The registry is the only part of the network that needs to be synchronized on a blockchain. All other actions can securely happen off-chain by signing them with the key pair. If you receive a message that claims to be from @alice, you can ask the registry for @alice’s public key and verify that the signature came from @alice’s private key.

Novel Social Primitives

Users don’t just want a decentralized version of an existing social network. What users really want from a new social network is status or entertainment, along with the benefits that decentralization offers. Any new network must offer a compelling way to achieve both, or it will face an uphill battle to get off the ground.

Blockchains have created novel ways to gain status. Being an early user, token holder, or voter confers status on people. Social networks for blockchain users can make it easy for people to generate proofs of such activity. The network could then offer features like token-gated communities, verified badges for NFT holders, and anonymous polls for token holders. The best on-chain systems are also highly composable, so a social feature designed for a standard like ERC-721 automatically works with every new token added to the network.

Successful social networks are usually built around a new communication primitive. Facebook had the wall, Twitter had the 140-character tweet and Snapchat had the ephemeral message. The idea maze of things you can do with decentralized identities, blockchains and zk-proofs is large, weird and interesting enough that there are probably many primitives waiting to be discovered. Decentralized social networks should explore this as a way to attract users. Offering a product experience that doesn’t yet exist is far more compelling than a clone of an existing network.

Conclusion

Centralized social networks influence every aspect of our lives, and their shortcomings are painfully clear. Improvements in cryptography and blockchains have provided workable solutions to achieve sufficient decentralization. We have a reasonable way to build a decentralized name registry, a hybrid off-chain/on-chain architecture to scale the network, and interesting new social primitives to build on. More importantly, people are unhappy with the status quo and want something better. If you’re an ambitious builder who wants to change the world, this is a great problem space to start working on.