Corporate-controlled social media platforms have undermined expectations for a participatory culture online, but alternative social media platforms offer a return to the original concept of online sociality. Lens Protocol provides a decentralized social networking protocol that securely stores user profiles and publications, and enables the monetization of user content and influence. Decentralized networks are expected to transform interpersonal communication, information sharing and community building, democratize access to information and resources, and mitigate the risks associated with centralized control.
Original title: A Comparative Analysis of Decentralized Social Protocols
Original author: 1kx, Accelxr
Original source: mirror
Compiled by: Kate, Mars Finance
The emergence of corporate-controlled social media platforms, driven by commercial motives, has significantly undermined initial hopes for a participatory culture online. Networked information technologies are supposed to fundamentally democratize cultural production, but today these platforms limit and shape online participation primarily for profit-driven purposes—a “like” doesn’t express gratitude for a piece of content, but drives commercially motivated algorithms monetization tool.
Alternative social media platforms based on decentralized protocols offer a return to the original concept of online sociality. Data is controlled by users and disseminated in a decentralized database, the front end is driven by the community, moderation is an expression of community preferences, algorithms are selected by users, and the open source spirit drives innovation.
The history of decentralized and alternative social media
Before the web became the center of commerce, entertainment, and social interaction, it was primarily an academic and military tool. Tim Berners-Lee had an egalitarian vision when developing the first network protocols—the Internet was originally designed to be a decentralized network where information could flow freely between nodes , without any single point of control or failure.
However, as the web grew in commercial importance, centralized platforms like search engines and social media giants became dominant. While these entities provide significant value, they stray from the original decentralized ethos, resulting in the web2 environment we have today.
The key innovation on the timeline of alternative social networks is the arrival of the concept of federated protocols. A federated network refers to a system in which multiple independent servers or "nodes" cooperate to form a single social network, rather than a centralized platform where one organization controls all servers.
In a federated system, each server runs compatible software that follows a shared protocol that enables them to communicate with each other. Users registered on one server can seamlessly track, interact and share content with users from other servers as if they were on the same platform. Examples of these protocols include ActivityPub and OStatus, which support federated platforms like Mastodon and PeerTube.
In a federated setup, users can choose which servers they trust, potentially migrate to a different server or set up their own, giving them more autonomy. The word "Fediverse," a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe," is used to describe such a system. Fediverse started with platforms like GNU Social and its predecessors (StatusNet and Laconica), but the real turning point was the development and widespread adoption of the ActivityPub protocol, which was published as a recommended standard by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2018.
In web3, federated social networks are the default state of decentralized systems once data is ported on-chain. The blockchain acts as a non-binding backend server that stores content, and the frontend indexes this content and serves it directly to users. Identity is handled by a public-private key pair that already manages the user's wallet, allowing them to easily verify any data or content they generate. Additionally, using on-chain primitives like NFTs allows stored content to be bundled in metadata and act as domain names or decentralized identifiers (DIDs).
Similar to how ActivityPub works, the web3 protocol attempts to bootstrap the social graph through authenticated relationships between user nodes. Since any front-end can index and serve this content, there is fierce competition in the front-end layer, causing features to flourish. Additionally, since the data is on-chain, users can choose the algorithms they prefer to use, and they can be incentivized to use certain algorithms to regain the value of their data. This, combined with more direct means of monetizing content, creates a better overall experience for creators who have been largely excluded from monetization, even though their content is what drives demand for these platforms.
Comparison of protocols
To truly understand the innovations in decentralized social media protocols, it is necessary to understand the technical nuances that enable them. It is worth noting that we did not include all social protocols , but selected some of the most popular ones:
identity/namespace
In the context of a federated and decentralized social graph or network protocol, a "namespace" refers to a domain or domain where user identifiers or other resources are unique. This is a way to differentiate a resource or identity from one domain/server to another, ensuring that there are no conflicts or ambiguities when integrating or communicating across multiple domains.
Identities and related namespaces across decentralized social protocols range from simple key pairs (Nostr, Scuttlebutt) to URIs pointing to HTTPs URLs for hosted configuration files (ActivityPub) to using on-chain primitives like NFTs More complex models (and recent ERC-6551 extensions like Lens v2).
Farcaster is a great example of these technologies. A Farcaster account represents a unique entity on the network. Each account has a unique numeric identifier called a Farcaster ID ("fid"). Identities are issued and managed on-chain through an Ethereum contract called IdRegistry. The user makes a transaction to the IdRegistry to obtain a new fid. The address that owns the fid is the user's hosting address. IdRegistry ensures that IDs can be transferred between addresses and no two addresses have the same fid. Farcaster has also extended this namespace to support ENS names published on-chain or off-chain. A signed proof must be submitted to the network to obtain a username.
ActivityPub, on the other hand, identifies each user through a unique URI (usually an HTTPS URL). This URI points to the user's profile and serves as the user's global identifier in feddiversity. To make these URIs more user-friendly, many ActivityPub platforms use a system called Webfinger. Webfinger allows users to have identities like "@username@domain.com".
Lens and CyberConnect manage user profiles as NFTs. In the case of Lens, one user address holds one ProfileNFT, and one address can hold multiple ProfileNFTs. Each Profile NFT encapsulates the entire history of a user’s activity, including posts, mirrors, comments and other types of content they create. Additionally, Profile NFT has a FollowModule, which is essentially a set of rules that govern how different accounts can obtain Follow NFT. These Follow NFTs are used to record the connection between accounts and primary profiles directly on-chain. There are also action methods that can exist that can be created separately from the configuration files and can be linked from one configuration file to another. Action methods exist in their own namespace (e.g. lenses/@alice).
data
Data is arguably the most important feature of decentralized networks, as its creation and standardization are the foundation of these systems. The most common techniques for managing data here are using standardized formats such as JSON and public relations objects (e.g. likes, follows). Core data objects typically include:
• Actors and Objects: Define "actors" (for example: users or groups) and "objects" (for example: posts or messages).
• Publication: A post or comment is packaged as a "publication" and usually links to external content via a URL.
• Append only content in the log: Each entry in the log, whether a post or an update, is a discrete content item that is appended and stored sequentially.
Let's dig into a few examples to see how it works using specific protocols.
ActivityPub utilizes the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format, a JSON-based structure, to represent various social interactions such as posts or likes. The protocol distinguishes between two main components: client-to-server (C2S) and server-to-server (S2S). C2S allows users to interact with respective servers through client applications. In contrast, S2S facilitates communication between servers, giving the protocol robust federation properties.
In ActivityPub, entities are classified into "participants" (usually user accounts or groups) and "objects" (content or actions, such as posts or likes). When a participant performs an action on an object, it creates an "activity" such as "Create", "Follow" or "Like".
Web3 Social Graph adopts many of ActivityPub’s core ideas but applies them on-chain. For example, Lens Protocol introduces “Publications,” which encapsulate various user-generated content such as posts, mirrors, comments, and other forms of media. Each publication is associated with a ContentURI that points to specific content stored on a decentralized protocol such as IPFS or Arweave, or on a centralized storage service such as AWS S3. This configuration ensures that a user’s profile and all associated publications are securely stored in their personal wallet, eliminating reliance on a centralized database.
Additionally, Web3 offers a more direct way to monetize user content and influence compared to Web2 frameworks. Users can charge for the minting of Follow NFTs, or they can integrate the collection module with their publications. The latter option allows them to receive minting fees for NFTs linked to their publication’s ContentURI. In addition to these features, Lens Protocol also provides a GraphQL API for shielding blockchain components from the front-end interface, providing a more user-friendly experience than previous attempts at decentralized social networks.
Ultimately, many decentralized social network protocols create append-only data structures that are authenticated by user keys. For example, on CyberConnect, each user-centric data is represented as a data flow, where only the data owner is allowed to update. Each update to the data is appended to the data stream in the form of appending only the commit log, and the resulting data structure becomes a hash-linked data structure called a Merkle DAG. Data types include content, collection, comments, and subscriptions.
Scuttlebutt similarly uses append-only logs. Each user has their own log, where every new message or action is appended to the end after being signed by the user's identity (i.e. the associated Ed25519 key pair). It also supports the sharing of binary data (called "blobs"). These can be images, videos, or any other binary content. The blobs are stored separately from the append-only logs, but references (hashes) to these blobs can be included in the logs.
For Farcaster, messages are public updates, like making a post, following someone, or adding a profile picture, which are encoded in protobuf and must be hashed and signed by the account's signer. As long as users have enough storage space, they can publish messages to the Hub. The Hub checks the validity of each message's signer before accepting it.
storage
Early data storage methods for decentralized protocols were primarily off-chain, although reminiscent of on-chain consensus. For example, Scuttlebutt uses a peer-to-peer gossip network that places the responsibility for storage on the user's local device. This approach ensures data sovereignty as users have full control over their information. However, this also means that the availability of the data depends on whether the user's device is online, or whether other peers in the network have a copy of the data. To manage storage space over time, some Scuttlebutt clients may need to implement a garbage collection strategy to remove old or less relevant data.
Another alternative to this peer-to-peer approach comes in the form of servers storing data, albeit with redundancy compared to traditional media platforms. Take Matrix, for example, which has multiple servers that store copies of room history and synchronize them with each other. When a user sends a message (or any event) in a room, their home server broadcasts that event to other participating home servers, which then store and forward the event to their connected clients. Similarly, ActivityPub lets each instance (or server) in the network store its data, usually in a database. The choice of database (relational, NoSQL, etc.) depends on the specific implementation of ActivityPub software. For example, the popular ActivityPub platform Mastodon uses a PostgreSQL database.
Protocols such as Cyberconnect, Farcaster and Lens all use blockchain for storage. The use of on-chain storage ensures the immutability and verifiability of data, providing a solid foundation for decentralized applications that use the underlying consensus mechanism to synchronize state. However, this approach can pose scalability challenges as each data block needs to be stored on-chain, which can result in high transaction fees and slower retrieval times.
This has led to many web3 social protocols trying to use a hybrid approach, using on-chain storage for less frequent operations (e.g. profiles, subscriptions) and off-chain storage for more frequent events (e.g. likes, retweets, comments) , or frequently use off-chain storage as a temporary stopgap for batch uploaded data on the chain.
To efficiently handle frequent updates between user connections, CyberConnect uses hash linked lists in a decentralized data store. When a connection is initiated, an "operation log" is created. Subsequent state changes, such as switching between tracking and untracking, are added to this log as new nodes. While these updates are initially stored on central servers, they are periodically uploaded in batches to decentralized storage platforms such as Arweave or IPFS. To facilitate data retrieval, nodes in the operation log are stored centrally. However, users can independently verify data integrity by browsing this hash chain. Although some data queries rely on central servers, CyberConnect's system is fully decentralized by design while also providing high performance.
Farcaster similarly uses a hybrid approach: on-chain contracts are used for infrequent operations where consistency and decentralization are important. Accounts, usernames, storage and keys are managed using a series of Ethereum contracts. Off-chain systems are used for frequent operations with high performance requirements. Messages created by user accounts are stored and disseminated on the Farcaster hub's peer-to-peer network.
discuss
Decentralized social protocols will revolutionize user experience in digital interactions. The accelerated adoption of public-private key pairs, driven by web3 as a proactive measure for AI-generated content, will promote broader understanding and familiarity with identity primitives in this context, and ongoing auditing and data capture by web2 social media companies There will be a public push for more users to look elsewhere. We expect the adoption curve for these protocols to accelerate.
To facilitate the development of new applications, there is an urgent need for protocol developers and open source contributors to move beyond the basic data types and relational objects currently used at the infrastructure layer. While the existing primitives fully encapsulate the functionality of traditional web2 social media, there is still huge potential for expansion and innovation. Most of the protocols discussed here inherently support extensibility within the system, providing a solid foundation for future development and open source contributions.
However, it is crucial to emphasize the importance of interoperability. While front-end developers are able to independently enhance functionality, doing so may reduce the overall effectiveness of the system if these enhancements are not interoperable with other applications built on the same underlying protocols. Ensuring compatibility and seamless integration between various applications is critical to the long-term success and adoption of decentralized social protocols.
In the field of data storage, the emerging consensus among web3 social protocols favors a hybrid approach. Given the vast amount of social content and engagement, it is pragmatic to allocate high-value assets (such as identity and primary content) to on-chain primitives, while delegating low-risk content (such as likes and reactions) to off-chain solutions. This balanced approach not only maintains the integrity and security of critical data, but also provides a user experience reminiscent of traditional social media platforms.
Decentralized networks promise to transform interpersonal communication, information sharing, and community building. By prioritizing user autonomy, privacy and cultivating organic relationships, these networks are paving the way for a more equitable and user-centered digital environment. Additionally, the decentralized nature of these networks helps democratize access to information and resources, mitigating the risks associated with centralized control.
