Social Networking with Ethereum?

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• GeorgeHallam Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 229 admin

  November 2014 edited November 2014

  Hi there @SilentCicero, I hope you are well.
  
  If I were to run a social network on top of Ethereum, I would do it like this:
  
  The actual data for the network (personal information, pictures etc) would be stored off chain using a decentralised p2p file storage system like Ethereum's own Swarm or Filecoin. This would save greatly on costs, but still allow for a large degree of decentralisation in regard to the data.
  
  You would then use contracts added onto Ethereum's blockchain to pull this data together in a meaningful way to be seen as a social networking page. For instance, you might create a name registration Dapp to help people generate their own personal addresses, another to track where the page's data is stored, another to help people search for other people using the network and so on and so forth.
  
  For further reading, check out MEOH (a social network proposed earlier on this summer to be built on top of Ethereum), as well as this Reddit post.
  
  

  Post edited by GeorgeHallam on November 2014

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• Jasper Eindhoven, the NetherlandsMember Posts: 514 ✭✭✭

  November 2014

  Personally I like the idea of using auditable pieces of data to represent pages and such. Otherwise you need a reference to magnet links(swarm links) to create a tiny post, whereas with a 'hanging block',(plug) you just send the signed comment(and other actions) to whoever is updating the state, and (s)he will create the next single magnet link that could be thousands of comments.(and you can get a proof that some comments are in there)
  
  Of course this idea sort-of uses auditable blocks, and challenges+the dynamics of the thing for auditability. Tbh i dont feel sure about it, and comments are a level lower in value. Depends on what it is about though! And if there is "karma", some data-missing-invalid blocks could mess things up longer term.

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• thyseus Member Posts: 1 ✭

  March 2015

  I was just about to start a decentralized, end-to-end encrypted social network running on semantic technology on the tox technology:
  
  https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/1259
  
  until i discovered ethereum. This platform seems to suit much better.

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• SilentCicero Toronto, CAMember Posts: 159 ✭✭✭

  March 2015

  Yeah, social networking on Ethereum is definitely an interesting idea. However, there are some serious concerns over its cost, we don't know any hard numbers yet but if its anywhere close to a cent a transmission, the nature of the communication would have to be worth this sort of cost. Not to say that's totally unreasonable, it just changes the cost/value assessment of the networking itself (i.e. what is social networking worth to someone). Excited too see what materializes!

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• GeorgeHallam Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 229 admin

  March 2015

  @SilentCicero - we've been mucking around in the office with a Twitter like DApp called "Clucker" should be doing a writeup on it soon. Can see a sneak preview here -

  https://twitter.com/ethereumproject/status/576423773768912896

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• SilentCicero Toronto, CAMember Posts: 159 ✭✭✭

  March 2015 edited March 2015

  @GeorgeHallam Looks great, cant wait to try it. Next stop facepalm: a decentralized facebook?

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• typecontract Member Posts: 4 ✭

  March 2015

  Hey, how does this compare to Synereo?

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