Inu wearing a knitted hat.

When Benchmark led Fomo's $17 million Series A funding round in November 2025, the Silicon Valley's most selective venture capital firm made an unusual bet on the crypto space. Benchmark rarely invests in cryptocurrency startups. The firm had previously invested in Chainalysis in 2018 and a few other projects, but the crypto sector was still not part of its typical investment portfolio.

However, Partner Chetan Puttagunta joined Fomo's board. Fomo is a consumer-facing application that supports trading millions of different crypto tokens across multiple blockchains.

What Benchmark invested in was not another trading app but social trading infrastructure—a category that is rapidly becoming an essential tool for retail investors, with importance on par with traditional brokerages.

More Than Just a Degen: A Case Study of Blossom Social

Blossom Social Team Taking a Group Photo with Community Members in Front of the Nasdaq Building

Blossom's CEO Maxwell Nicholson has a deeper understanding of "friction" than most people.

When building a social platform, forcing users to link a brokerage account from the get-go often creates significant resistance at the start of the user journey. While most consumer products choose to remove this barrier, Blossom took a different approach by making it a mandatory requirement.

At first glance, this decision may seem counterintuitive until you understand what Nicholson aims to build.

Blossom launched in 2021 amidst the retail trading frenzy sparked by GameStop. At that time, stock discussions on Reddit were mostly anonymous—you couldn't see real positions, only various opinions. Although StockTwits had a large user base, the shared content was mostly unverified.

Nicholson wanted to create a social network based on real investment behavior. Through APIs like SnapTrade, Blossom could link brokerage accounts to verify user holdings. The technology was mature, but the question was: Would users be willing to endure this "friction"?

The result was: they were willing.

Today, Blossom has 500,000 registered users, with around 100,000 users having linked brokerage accounts, representing nearly $40 billion in assets. On the platform, about half of the holdings are ETFs, not individual stocks, with the most popular being the S&P 500 Index ETF.

Mandatory linking of accounts shaped the platform's culture.

Nicholson observed that although StockTwits later also added brokerage linking, it was optional. Technically, anyone could integrate through Plaid or SnapTrade, but because linking was not core to the platform culture, users did not widely adopt it. In contrast, on Blossom, almost all active users share their real holdings and earn badges through verification. This "friction" filters out those willing to publicly disclose their investment portfolios, thereby creating a unique community atmosphere.

This culture eventually transformed into a business model.

In 2023, Blossom achieved a revenue of $300,000, reached $1.1 million in 2024, and is projected to exceed $4 million this year, with 75% of it coming from collaborations with ETF issuers.

State Street pays Blossom to enhance the awareness of SPY among retail investors, preventing them from defaulting to Vanguard's VOO. VanEck promotes thematic ETFs, and Global X advertises its specialty funds. Currently, about 25 issuers are partnering with Blossom because this platform can precisely target retail investors who are actively choosing funds.

This model is effective because Blossom's users are not day trading but rather building portfolios for the next few decades. When they link their accounts and discuss holdings, they not only create content for other users but also generate data on real retail investor behavior.

Nicholson introduced Blossom's quarterly ETF retail fund flow report. These data show how users actually allocate funds, not just their claimed behavior in surveys. Since the data is verified through brokerage accounts, it is highly reliable and therefore commercially valuable. ETF issuers are willing to pay for this data to understand if their products are truly attracting retail investors.

This $4 billion in linked assets represents real money, making genuine asset allocation decisions based on discussions on the social platform.

For ETF issuers, this is not just a content platform but a new layer of financial infrastructure.

Retail Investors Rule the World, but Which Type of Retail Investor?

Kevin Xu, a well-known investor on Reddit, is the founder of AfterHour and Alpha Ai

The explosion of social trading has revealed a fact: retail investors are not a homogeneous group. The platforms that have truly emerged in this space serve completely different user bases—their risk preferences, investment horizons, and motivations are all different.

AfterHour targets the WallStreetBets community. Founder Kevin Xu, during the meme stock frenzy, openly shared every trade on WallStreetBets under the identity "Sir Jack," turning $35,000 into $8 million. He created AfterHour to serve these types of users. The platform allows users to share holdings anonymously but requires validation through a linked brokerage account. Users share specific amounts, not just percentages. The atmosphere in stock chat rooms is more like a trading version of Twitch live streams.

In June 2024, AfterHour secured a $4.5 million investment from Founders Fund and General Catalyst. The platform has gained tremendous popularity, with reportedly 70% of users opening the app every day. They are not passive investors who check their portfolio once a quarter but rather active participants who view the market as entertainment and a community. The platform has sent nearly 6 million trade signals to users, and verified holdings exceed $500 million.

Fomo, on the other hand, targets the "Degen" in the crypto community. This group of people wants to trade any token on any blockchain. Fomo's founding team, by listing 200 ideal angel investors and leveraging their network for introductions, managed to secure 140 of them, including Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.

The team behind Fomo, which recently received investment from Benchmark

The opportunity for Benchmark to invest in Fomo arose when three different individuals recommended Fomo's co-founders Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park to partner Chetan Puttagunta. Having previously worked together at dYdX, they shared the vision for Fomo: to create a super app that allows users to trade all crypto assets on any blockchain, with embedded social features to track friends and KOLs' transactions in real-time.

Fomo caters to those who want to trade anytime, anywhere, from Bitcoin to obscure meme coins. The app charges a 0.5% transaction fee but absorbs on-chain gas fees, making it particularly attractive to those interested in mainstream coins. For example, you can trade Solana tokens at 3 a.m. on a Sunday without worrying about network fees—the traditional market "friction" is particularly evident here.

By June 2025, Fomo integrated Apple Pay, allowing users to start trading upon download. The platform's revenue quickly grew to $150,000 per week, with daily trading volumes reaching $3 million. By the time the funding round closed in September, daily trading volumes had soared to $20-40 million, daily revenue hit $150,000, and the user base exceeded 120,000.

This wave of growth has validated Puttagunta's judgment: social trading is no longer just a feature but a new layer of infrastructure. These platforms are building a long-term architecture for retail investor discovery, discussion, and execution of trades.

On the other hand, Blossom aims to attract long-term investors. Users on the platform discuss whether their portfolios should tilt towards small-cap value stocks or the international market. Around 37% of holdings are in the S&P 500 ETF, while the remaining 63% consist of dividend funds, covered call ETFs, crypto ETFs, fixed income products, and sector-specific ETFs. Users generally follow a "core-satellite" strategy: a broad market base with thematic allocations around it.

The user bases served by these platforms are entirely different.

A user discussing SCHD's dividend yield on Blossom is clearly not the same type of person as a user on Fomo trading Trump meme coins late at night. They are both retail investors, but they have different goals, risk appetites, and market attitudes.

The success of these platforms lies in accurately selecting their audience.

Blossom enforces brokerage account linking, filtering out serious investors willing to share real holdings; AfterHour's anonymous transparency mechanism appeals to those seeking reputation without revealing their identities; Fomo's multi-link-in feature caters to crypto natives accustomed to round-the-clock trading. In theory, these platforms could all serve all retail investors, but they have chosen not to do so.

The Logic of Financial Super Apps

On July 29, 2021, online brokerage Robinhood went public on the New York Stock Exchange. That day, co-founders Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev showed up on Wall Street, and Robinhood's stock price fell about 5% on its first day of trading on the NASDAQ.

By September 2025, Robinhood announced the launch of "Robinhood Social," validating the trend of social trading from an unexpected direction. When the platform that once "commoditized" trading commissions started incorporating social features, it signaled a fundamental shift in the entire brokerage industry's underlying logic.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated at an offline event in Las Vegas, "Robinhood is no longer just a trading platform; it's your financial super app."

This release includes AI-driven custom indicators, futures trading, shorting mechanism, overnight index options, and support for multiple separate brokerage accounts. However, the most core update is Robinhood Social—an in-app trading community supporting real trade validation and verified identities.

These features almost replicate the core experience of standalone social trading platforms: users can view real-time entry and exit points, discuss strategies, follow other traders, and directly execute trades within the feed. They can see their yearly P&L, daily returns, and historical trade records. Each profile is KYC-verified to ensure authenticity. Users can even follow politicians, insiders, and hedge funds based on publicly disclosed trade records, even if these individuals are not active on Robinhood.

Robinhood has made the social features "invite-only," indicating their recognition of the importance of this track. With 24 million funded accounts, the platform possesses strong distribution capabilities. It once led zero-commission trading and long defended the "payment for order flow" revenue model. Now, it is venturing into the social layer as brokerages themselves face the risk of becoming commoditized.

Zero commissions have become an industry standard, mobile experience is a basic requirement, and fractional share trading has become common. Robinhood's differentiating advantage in 2015 can now be found on Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade. The next round of competition focuses on "community" and "conversation."

Robinhood's move proves that social trading is not just an additional feature but a foundational layer. When the largest retail brokerage by user count starts incorporating social features, it indicates that this track has been validated by standalone platforms and has proven its value.

The timing of this move also reveals a defensive posture. Blossom, AfterHour, and Fomo are capturing the minds of different types of retail investors. They do not need to be brokerages themselves but instead connect to existing brokerages via API. However, they control the "discovery" and "discussion" layer—where investors decide what to buy. If trading happens on Robinhood while the discussion takes place elsewhere, Robinhood risks becoming a mere "pipeline."

The user stickiness brought by the social layer is irreplaceable by the execution layer. If your friends are all trading on AfterHour and the investors you follow on Blossom are not on Robinhood, the migration involves not only assets but also community, discussions, and decision-making context. Robinhood has recognized this and started to respond, but it is following rather than leading in this track.

Social Media is Becoming Market Infrastructure

StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon spoke at the Bloomberg Link Empowered Entrepreneur summit held in New York, USA, on April 14, 2011 (Thursday).
The summit brought together the most innovative entrepreneurs to spend a day with other entrepreneurs, investors, and potential business partners, engaging in in-depth discussions on entrepreneurship, funding, and business growth.

Social trading platforms are integrating two originally separate functions in retail investing: financial media and market infrastructure, creating a unified user experience.

Imagine how Wall Street professionals work. They spend $24,000 a year subscribing to the Bloomberg Terminal. The value of the Terminal lies not only in data or trading functions but in its integrated workflow: professionals can view the market, read news, analyze charts, chat with other traders, and execute trades all in one interface. Bloomberg's instant messaging system is still widely used today precisely because it is embedded in the trading process rather than forcing users to switch between different platforms.

Social trading platforms are building a similar experience for retail investors. StockTwits has 6 million users discussing the market in real time. Founder Howard Lindzon (also the creator of the "Degen Economy Index") launched this platform as early as 2008, long before the retail trading frenzy. This community focuses on "what is happening now" rather than what CNBC reported three hours ago. During the GameStop surge in 2021, discussions took place on Twitter, StockTwits, and Reddit, not on traditional financial media.

Blossom combines this idea with real holding data. When users link their accounts and discuss their actual holdings, the generated content not only serves other users but also becomes a data source for the platform. ETF issuers are willing to pay for exposure because retail investors discover funds in the social information flow rather than through Morningstar ratings or financial advisor recommendations.

AfterHour's mechanism is that when the people you follow make trades, the platform sends real-time trade signals. The urgency brought by this immediacy is unmatched by traditional media. When an investor you respect buys a stock, you can see it immediately instead of waiting until the close to see the day's hot topics on CNBC.

Fomo, on the other hand, allows users to trade hundreds of thousands of different cryptocurrencies and see what assets others are holding. The social feed will display which tokens are gaining attention, sometimes even before mainstream crypto media coverage. The discovery process is community-driven, rather than determined by centralized editors deciding what is worth reporting.

This integration explains why traditional financial media struggles to attract young investors. CNBC still follows a broadcast model: hosts explain, and viewers passively watch. The disconnect between media consumption and trade execution creates "friction." Young investors don't watch cable TV or wait for market summaries. They consume content in real-time on their phones and make decisions.

Social trading platforms address this issue: they make content creation "participatory." Users create content through trades and discussions, and the platform is both a media company and a community generating signals from users. This structure reflects the media consumption habits of the younger generation—they don't differentiate between "creating" and "consuming," and social trading platforms are a manifestation of this behavior in the financial markets.

These platforms' business models also reflect the integration of media and infrastructure. Blossom's revenue comes from ETF issuers purchasing exposure, similar to media companies selling ads. However, these ads are combined with actual holdings data, allowing issuers to assess if their product is genuinely attracting users and pay based on actual performance. AfterHour and Fomo, on the other hand, profit from trading fees, similar to brokerage execution revenue, but the trades occur in a social context, driven by community discovery.

These platforms are not trying to replace CNBC or Bloomberg but rather to replace the "disconnect between media consumption and trade execution" experience. The real innovation lies in integration: when discovery, discussion, and execution are completed in one workflow without the need to switch platforms, the platform itself is no longer just an app but a new layer of financial infrastructure.

Trade Data, Becoming the Product Itself

Blossom Social once held a 1400-person offline event at the Toronto Rogers Centre—where the Blue Jays lost in Game 7 of the World Series.

Social trading platforms are creating an unprecedented data set, where this data itself is the product, independent of the social functions that generated it.

Blossom has currently connected around $40 billion in assets, and this data reveals actual retail trader behavior, rather than their claimed preferences. Traditional market research relies on surveys, asking investors what assets they hold or plan to purchase, but such surveys are often influenced by selection bias, memory errors, and idealized answers. Blossom, on the other hand, through brokerage account connections, directly verifies users' actual holdings.

Each quarter, Blossom releases a report on the retail flow of funds into ETFs, revealing which categories are attracting funds and which are experiencing outflows. This data is important because retail trading now holds a significant market share. In 2021, the activity of retail traders forced institutional investors to adjust their strategies, and this activity did not disappear with the decline of GameStop.

ETF issuers are willing to pay for this data because it can reveal whether their products are truly resonating with retail investors. State Street and Vanguard compete for retail funds in the S&P 500 ETF, while VanEck and Global X vie for flow in thematic ETFs. They need to know if retail investors are really buying their funds, not just hearing about them.

Blossom can provide answers. When 37% of connected assets are concentrated in the S&P 500 ETF, it indicates that this category is broadly appealing; when covered call ETFs experience strong inflows, it shows that the market has a real demand for income-generating products; when crypto ETFs are widely adopted, it indicates that retail interest extends beyond speculative trading on exchanges. This data comes from actual holdings, not surveys or focus groups.

AfterHour's position verification mechanism reveals the stocks that the WallStreetBets community is actually trading, not just discussing popular stocks. Many stocks are highly discussed on social media but have low actual trading volume. AfterHour can differentiate between "noise" and "signal" through users' verified real holdings. The $500 million in assets connected to the platform represent real funds making trading decisions based on community discussions.

Fomo's trading data reveals which cryptocurrencies are truly being adopted by retail investors, not just hyped up. The platform promises to support trading millions of tokens on all blockchains, most of which will eventually fail. But which tokens can sustain trading volume, and which are just briefly in the limelight, this data is crucial for understanding retail behavior.

As retail trading's share in the market continues to rise, the value of this data also increases. Social trading platforms are collecting information that traditional data providers find difficult to access. Retail investors do not submit 13F filings or publicly report holdings. Brokerage data is usually siloed, but social trading platforms aggregate data across brokerages through user connections, breaking traditional data silos.

These platforms' business models are also based on this: they do not make money from trading frequency but from information flow. Blossom does not need users to trade frequently; it only needs them to genuinely share their holdings for the data to be valuable. This model is different from traditional brokerages that rely on commission-based or order flow payment logic, and the incentive mechanisms have changed accordingly.

The data product has also built a moat. Once ETF issuers start relying on Blossom's quarterly reports to formulate strategies, they become dependent on data; once AfterHour shows hedge funds the real trading behavior of retail investors, that information becomes part of their investment process. These platforms are not only the infrastructure of retail investors but are also becoming tools for institutions to understand retail investor behavior.

Trading Has Become a Form of Consumer Behavior

Social trading infrastructure is becoming a permanent architecture of the market. Although each platform caters to different user groups, they share the same underlying logic: real holdings, real-time discussions, and a business model built on transparency rather than trading volume.

The technology underpinning this infrastructure is irreversible. Brokerage account linking APIs already exist and will continue to be optimized. The ability to validate holdings in real time is accessible to any platform. The issue is not whether social trading infrastructure exists but rather which platforms can capture which user groups.

The retail trading frenzy sparked by GameStop has not subsided. Retail investors who opened accounts in 2021 did not close them after the meme stock craze faded. Data indicates that they are still actively participating in the market. These investors need infrastructure to support their investment process — a platform that seamlessly integrates discovery, discussion, and execution.

Traditional brokerages can add social features, as evidenced by Robinhood. However, platforms that start from a social standpoint and then integrate trading functionality may have a structural advantage. Blossom, AfterHour, and Fomo do not need to be brokerages themselves; they connect to all brokerages via API, allowing users to trade on their familiar platforms while engaging in a social community.

The business models of these platforms also validate their sustainability. Blossom's revenue grew from $300,000 to $4 million within two years, indicating that ETF issuers are willing to pay to reach retail investors; AfterHour's daily active user data shows that social trading can form user habits; Fomo's trading volume growth proves that crypto natives are eager for a social trading experience. These are not just products of the moment but infrastructure that serves real needs.

The regulatory environment is also supporting rather than hindering this architecture. Social trading platforms do not hold assets or execute trades; they provide communities and discussions around real holdings. This structure avoids most of the regulatory complexities faced by brokerages. Platforms collaborate with compliant brokerages rather than compete with them.

The future development path will involve continued segmentation. More platforms will emerge, serving specific groups of retail investors: some will focus on options trading, some will serve dividend income investors, and some will target emerging markets. They will build communities around real data and integrate trade execution without becoming brokerages.

The ultimate winner will be those platforms that truly understand their user base, rather than trying to serve everyone. Retail investors are not a monolithic group, and a successful social trading platform reflects this reality in its product design, business model, and community culture. Benchmark's investment in Fomo also validates this logic: they invested not in a platform trying to serve all retail investors, but in one focused on serving crypto natives, supporting their trading of millions of tokens in the community.

Social trading infrastructure doesn't necessarily have to replace brokers but rather adds a layer on top of brokers—within this layer, community, discussion, and discovery are taking place. This layer is becoming as important as the brokers themselves. Platforms building this layer are creating a permanent market structure for retail investors.

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