IPFS IPFS Camp 2022, 2 Nov 2022

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From YouTube: Unlocking web3 social networks with IPFS - Sneha Mishra

Description

This talk was given at IPFS Camp 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal.

A

uh If you're, looking at Mass adoption in web 3, we started off with D5 protocols and, like people started making a lot of money off it, then we got into gaming and you know like Play-Doh on models, but this could be like the next big thing to onboard. Like you know the next billion users. What do you see like the tagline on every product right? So how do we exactly go about it?

A

Okay, so first question obviously lies around. Why do we need a web 3 social media? Why do we need that kind of a thing on blockchain like? Should we be doing something like this? It's not scalable blah blah blah right, but I mean uh I. Think this is like pretty self-explanatory. Like uh we have data breaches, uh I mean Facebook, uh they just pay the penalty, and then they just like keep doing that kind of stuff with us. We have server outages right.

A

We have Banning or censorship, I mean I, think everyone is scared with our Twitter CEO being Elon now, and we have privacy violations right. So uh that is exactly why we need web3 social media and I. Think there are a couple of talks uh before as well speaking about blue sky um as well as we be talking about Litecoin, and these are like huge challenges. That is why we need web3 social media, but how do we build it?

A

Yeah, okay, so I'm going to talk about three approaches here on how you can go about uh building web free social media, uh the first one being we have the smart contract logic, Plus off chain data storage on ipfs. So this uh what I mean by this is like, uh if any of you folks have heard about lens protocol. So what does lens protocol do is like um it's on polygon and every content, piece that you write. It's actually a transaction and in every content piece uh it's an nft.

A

It has a Content URI, which is basically the standard URI that we can use for ipfs or it could be other storage providers as like RV, and this kind of content can be text image. Video like how you see in any standard nft right. So the logic is on the smart contract, but the data storage is on ipfs.

A

Unless protocol has like uh like built this entire API around it, which can mean, like you, just go around in the docs, you can play around with like uh use the API, and you can actually create social media applications on top of lens protocol and the way they're doing it is around like again a creative economy. You can actually make money of the post uh people like uh and like collect that they actually buy it as an nft. So that's how they're going about it. So what are the pros of this?

A

It's very easy to code this right and it's it's really good, because you can query this directly from the graph, because we are looking at a polygon, so just create a sub graph, and you can like query anything any kind of information you want from that. But the cons like because we're saying that the smart contact logic, that is every piece of content, is essentially a transaction which means that it's all like every transaction, we require gas. So all kinds of posts would require gaspies, which is well not good for users and users.

A

Absolutely, but also it's very bad. Ux I mean if you every time you have to post somewhere. Just imagine the friction like if you have to post on Twitter and you can just like go ahead and click post.

A

But if you are looking at some something like lens protocol, then either you need to like approve the access for all kinds of transactions initially or you'll have to sign a message every time you post and that is very bad ux for end users, so yeah, and then we also talk about poor interoperability, because this is on polygon. What, if you want to build on, like you know some other chain? What, if you want to build on Cross chain applications, so this uh yeah? This is one of the methods you can go about it.

A

Let's look at some other ones.

A

Okay, so second is pretty much very straightforward. You can build the entire architecture on your own right. uh What are the pros of this immense flexibility? uh You can be the provider yourself for the social media app so like what lens is doing. You can also create something like that and allow other people to build.

A

On top of you, and uh just like how lens is small rising over it, you can actually even keep some transaction fees or something there so that this can be uh like not just like a side project but like a complete protocol and what are the cons of this well. This is going to be duplicated work, obviously, because you're building, like the whole architecture by yourself and initially it will be very difficult to find validators, uh so it will be centralized at the beginning.

A

So this would be a challenge to like you know, decentralize it so yeah. This is another way you can go about it, and this is interoperability with ceramic. uh So ceramic allows you to like uh it's like this huge additionalized, a data storage platform, but it's different in the sense that it's not a blockchain, which means that every time uh you talk about all these posts uh with lens there are actually transactions.

A

You can actually do the same thing with ceramic without any gas fees and without having to go through that bad user experience, and it means that you can also plug in with multiple providers like Solana ethereum, anything right. So what are the cons of this well you'll have to like go to the developer. Docs for ceramic you'll have to learn those learn that kind of stuff querying will be a challenge, because this is not actual blockchain, so Europe. You can't use the graph to carry from here.

A

So you'll have to create your own querying logic, but ceramic is working on a product right now to help with that so yeah and since it's not a blockchain again, it introduces centralization in some sense. So the question that we I us around Falcon as well like. Why should I host other notes content if I'm not incentivized? Well right, so these are all the things that you'll have to look into okay. So these were pretty much. The three approaches that you can take if you're looking to build like a weekly social media app.

A

uh But this is not a very um easy uh problem to solve, because this combines private data and public data right. So we need decentralized access control if you're talking about something like a web 3 social media. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense if you're talking about all of these data breaches, but if we keep all of this information in a public blockchain, it does not make any sense. So we need to hide some sensitive information. uh So how do we do that? Okay, so these slides are slides.

A

I have just added, like after hearing uh from people speak here over the last two days and I got to know about all of these uh cool decentralized, Access Control uh protocols how they're building around it so I'm, just gonna talk a little bit about how they are going about it and how you can use it all right. So uh this vision and what we saw this so they have partnered up and uh they have something known as you cans uh which is jwd on drugs, but essentially what it means is like on web2.

A

You have all of these JWT tokens that you pass to authorize right and there's like this huge authorization server which will just check that token and like validate you, but how do? How can we build this in a serverless manner? How can we build it without with by removing the authorization server completely, and that is actually you can so basically uh you what? Whatever you need it's in a key and it is sent to anyone that can interpret this format.

A

So what we are building is authorization for distributed systems for offline access, so you don't need an authorization server there right and, uh let's see like it, is a close to zero developer onboarding effort because it comes from the web to world.

A

So if you know how to code uh like how to make like JWT tokens like in the back and stuff, you can pretty much like easily pick this up and again, it's like a frictionless user onboarding experience right uh if you have decentralized access control, so yeah so check out vision and web3 storage and how they're going about it. I would be happy to share some more links. If any of you are interested to read up more about it all right and then we have table land.

A

So this is again another approach taken around decentralized access control so like how we spoke about ucans and jwts, which are the tokens that you pass, which determine the access control level that you have. Instead of that here we are talking on the data level, like the tables itself so like on.

A

If, if you're you, if you come from a web to world, you have probably used SQL to create tables right and table, land is actually creating private SQL tables as nfts and the access control will happen through a smart contact language like solidity, so the developer onboarding effort is actually very low because SQL is all you need to know and you you can choose like whatever evm chain. You want the data to be anchored to.

A

Finally, so I think the best way I think uh Carson explained it yesterday was on chain registry on chain access, but aux chain, storage of the actual data, that of the tables. So that is another approach that you can take like on a table level to uh like control access. So you can create some sort of policies through your our contact language, some sort of rules that can enable certain people to access it and certain people to not access it.

A

Okay, so okay, I'm gonna, do a Shameless plug here, but yeah, so why? Why am I researching more about webpage social media? It's because I'm building, a decentralized LinkedIn, uh it's known as social tree. We are live right now. You can like scan this QR. You can check out our app and uh yeah. Just like give me some feedback on how how we should be going about it. We have onboarded like over 50 jobs and over 1000 users.

A

So I am really happy to list like uh hear from you on uh on what whatever we are building right. So uh one more challenge or one more question, I think at this point uh you folks might have is like okay, we spoke about how to build things, and you know uh what are the best ways to do: digitalized access control, but what are the actual use cases uh if you look at like building something like decentralized LinkedIn right, so where would ipfs fit?

A

And what are the kind of content that you would like to put on ipfs? So it just it can pretty much fit anywhere like everywhere right, so I'm just going to talk about the use cases uh that we are using like uh inside our application. So uh if you talk about access control, we want the personal information about a candidate revealed only if the recruiter and the other fit right, not at the initial stages.

A

So it can be like the contact information or something like that, or it could even be certain documents that they asked for kyc at a later stage right. So that is a really good use case on how you can incorporate Access Control. If you talk about content verifiability, which is like one of the hardcore things for ipfs, we can look at educational degrees and certificates uh that you, like you know, get from like learning and completing like any sort of courses.

A

Anything right and every time like you can just keep all of this like as nfts or else transactions with the metadata stored onto ipfs, and you can fetch and verify like you know, whatever data you're getting whether it's right, you know just like uh that's that's how you can go about it and then you can.

A

You can also look into on-chain transaction with off-chain storage for the candidates, work, experience, personal projects, endorsements referrals, all of this kind of stuff, and then we can also look into bringing web to certification to web3, which I think uh can be a really powerful move uh to move like to to bring a lot of these webto audience onto web3. So almost a lot of people would have completed courses on udemy or Coursera or like company specific certifications like uh AWS or Oracle Cloud certifications, which are like huge for any software developer right.

A

So if we can bring all of this certification, which is actually just on like a udemy or Corsair aside- and it's not actually that it's not verifiable like they do, give you a code, but how about we move all of this onto the chain right onto blockchain?

A

We keep all of this on off chain storage using ipfs it that's that's something that can help a lot of web2 users on board onto web3, and then we have something known as reputation batches where uh we pretty much like query your like, whatever data you have on chain, and then we create like some sort of nfts uh depending on uh let's say your transactions on chain. Have you ever deployed smart contracts? Do you hold nfts? Do you hold tokens? So what can like? What kind of a user are you? Are you an advanced user?

A

Are you developer? Are you a Content writer? Have you completed bounties all of this information, so we generate refutation batches for it, which are actually nfts with the metadata on ipfs, so yeah and and the list just like pretty much goes on so like hackathons, bounties everything. So this is what would constitute the kind of data that you would like to put on like a decentralized, LinkedIn and I think you can create similar use cases if you're looking to build a web, 3 social media, app, okay, so yeah! That was pretty much it.

A

uh If you would like to connect with me. uh These are these are all my socials and if you're hiring I would love to talk to you and get some feedback on how you're going about your hiring process and if I can help in any capacity. All right. Thank you. That was it.