[re]Decentralize Social Network with Next.ID and IPFS | Yisi Liu, Mask Network | ETHTaipei 2024

thanks he good morning uh my name is e and uh I'm the confounder CTO mask and today I'm uh going to talk about the topic of building a so like decentralized social media with ipfs and NEX ID well I would just like talk briefly talk about like the building blocks well uh the reasons why we're building this and then the building blocks and then the potential possibilities enabled by this and first of all uh actually we launch our projects in Taiwan well not launch our project but announce our project this is our first Like official meet up uh but it was like happened like 5 years ago in Taiwan uh at this like T and it was like super exciting because like we were focusing on privacy and data and then people usually don't really care about that but when we talk about this like two a lot of like Taiwanese friends they care about this a lot and then we gained a lot of like great uh feedback from them and so that we just you know decided to announce our project officially in Taiwan and this yeah just like something to mention and uh at that time we only have like one product called Mas book or mask uh but now we have like a lot more uh we have like T Cube uh it was a uh mobile input method so you can use your like uh like you can just like type and then encrypt your messages to whoever you want to encrypt to using uh we're using like pgp but like we like pgp has like it was like too complicated and then too like tedious and then the the payload is super super like long uh and it doesn't like fit in any like mobile like modern social medias or like instant messaging apps so we decided we decided to like make a better one but well you know like people don't really like cherish this kind of things cuz like they don't really know like how like encryptions works so we just like decided to like pause this project for a little bit and then we have like twit which is like a third party tw Twitter uh like application but uh after like Twitter has like like suspended their API access uh we no longer like uh maintain this projects more well which is a Pity and next ID which is the identity protocol uh I will just like brief I will talk more about it later and Firefly it's aggregated timeline uh social media timeline uh media like you know aggregated social media app so that you can just like you know uh have M multiple social medias in one app so you can just like browse like your Twitter Mason and anything you can or Lear some fat Caster in one app and Mason which is the thing uh the projects I'm going to talk about later today which is like the well I think it's a better version of like social media bu purely on ipfs so on why decentralized social uh I think it's this is a really good question and I don't really have an answer for that like many people have like uh the reason because like they think their privacy or data are abused by uh the major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter um but many more people think this is a good opportunity to make money or whatever uh but like we started this project mask uh in 2019 just to like fight against like Facebook uh that's why we cut a mask book at the very beginning but we got sued by them so we just like we need to change the name from mask book to mask but whatever so it's a bu on Facebook and Twitter in 2019 and then it's a layer on top of all social networks so it's not just on Facebook and Twitter now it can be like so it's a br extension uh I will just like you will see the demos later and uh we want to help users regain the ownership of their data identity and then privacy and uh there's a like very key uh like concept here which is called Persona which is just like cryptography identity uh you can just like uh generate your own it's like SE identity so you don't really rely on any like web 2 or like centralized services to generate your identity and then manage them but think about it like your web two identities are super vulnerable because you don't really have the ownership of it you just have the access to your dat like your account and then you can uh you have the right to post to like to repost but like whenever like platform think you are a threat where think you're not like suitable for their platform they can just like suspend your account because your account or your identity it's just like sing Single data entry in their database and then this Persona is able to bind with like both web two and the web 3 identities and then which will be covered later and um sorry okay so basically uh the the problem we want to tackle is like you're a privacy issue on Twitter and Facebook back in 2016 17 18 uh there's a super famous uh uh Cambridge and natica Scandal uh uh like that actually just happen not not just in the US but also in UK and then like Mexico and a lot of different countries so like Facebook and other social media uh just like use abuse your data to control like to post your some like targeted like advertisement to like control well like at that time they control like implicitly or explicitly control the United States like presidential election brexit election and then like Mexico general election so we want to like help people regain the ownership and the Privacy uh on the social media but how so we decided if we can just like like help people encrypt their data directly on social media so that like these like social media platforms no longer have the access to these data so that they don't really know who you are and what you what what what your hobbies are and then what you like and in this way you can just finally control your data and then you don't really have to be like you know controlled by these platforms so it's pretty simple uh but it requires a like uh private and public key pair to ENC for the encryption so basically you generate this like uh Persona which is just like private and public Keir and then on Facebook uh just like you you post something like hello world and then we will just use this as key to encryp it and then we will just like generate another like infal Keir well this uh this is like followed by ECI if you know ECI it's pretty simple but if you don't it's just like you know encryption scheme used by pgp and we will just encrypt this like AES key so this AES key is a symmetric key pair so that just like it's a key to encrypt and decrypt your data at the same time so we will just like encrypt this keep this key and then share that with your designated recipient like your friends so you don't really have to well you're still like posting on Facebook so we're still using their datab base but like and then CD and everything but all they are storing is just like this like gym brush so it's like a random bites and but like if you have the access to the data or like the access right uh like you can access to the key to that you can decrypt the actual content behind it so um it'll look like look like this um but but but later on we think not we cannot just like we don't really have to like just allow people to post encrypted post there we can also like basically you can encrypt anything like uh like applet where like a small extension so at that time we think we were thinking so like these like social social media apps don't really allow you to upload attachment to your like post for sure but we want to do this with our extension so we collaborated with like RV so that you can just like upload a file onto RV and then just like inject into your post like this so like people who installed mask will see something like this so you will see U like a a a like a button there to to click on and you can see the preview of this file or downloaded directly from AR with no like centralized uh access and so centralized servers and on the right it this a rap packet which is like homeow like in in Chinese uh we were thinking well there was homeow was like very famous on WE CH like tenson Q tensent like products so that you can just like distribute money to your friends you group chat were directly to them and then we were thinking if we can do this directly on ethereum and there you go we just like you know inject this like like functionality into ethereum and then just you know whenever you uh send some money send some tokens to a Smart contract and then just like inject us uh into the post and then people who can access to this like uh post can just like claim the token from that directly without any centralized services and then uh but uh we don't do like uh just like post we also like did a lot of modifications directly on these like social Medias like on the right side we rendered this like a a sidebar for like just for like crypto people you can see like there's like crypto news and advance and a new new new M that being mainted so basically we can do everything with this like so so like extension and we want to do a layer above the uh existing social media you uh like people who don't really have our extension can see like the social media as it way but if you insult it we will just rendom more things more features for you because we believe in the like freedom of like interpretation you can interpret this like web or this like internet however you want and uh we have like many more things but this is how you like post uh encrypted data but we just like ignore like skip these like for for now and then if you like search for mask yeah we do have a token if you search for mask uh directly in Twitter search bar you will render this for you so you can just if if it's on like any deck you can just directly swap with your like connected wallet it can be a m mask or like building wet so basically uh our goal sorry uh oh sorry so our goal is to on board more users so like you don't if you know like uh crypto you can just connect to your wallet but if you don't you can just like use our NPC controlled Persona so that you don't really have to worry about your private key and then we will have another will also have a smart contract wallet for you so that you don't really have to well basically you don't really have to control any like private key to control all these like identities and asset but you take it your own risk because yeah this is how it works and then we we think we treat it as like trial wallet for new users so if you like like uh like crypto and or like we3 uh you can just like using our like we will like definitely just get airdrop P some tokens for you to like browse the web 3 world easily and if you like it you can just like find a ways to uh to get on board but if you don't just just treat it as a trial wallet you don't have to worry about it later and then we will uh well I don't I don't think I have like enough time for a lot of like expand naations so I just like uh hurry up so next ID is our like internal uh identity protocol which is just like the the protocol around the Persona so it's like a protocol to find your different identity together so basically if you have like private like public keeper but you want to connect with your like uhb web to account like Twitter all you need to do is just like you need to sign one way and then use the Twitter use your Twitter account to post uh some like uh signatures or something that only the owner can do to prove that you have the ownership of both way both identities and then you can do like uh connect with your web3 wallets by easily uh you know uh signed by both ways by directional signatures so it's like permissionless trustless and and decentralized I don't want to like cover these like uh today so you can but you can just definitely check out my slides later if you interested so this is how it works on the left side the D web3 accounts so you just sign both ways if you want to well we re Rebrand like Persona to Avatar now so basically there're the same thing if you want to bind your like uh web3 wallets just assign both ways to to claim the ownership and on the right you can do the same sign one way and then just do something the that the only the owner of the web your web to account can do which is usually like post something and then to connect these so we call it D graph so that like people whoever found your maybe like your ethereum wallet can find your like other like you know identities like your Twitter account you like or your Facebook account or anything that that is connected with this Persona and this is how how like Avatar interaction look like so basically in the in the past you only have like one oneto one mapping or one toone interaction like if you like interact with someone on Twitter or like on Facebook but we now we can aggregate them all together into a like more comprehensive like you know graph interactions and then uh this is like kind of the the social grath we envision uh because like for now if you talk about social grath just on uh it's just like purely just like you know interactions between two ethereum wallets but in this way it's more like two like interactions between two souls or multiple souls and uh we do have like ported these D graph onto like uh a smart contract so we do have a demo on there here so that you can just directly query all these like you know identity Bings on on any evm chain but we just have this demo on like a polygon by but you can definitely check it out later and with this we what we really want to do is like to do some like really small credit along for users so that if you don't really have any well it's really hard to get on board to well to get some native tokens if you're just newbie to this world so we want to aird drop you some token but we don't really want to aird drop you we want to like uh treat it as a like a loan so that you can just um like uh maybe like buying some of your like and Denis and they get air dropped using these credit and then uh we do have a demo for that but uh you can check out later uh so actually the uh the the the core thing I want to mention today is Madan which is like our topic today uh building a decentralized uh social media just purely on top of ipfs and some other like you know uh uh like protocols like like NEX ID um so basically uh the reason why we're doing this is pretty simple we are maintaining three of the largest Mason instances in the world which are like poon M msdd and Japan and Mason CL we do have like 1.5 million users in total which is a huge number so that we we like spend a lot of money and time maintaining all of these this is huge pain for us uh the reason why we became the like you know the maintainers of these instances is pretty simple so like the privious maintainers cannot like you know uh sustain anymore cuz like are paying like thousands of dollars per month just for free like these services are super like if you try any of these these Services super smooth but it costs a lot of money you cannot just suain with like you know with your heart and love so we took over their like maintenance because we want to maintain a better or like Freer uh internet for these users uh but it's really hard to really you know make it sustainable and also like you know it's it's even harder to scale that uh like uh there were two like really huge uh time time Point like when people came to madon when like Elon Musk bought like bought Twitter so a lot of people just escaped from Twitter to madon but madon this kind of like a federative network social media is not designed for like you know a single incident like with a lot of users so we want to like really decentralize it so that more people can join our Force to like you know maintain different multiple like madon instances so that make it to make it more sustainable and the more people who maintain the servers were instances in this world the better the more decentralized this like you know social media can be so uh we were so we decided to build a newer version of madon directly on ipf and and the previous like you know the mask or like the next ID are just the building blocks towards this so this is there's a new Eon system we replace username and password Eon to a private public key pair but it's really hard for new users so we decided to use Pass Key and we have been like watching like the how like web authentication uh like go since the since it's finalized in 2018 but just until last year a major like you know companies decided to unboard pass keys and web authentication which is a great opportunity for us to do this so each user can just like generate a uh private and public key pair on their phone and then so they it's like a seamless like experience they don't really have to like worry about like storing these keys because these are all stored in your like in your phone like in the security enclave and then each action can be signed to prove authenticity which is a huge plus because like nowadays you don't really have to like you don't really have the signatures of your post which means you cannot approve uh you posted something only the Twitter where like those like centralized Services can prove you are the owner but they can easily just alter the all of these like things and then uh we we do have a new data storage architecture for previously they were all like you know stored on like centralized over but now we're moving all of them to ipfs not just like the post but Al multim media the metadata is also stored on ipfs so basically everything is on ipfs it's like it's born there but if you want a better experience we do have the caching or the cache uh like uh options but it's all like you know depend it depends on your option if you want a better like experience uh you can use our cach like version but you want a more decentralized one just use the ipfs directly no data or service solely depends on centralized services and this is our promise and uh but uh something else that's like happening right now is like with like EIP 72 7212 which is not finalized yet on ethera but just got approved on polygon uh it's also live on polygon mumai by the way uh with this like Pass key sign data can be directly verified on CH so uh this thep just as the pre-compiled uh uh secp 256 R1 which is the uh the most popular uh curve uh that has been implemented on like major like phones or major devices so that like also imp your like Pass key uh support so you can just like sign the data and then directly verify them directly on like blockchains so like with this each post can be tokenized without an like external Oracle anymore so if if you want your Twitter data where data on like any blockchain you don't have to like rely on any like centralized service or third party service you can just like sign it and then we you can just like Port it put the signature onto the blockchain directly and then you can prove this is yours because it can be directly verified and then cross interpretation is guaranteed because if it's on AVM it's everywhere on the evm and we do have a demo but I'm not going to show it today and this is how you know uh the sign up works so you just like uh go to the signup as usual and then put your username and then pass key label which is the the name for a pass key and then just you know connect with wallet and and do a bunch of things I'm not going to you know uh D it today but just like pretty smooth for new users and then sign up and then whenever you are posting and then these actually uh this is like the normal madon instant uh like interface and then and everything you see here like my username and then the hello and then the multimedia the image are like all stored onfs and then we are just providing this front end for you to access them but if you don't really want to access from our front end you can just access them directly from ipfs and this is something we think will be like you know replacing a lot of like existing social media in the future which is like both userfriendly but also like opening a lot of like new opportunities uh so I'm just uh like skimm this for real quick uh so pay Theon uh is possible if you don't really want to like uh maintain your data or like pay your data on fpfs you can just pay us or pay any third party and then uh we can do endtoend encrypted messaging everywhere because you have the keys you can just encrypt to any public key you want using very mature technology and then web through native applications directly render in Timeline just we show show in uh like with the support of mask and applying to other like social network protols now we're just focusing on madon but it's relying on AP but we can do that with like a lance faster or like any other like social or like you know uh blue sky and then data indexing offloaded to third party services so you can have the search uh function that features uh provided by any uh any like existing third party um companies and then uh directly on ipfs because we don't store data anymore and on data indexing through like our identity graph and so much so on and if you are interested in what we're doing um I don't know uh I think this is the last side uh uh yeah okay yeah so uh if you want to try it out we do have a demo and uh we're like we really want to hear more like feedbacks from you guys so uh if you're interested just contact me uh through Twitter or my email and that'll be all for my uh talk today thanks sorry s thank you e and now we have five minutes Q&A time does anybody have any questions okay yeah uh thank you for presentation so uh I just arrived a little bit late but I was wondering uh the how would you compare like with forecaster like right now that's kind of like I think on the last part what we were saying is on the social media site and you put everything on ipfs right right uh which is uh on the technical architecture very different from how forecaster were doing it and so I'm wondering how like perhaps like what kind of challenges uh have you encountered and how would you compare like the tradeoffs between your architecture and uh you know like forecasters well basically I don't think we're competing with like faster because like I think these like new social medias are just great like attempt uh to you know no one knows like how like we3 looks like or how we3 social look like but what we are doing is actually setting on like the maintainer P perspective so if you are a madon like uh maintainer and you want to be more sustainable this is how where you want what you want really want to try cuz like now on madon there are like at least like millions of users and then we do have like 1.5 million users in total and then uh eventually we really want to like turn these people like into well we still want them to have the same experience just like this um you having the same exactly same experience on like madon but if you want to try something else try something new you can definitely just just get on board to this like a new world seamlessly with our like architecture so like uh what we really want to do is like these users just want a pure most of them just want a pure social media that's not targeted by those like you know uh vulnerable third party well you know those like bad bad parties but like some of them are super like you know Advanced they want to do like something really new so this is their like great opportunity and then when we we just like turn these like three large instances into this structure these people can can easily switch to a new world and this is what we really want to do because we not just want to get okay more sustainable but also we want to get like people on board this new world e like in an easier way because now if you like hear about web 3 where like crypto all you can hear is like you can make more money but I we really want to provide the better well like alternative options for users to think to experience to play with and this is how it works but comparing with like fat Caster I don't think we have any like well faster supposedly is like should be like more decentralized than it is now uh but uh they have like like different features where different you know targets I guess so I'm not going to you know really compare with them and then this is more like a like you know side project of our um company and we really want to do it purely so like open source and freeway so I don't know app thank you so much okay so thank you ISU and if you have any more questions please feel free to approach