1KX Comparing 8 major decentralized social protocols from various aspects such as identity, data, storage, etc.

1KX A Comprehensive Comparison of 8 Prominent Decentralized Social Protocols Across Identity, Data Management, Storage, and More.

Author: Justin McAfee, 1KX Research Analyst; Translation: 0xxz@LianGuai

Driven by commercial motives, the emergence of social media platforms controlled by corporations has greatly undermined the initial hope for online participatory culture. Information technology on the internet was supposed to democratize cultural production, but now these platforms primarily limit and shape online participation for profit-driven purposes. “Likes” are not expressions of gratitude for certain content, but rather a monetization tool driven by commercial algorithms.

Decentralized and alternative social media platforms based on federated protocols offer a return to the original concept of online socialization. Data is controlled by users and propagated in decentralized databases, and the front-end is community-driven. Self-imposed restrictions are expressions of community preferences, and users choose the algorithms while the open-source spirit drives innovation.

The History of Decentralization and Alternative Social Media

Before the internet became a center for commerce, entertainment, and social interaction, it was primarily an academic and military tool. Tim Berners-Lee, in formulating the first internet protocol, held an egalitarian vision – the initial design of the internet was a decentralized network, where information could freely flow between nodes without any single point of control or failure.

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However, as the commercial importance of the internet grew, centralized platforms such as search engines and social media giants became dominant. Although these entities provided tremendous value, they deviated from the original decentralized spirit, leading to our current web2 environment.

The key innovation in the timeline of alternative social networks is the emergence of federated protocol concepts. A federated network refers to a system where multiple independent servers or “nodes” collaborate to form a single social network, rather than being controlled by a single organization on centralized platforms.

In a federated system, each server runs compatible software that follows shared protocols, enabling them to communicate with each other. Users registered on one server can seamlessly follow users on other servers, interact with them, and share content as if they were on the same platform. Examples of these protocols include ActivityPub and OStatus, which support federated platforms such as Mastodon and PeerTube.

In a federated setup, users can choose the servers they trust, potentially migrate to different servers, or set up their own servers, giving them more autonomy. The term “Fediverse” (a combination of “federation” and “universe”) is used to describe such systems. The Fediverse began with GNU Social and its predecessors (StatusNet and Laconica) platforms, 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, once data is ported to the blockchain, a federated social network becomes the default state of a decentralized system. The blockchain acts as a neutral backend server for storing content, and the front-end indexes and directly provides it to users. Identities are handled by public-private key pairs managed by user wallets, allowing them to easily verify any data or content they generate. Additionally, using on-chain primitives such as NFTs, stored content can be bundled with metadata and act as a domain or decentralized identifier (DID).

Similar to how ActivityPub works, the web3 protocol seeks to guide social graphs through authenticated relationships between user nodes. With any frontend able to index and serve this content, there is fierce competition at the frontend layer, leading to vibrant functionality. Additionally, since the data is on-chain, users can choose the algorithms they prefer to use and can be incentivized to use certain algorithms that regain the value of the data. This, combined with more direct means of content monetization, provides creators with a better overall experience, even though they are largely excluded from monetization despite driving the demand for these platforms.

Protocol comparison

To truly understand the innovations in decentralized social media protocols, it is necessary to understand the subtle technological differences that implement them.

It is worth noting that we do not include all social protocols here, but select some of the most popular ones for comparison: Matrix, Scuttlebutt, ActivityPub, Nostr, CyberConnect, Farcaster, Lens, AT Protocol.

Identity/Namespace

In the context of federated and decentralized social graphs or network protocols, “namespace” refers to the uniqueness of user identifiers or other resources in a domain or realm. It is a way to distinguish resources or identities of one domain/server from those of another, ensuring no conflicts or ambiguities exist when integrating or communicating across multiple domains.

Identity and related namespaces in decentralized social protocols span from simple key pairs (Nostr, Scuttlebutt) to URIs pointing to HTTPS URL-hosted profiles (ActivityPub) and more complex models using on-chain primitives like NFTs (and the recently proposed ERC-6551 extension, such as Lens v2).

Farcaster is a good example of these technologies. A Farcaster account represents a unique entity on the network. Each account has a unique numerical identifier called a Farcaster ID (“fid”). Identities are published and managed on-chain using an Ethereum contract called IdRegistry. Users transact with IdRegistry to obtain a new fid. The address owning the fid is the user’s hosted address. IdRegistry ensures that fids can be transferred between addresses and no two addresses have the same fid. Farcaster also extends this namespace to support ENS names published on-chain or off-chain. A signed proof-of-ownership must be submitted to the network to obtain a username.

On the other hand, ActivityPub identifies each user through a unique URI (usually an HTTPS URL). This URI points to the user’s profile and serves as their global identifier within the Fediverse. To make these URIs more user-friendly, many ActivityPub platforms use a system called Webfinger. Webfinger allows users to have identities like “@ [email protected]”.

Lens and CyberConnect manage user profiles as NFTs. Taking Lens as an example, a user’s address holds a Profile NFT, and a single address can hold multiple Profile NFTs. Each Profile NFT encapsulates the entire history of a user’s activities, including posts, mirrors, comments, and other types of content they create. Additionally, the Profile NFT has a FollowModule, which essentially consists of rules on how different accounts gain their Follow NFTs. These Follow NFTs are used to directly record the connections between accounts and primary profiles on-chain. There are also usernames that can exist and be created separately from profiles and be linked or unlinked from one profile to another. Usernames exist in their own namespace (e.g., lens/@alice).

Data

Data can be said to be the most important feature of decentralized networks because the creation and standardization of data are the foundations of these systems. The most common technique for managing data here is to use standardized formats such as JSON and common relational objects (e.g. “likes” and “follows”). The core data objects typically include:

• Participants and objects: defined “participants” (e.g. users or groups) and “objects” (e.g. posts or messages).

• Publications: posts or comments are encapsulated as “publications” typically linked to external content via URLs.

• Content only added to logs: each entry (whether published or updated) is a discrete content item logged, added and stored in sequential order.

Let’s delve into a few examples to see how they work using specific protocols.

ActivityPub utilizes ActivityStreams 2.0 data format (a JSON-based structure) to represent various social interactions such as posts or likes. The protocol has two main components: Client-To-Server (C2S) and Server-To-Server (S2S). C2S allows users to interact with their respective servers through client applications. In contrast, S2S facilitates communication between servers, ensuring the robustness of a federated protocol.

In ActivityPub, entities are classified as “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 incorporates many core ideas of ActivityPub but applies them to the blockchain. For example, the Lens Protocol introduces “publications” that encapsulate various user-generated content such as posts, mirrors, comments, and other forms of media. Each publication is associated with a ContentURI pointing to specific content stored either decentralized protocols like IPFS or Arweave or centralized storage services like AWS S3. This configuration ensures that user profiles and all related publications are stored securely in their personal wallets, eliminating reliance on centralized databases.

In addition, compared to Web2 frameworks, Web3 provides a more direct way to monetize user content and influence. Users can charge fees for minting Follow NFTs and can also integrate Collect Modules with their publications. The latter option allows them to charge a minting fee for NFTs linked to the ContentURI of their publications. Apart from these features, Lens Protocol also offers a GraphQL API to shield blockchain components from the frontend interface, providing a more user-friendly experience than previous attempts at decentralized social networks.

Finally, many decentralized social network protocols create data structures that are append-only and authenticated by user keys. For example, on Cyber Connect, each user-centric piece of data is represented as a data stream where only the data owner is allowed to update it. Each update to the data is appended as a log entry with append-only properties and the resulting data structure becomes a hash-linked data structure known as a Merkle DAG. Data types include content, collections, comments, and subscriptions.

Scuttlebutt is similar in its usage to append-only logs. Each user has their own log, where each new message or action is signed by the user’s identity (i.e., associated Ed25519 key pair) and appended to the end. It also supports shared binary data known as “blobs.” These can be images, videos, or any other binary content. 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, such as posting, following someone, or adding a profile picture. These messages are encoded as protobuf and must be hashed and signed by the account signer. As long as there is enough storage space, users can publish messages to the hub. The hub checks the validity of the signer before accepting each message.

Storage

Early data storage methods for decentralized protocols were mainly off-chain, although reminiscent of on-chain consensus. For example, Scuttlebutt uses a peer-to-peer gossip network, placing the responsibility of storage on the user’s local device. This approach ensures data sovereignty as users have full control over their information. However, it also means data availability depends on whether the user’s device is online or other peers in the network have copies of the data. Over time, some Scuttlebutt clients may need to implement garbage collection strategies to remove old or less relevant data to manage storage space.

An alternative to this peer-to-peer approach has emerged in the form of servers that store data, although with redundancy compared to traditional media platforms. Taking Matrix as an example, multiple home servers store copies of room history and sync 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 it to their connected clients. Similarly, ActivityPub allows each instance (or server) in the network to store its data typically in a database. The choice of database (relational, NoSQL, etc.) depends on the specific implementation of the ActivityPub software. For instance, the popular ActivityPub platform Mastodon uses a PostgreSQL database.

Protocols like CyberConnect, Farcaster, and Lens use blockchain for storage. The use of on-chain storage ensures data immutability and verifiability, providing a solid foundation for decentralized applications that synchronize state using underlying consensus mechanisms. However, this approach may pose scalability challenges as each piece of data needs to be stored on the chain, resulting in high transaction costs and slower retrieval times.

This has led to many web3 social protocols attempting a hybrid approach, using on-chain storage for less frequent operations (such as profiles and subscriptions) and off-chain storage for high-frequency events (such as likes, reposts, comments), or periodically batching data uploads to the chain at intervals, using off-chain storage as a temporary solution.

CyberConnect adopts a hashed linked list in its decentralized data storage to efficiently handle frequent updates between user connections. When a connection is initiated, an “operation log” is created. Subsequent state changes (e.g., toggling between following and unfollowing) are added as new nodes to this log. While these updates are initially stored on centralized servers, they are periodically batch-uploaded to decentralized storage platforms like Arweave or IPFS. For fast data retrieval, nodes in the operation log are stored in a centralized manner. However, users can independently verify data integrity by browsing this list of hashed links. Even though some data queries rely on central servers, CyberConnect’s system is designed to be fully decentralized while still providing high performance.

Farcaster 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 that require high performance. Messages created by user accounts are stored and propagated on Farcaster’s peer network.

Discussion

Decentralized social protocols have the potential to revolutionize the user experience in digital interactions. With the push towards web3 and as a proactive measure against AI-generated content, the accelerated adoption of public-private key pairs will aid in a broader understanding and familiarity with the identity primitives in this context, as well as nudge more users away from web2 social media companies that continue to scrutinize and capture data. We expect the adoption curve of these protocols to accelerate.

To foster the development of novel applications, protocol developers and open-source contributors are in dire need of going beyond the basic data types and relationship objects used in the current infrastructure layer. While existing primitives encapsulate the functionalities of traditional web2 social media sufficiently, there is still vast potential for expansion and innovation. Most of the discussed protocols inherently support scalability within their systems, providing a strong foundation for future development and open-source contributions.

However, emphasizing the importance of interoperability is crucial. While frontend developers can independently enhance functionalities, doing so in a manner that doesn’t allow interoperability with other applications built on the same underlying protocols could potentially compromise the collective benefit of the system. Ensuring compatibility and seamless integration between various applications is crucial for the long-term success and adoption of decentralized social protocols.

In the realm of data storage, a consensus is emerging within web3 social protocols to use a hybrid approach. Given the high-value nature of social content and engagement, allocating assets such as identities and primary content to on-chain primitives while distributing low-risk content such as likes and reactions to off-chain solutions is a pragmatic approach. This balanced approach not only preserves the integrity and security of critical data but also provides a user experience reminiscent of traditional social media platforms.

Decentralized networks have the potential to transform interpersonal communication, information sharing, and community building. By prioritizing user autonomy, privacy, and fostering organic relationships, these networks are paving the way for a fairer and user-centric digital environment. Furthermore, the decentralized nature of these networks helps democratize access to information and resources, mitigating risks associated with centralized control.

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