To succeed, decentralized social media networks must have a unique value proposition. Many recognize the enormous potential of public blockchain infrastructure to become the breeding ground for this new generation of applications. Apps that not only aim to be technologically superior, but to dramatically change the relationship between users and service providers. They can disrupt the currently established power balance and nurture a sharing economy in a world of finite resources, glaring global inequality and unstable concentrations of power.

Social networks, as tools used by billions on a daily basis, are an interesting use-case for decentralized apps. As mentioned in the first part of the series, these new types of networks face an enormous challenge. They need to be at least 10 times better than current solutions to be disruptive. Their challenge is two-fold:

They need to be as user-friendly as centralized solutions, despite the completely new infrastructure they are built on

They need to have unique value propositions as opposed to centralized apps

In the coming series, we will look at the features that blockchain-based social networks could offer and some of the pioneers trying to realize them. This entry will focus on two specific advantages:

Data control for users and self-sovereign identity Encrypted chat by default

Data Control and Self-Sovereign Identity

Data is valuable. The rise of the tech giants that focused on data aggregation, management and segmentation is a testimony to that. Despite the fact that most people are familiar with the popular expression Information is Power, few are able to convert it into an actionable insight in the digital world.

Your identity data is a white-hot commodity. [lifeID]

People are quite used to providing their information freely to any new service they want to use. It is hard for many to grasp that “creating your online profile” does not only mean filling in some fields in a form and uploading a nice profile/cover photo. Your profile is actually built up by anything you do online. Every action you take in the digital space is recorded, stored and processed. Finally, it is converted to power and wealth, focused in the hands of the friendly digital service providers that are not supposed to be evil.

Do you know how many registrations on different websites you have completed since the time you first joined the internet? How many services have your names, phone, ID or Passport number? How many of those know your address, your bank account details, your location? How many services know that you are into gaming, have recently bought a bike and like to go to blockchain meetups? Who can remember all this, right? What control do you really have on your data?

Today, one’s identity on the Internet is fragmented across various identity providers — employers, Internet portals, various communities, and business services. This fragmentation yields isolated, high-friction, one-to-one customer-to-business relationships and experiences. [Ken Jordan et al., First Monday] Every universal identifier is a major correlation risk — even your mobile phone number. [Slashdot]

No, GDPR does not help. The whole digital identity and data management field is still a big mess. A mess that makes you vulnerable to data thefts, data abuses and generally causes you not to benefit from a resource that is highly valuable. Moreover, what GDPR does is to make you (once again) dependent on third parties. You cannot manage your data. What you can do is instruct third parties about what you want them to do with it. Are they doing it? How would you know!?!

Oh, you don’t want us to provide your personal data to our partners? Oh, yeah…sure.

One solution to this predicament could be self-sovereign identity (SSI). We recently published a whole blog post on the subject, but here is the essence.

SSI provides users with sovereignty over their digital selves to the same degree that they have control over their physical selves. [Kaliya Young, CoinDesk]

Since blockchains provide a transparent, immutable, reliable and auditable way to address the seamless and secure exchange of cryptographic keys, they could be the perfect platforms for SSI.

SSI allows users to prove things about themselves using decentralized, verifiable credentials just as they do offline. [Phillip Windley, Computerworld]

There are many companies that work on SSI on top of a blockchain. Some use permissioned infrastructure, others — a public blockchain, yet others create completely new blockchain protocols. These could be integrated into social media platforms and allow users to not freely share their personal data, but monetize it. All these projects working on SSI realize that:

The currency of the future is personal data. [Amber Baldet, Quartz]

Sovrin

Hyperledger Indy’s codebase is being utilized by Sovrin for their SSI solution. Hyperledger Indy is open-source and provides tools, libraries, and reusable components for creating and using independent digital identities rooted on blockchains or other distributed ledgers so that they are interoperable across administrative domains and applications. Sovrin uses those for their ambitious vision of an SSI, executed on a hybrid blockchain (read on).

A two ring design — validator nodes (center) and observer nodes (middle). Both serving the outer layer of wallets and apps.

It uses decentralized identifiers developed by the W3C which allow “permanent, globally unique, cryptographically verifiable identifiers entirely under the identity owner’s control”. Moreover, Sovrin is built to be platform-agnostic, meaning that it can be incorporated in any solution that wants to feature SSI.

The “not so great” part is that it is a hybrid public permissioned blockchain. No token sale or mining here. Running a validator node can only happen after an off-chain application process. You can see a list of the current stewards (which most likely refers to validator nodes, it is not clear to us) here. Generally, an interesting project that looks like an alliance of companies that are exploring SSI.

LifeID

The lifeID platform has taken a different approach to SSI. It aims to realize SSI via a system of smart-contracts that could run on any blockchain platform. Their product is fully open-source and permissionless, which is fundamental for SSI. It utilizes mobile biometric technology for identity creation and verification. Identity information is not stored on servers or in the cloud, but only on a user’s device in an encrypted format. Users maintain 100% control over their data. The solution should also be easy to integrate, so if you are developing a decentralized social media platform that needs SSI — you are welcome.

uPort

uPort is building a SSI solution on top of the Ethereum platform. It allows users to send and request credentials, sign transactions, and securely manage keys & data. All identities are registered on the Ethereum network. Again, having in mind that this service is executed via smart-contracts, it may be portable to any other blockchain platform. The company is also partnering with Status, who provide an encrypted chat service (that will be considered below).

Veres One

Veres One’s approach to SSI is similar to Sovrin’s — develop a completely new blockchain protocol that addresses identity protection and control. The platform also features Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and different types of nodes. Anyone can become a simple node, but in order to become a validator — one needs to go through a lightweight approval process. It is not really clear what the incentive to become a node is. In addition to nodes, Veres One features accelerators, who actually create and update DIDs (and get paid for it). They also need to go through an approval process (lightweight, not mentioned this time).

An all-in-one digital wallet.

It is interesting that the protocol does not utilize coins or tokens. The documentation mentions that fees need to be paid for the creation or modification of DID, but there is no mention of how those fees are to be paid (through PayPal, perhaps?). Nonetheless, despite the fact that clarity on how payments work will be welcome, Veres One should be a permissionless, leaderless, sustainable platform based entirely on open standards and open specifications. Having in mind the application processes, the permissionless and leaderless part are obviously works in progress. Learn more about the project by browsing through its documentation.

Blockstack

Blockstack is trying to solve the identity on the blockchain problem a step at a time. The project is not trying to enable SSI, but is creating a decentralized naming service that will match human-readable names with public addresses. It is similar to a DNS service, but decentralized. This service is called Blockchain Name System or BNS. According to their whitepaper, after the BNS is live, third-party attestations can be attached to the names. This could create customizable identities. Using the BNS, users can log in to apps and services by using blockchain-based decentralized identity and save data generated by apps/services on storage backends owned by the user (instead of the service provider). æternity’s approach to identity is very similar to Blockstack’s. æternity’s naming system or AENS will be introduced after the launch of the Mainnet. Names will be distributed through an auction process and will allow users to link accounts to easy-to-use handles.

Telegram

Finally, Telegram, which is one of the most widely used communication platforms for blockchain and cryptocurrency discussions, organized an ICO in 2018. That managed to increase the company’s financial assets by $1.7 billion and earn the company a status of the most successful ICO to date. The significant proceeds should be used for the development of Telegram’s Open Network, a feature-rich blockchain platform supposedly in development.

In July, 2018 Telegram managed to announce Passport, a self-sovereign identity solution. For the time being, it will store identity-related data on the Telegram cloud, secured by end-to-end encryption and not a blockchain. The service is already integrated in epayments.com.

It remains to be seen if Telegram will be able to make good on their promises and use the 1.7 billion (!?!) to develop their quite ambitious vision of a multi-purpose blockchain platform. Many are not convinced they can do it. Pantera Capital’s Charles Noyes called the project “opportunistic” with a white paper that is a wishlist of things they want to have and no contribution to any type of blockchain-related research. Telegram’s Gram token is still not available on any exchange and it is not clear when it will be.

Civic

The honorable mention here is Civic. Civic is not trying to enable SSI but is one of the most recognizable players in the decentralized identity space. Civic’s Secure Identity Platform utilizes blockchain tech and biometrics on a mobile device, to provide multi-factor authentication without a username, password, third-party authenticator, or physical hardware token.

Utopian or dystopian, you decide.

For better or for worse, some of their services rely on third-parties to verify identity. Once the verification is complete, identity and data management should be easy. Using third-third party verifiers allows service providers to use different verification procedures which introduces integration flexibility. The requirements of know-your-customer (KYC) checks are service-dependent. Banking, finance, etc. usually demand more stringent KYC control.

While these services may sound similar to Facebook Login, [they] offer both privacy of data transactions and greater trust in user identity. [Civic.com]

There are many other blockchain, semi- and non-blockchain solutions out there that are searching for the best approach to improved identity and personal data management. A whole spectrum of these exists and some will be more suitable to Social Networks 2.0 than others. Implementing SSI in a decentralized social network will fundamentally change the dynamics of the network. It will certainty require a modification of the business model (tokenomics most probably) and will enable users to have significantly more control over how their valuable personal information is used. SSI in a blockchain-based social network will be the foundation upon which further value can be created for users.

However, only time will tell if SSI actually solves any problems that users experience. The main user problem that we see is — Why am I not being paid for sharing my data?

In the future, we might not have to use centralized authorization services to access the Internet such as Twitter, Google or Facebook and instead we will use our Self Sovereign Identity to validate our identity without having to rely on third parties. [Alex Preukschat, Medium]

Encrypted Chat by Default

Encrypted communication is becoming the preferred mode of exchanging information between users. The most popular messaging services have already introduced end-to-end encryption. Facebook’s Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Wire and Signal have all implemented message encryption (some were created for that very purpose). However, chat encryption can mean many things. Here is a comparison chart: