Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks

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Key takeaways:

A centralized social networks believe limiting choice is the path to healthy network → place more restrictions on users and developers

A decentralized social network has two essential advantage:

guarantee that users own a direct relationship with their audience

developers gain somewhat “equal” access to social network

Sufficient decentralization

if two users can find each other and communicate even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it

core elements of sufficient decentralization

the ability to claim a unique username

post messages under that name

read messages from any valid name

Requires the entire social network to be on a blockchain is unnecessary and even undesirable [ Social networks generate petabytes of data every year, which can be very expensive to store on-chain ... ]

Challenging problems that are slowing the adoption:

scaling network

centralized host but many of them to achieve decentralization

decentralizing the name registry

smart contract (eg. ENS)

building novel social primitives

Users don’t just want a decentralized version of an existing social network.

generate proofs of such activity

token-gated communities

verified badges

Successful social networks are usually built around a new communication primitive.

Facebook (Phone book in internet)

Twitter (140 character)

Snapchat (Ephemeral message)

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