A decentralized social graph made with IPNS
From pods in Solid to data repositories in AT Protocol, there are various designs for users to control their own data. But instead of relying on personal servers, we can simply use IPNS as the dynamic pointer of users' home directories. This allows users to control their own data with the key pair used to sign IPNS records while using storage from both local and remote devices.
We can go one step further and store ActivityPub data in user directories on IPNS. This creates a decentralized social graph with IPNS records pointing to each other while being backward compatible.
This approach opens the door to interoperability with many different ecosystems. For example, wallets that support the Ethereum account can be used to sign social activities in IPNS records, which now become compatible with popular software such as Mastodon. Standards like ERC-1577 and clients like Brave Browser or Planet make these IPNS the personal website for each user.
About the Speaker
Guo Liu is an engineer and cyber anarchist who learned programming and p2p technologies by circumventing the China firewall. As the CTO and co-founder of Matters Lab, he now works on protocols and applications that can enable and preserve meaningful content and discussions.