How to Architect a Protocol for Portable Social Connections

Portable social connections allow a user's social graph—their followers, friends, and reputation—to move with them between platforms. This concept, often called decentralized social or DeSoc, shifts control from centralized platforms to users. Instead of a social network like X or Instagram owning your follower list, you own it as a verifiable asset on a blockchain. This portability is the foundation for a new wave of interoperable applications where your social capital is not locked into a single service.

Architecting a protocol for this requires solving several core technical challenges. You must define a data model for connections that is sovereign, composable, and verifiable. A common approach uses smart contracts on a blockchain like Ethereum or a Layer 2 to record connections as on-chain attestations. Standards like EIP-712 for signed typed data and EIP-5792 for on-chain social recovery are relevant. The protocol must also be gas-efficient and scalable to handle potentially millions of social interactions.

The architecture typically separates the social graph layer from the application layer. The protocol defines the rules for creating, updating, and querying connections. Applications then read from this shared graph to power features like feeds, notifications, and discovery. This separation allows for innovation at the application level while maintaining a unified social identity. For example, a user's followers from a music app could automatically become their audience in a new blogging platform built on the same protocol.

Key design decisions include choosing a graph representation (directed/undirected, weighted), a consensus mechanism for state updates, and an indexing strategy for efficient queries. Many protocols, such as Lens Protocol and Farcaster, use an optimistic update model where actions are signed off-chain and then batched to a blockchain for settlement. This keeps costs low while maintaining cryptographic verifiability. Your architecture must balance decentralization, performance, and developer experience.

This guide will walk through the components needed to build such a system: from data models and smart contract design to indexing and client SDKs. We'll use practical examples, referencing existing protocols and Ethereum standards, to illustrate how to create a robust foundation for portable social applications. The goal is to provide a blueprint for developers to build the social infrastructure of the future web.

Portable social graphs require a fundamental shift from application-owned to user-owned data. You must understand the core components: decentralized identifiers (DIDs) as self-sovereign anchors (like did:key or did:ethr), verifiable credentials (VCs) for attestations, and decentralized storage (e.g., IPFS, Arweave, Ceramic) for data persistence. The W3C's Verifiable Credentials Data Model provides the essential standard for creating, transmitting, and verifying claims in a machine-readable, cryptographically secure format.

Familiarity with smart contract wallets and account abstraction is crucial for managing on-chain social actions. Protocols like ERC-4337 enable social recovery, gas sponsorship, and batch transactions, which are key for a seamless user experience. You should also understand graph data structures and query languages; while a social graph can be stored on-chain (e.g., using events or state channels), off-chain indexing with protocols like The Graph or custom subgraphs is often necessary for performance and cost efficiency when querying complex connections.

Architectural decisions hinge on the trade-offs of on-chain vs. off-chain data. On-chain storage (e.g., storing follower lists in a contract) provides maximum verifiability and censorship resistance but is expensive and public. Off-chain storage with on-chain pointers (like storing a content hash on-chain that resolves to a JSON file on IPFS) offers flexibility and cost savings but introduces liveness dependencies. Your design must clearly define the trust model for each data type.

Finally, you need to consider interoperability standards from day one. Adopting existing schemas, such as those from the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) or projects like Lens Protocol's open graph, can accelerate development and ensure compatibility. Your protocol should emit standard events (ERC-721 for profiles, custom events for connections) and provide clear APIs for other applications to read and write to the user's graph, fulfilling the core promise of portability.

A portable social graph protocol must prioritize user sovereignty and interoperability. The core architectural decision is the data model: a graph structure where nodes represent entities (users, content, communities) and edges represent connections (follows, likes, memberships). This model must be stored in a decentralized manner, typically using a content-addressed storage system like IPFS or Arweave for the data itself, with on-chain registries (smart contracts) pointing to that data and managing permissions. The protocol's state—who owns which graph fragment—is secured by the underlying blockchain, ensuring verifiable ownership without a central database.

Smart contracts form the protocol's backbone. A minimal implementation requires at least two contracts: a registry and a graph data contract. The registry, often an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFT, assigns a unique identifier to each user's graph node, making it a tradable, ownable asset. The graph data contract stores the connection logic, allowing users to create, update, or delete edges by submitting signed messages. For example, a follow function would create an edge from the caller's node ID to a target node ID, emitting an event that indexers can use to rebuild the graph off-chain. This separation of ownership (registry) and logic (graph) is a common pattern in protocols like Lens Protocol.

Data portability hinges on standardized schemas and open APIs. Define your connection types (e.g., Follow, Collect, Mirror) using a schema language like JSON Schema or Protobuf, and publish them on-chain or to a decentralized storage network. An open GraphQL API served by indexers or the users themselves allows any frontend to query a user's social graph without vendor lock-in. The critical technical challenge is state synchronization; you must design a robust indexing layer that processes blockchain events to maintain a queryable, real-time representation of the graph, similar to how The Graph indexes protocol data.

To enable true composability, architect for external hooks and module extensions. Your core contracts should allow users to attach modules—separate smart contracts that add functionality like fee-based follows, token-gated connections, or reputation scoring. Use an upgradeability pattern like the Proxy Pattern or Diamond Standard (EIP-2535) for the module manager to allow for non-breaking upgrades. Furthermore, design event emissions to be rich enough for other protocols to build upon; a PostCreated event should include the content URI, creator address, and module addresses used, enabling seamless integration by third-party applications.

Finally, consider the user experience and key management. Requiring a blockchain transaction for every social action is prohibitive. Implement meta-transactions or a gasless relayer using EIP-2771 and EIP-712 for signed typed data. Users sign messages expressing their intent (e.g., "I want to follow 0x123..."), and a relayer pays the gas to submit it on-chain. This architecture, used by social protocols today, abstracts away wallet complexities. Always include a recovery mechanism in your user registry, such as a social recovery module or a transferable guardian system, to prevent permanent loss of a social identity if a private key is lost.

A portable social graph protocol must define a minimal, flexible, and verifiable set of core data structures. The primary entities are the User, the Connection, and the Content or Attestation. The User is typically represented by a wallet address, but for richer identity, it can be linked to a decentralized identifier (DID) or a soulbound token (SBT) that holds profile metadata. This separation allows the social graph to be permissionless and composable across different front-end applications.

The Connection is the fundamental unit of the social graph, representing a directed or bidirectional link between two users. In a smart contract, this is often implemented as a mapping or a set of structs. For example, a follow connection might be stored as mapping(address => address[]) public following;. More advanced protocols, like Lens Protocol, use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to represent follow relationships, making them ownable and transferable assets. Each connection should include metadata such as a timestamp, a proof of validity, and potentially a type field (e.g., follow, friend, colleague).

Content and social actions—posts, likes, comments, and shares—are modeled as Attestations. These are cryptographically signed statements linking a user to a piece of data. Using a standard like EIP-712 for structured data signing ensures verifiability off-chain. The core contract needs a registry to store or reference these attestations. A common pattern is to store a content hash (like an IPFS CID) on-chain with a pointer to the creator, while the actual data resides off-chain for scalability.

To enable true portability, these structures must be chain-agnostic. This is achieved by using neutral identifiers and cross-chain messaging. A user's primary identifier could be their Ethereum address, resolved across chains via ENS or a cross-chain name service. Connections and attestations can be bridged using protocols like LayerZero or Wormhole, which relay attestation proofs to other networks, ensuring the social graph state is synchronized.

Finally, the data model must account for privacy and granular permissions. Not all connections are public. Structs can include a visibility field (public, private, followers-only) and encryption keys. Zero-knowledge proofs, via systems like Semaphore, can allow users to prove membership in a social group (e.g., "I have more than 50 followers") without revealing their specific identity or connections, enabling private yet verifiable social graphs.

A portable follow module is a smart contract that manages a user's follow relationships in a way that is not owned by any single frontend or platform. The core idea is sovereign data ownership: the connection data lives on-chain in a user's wallet or profile NFT, not in a centralized database. This enables interoperability, as any new social app can read this on-chain graph to bootstrap a user's experience. Key protocols pioneering this space include Lens Protocol and Farcaster, each with distinct architectural approaches to portability.

The fundamental architecture involves two main components: a registry and a graph. The registry is a smart contract that maps a user's identifier (like an Ethereum address or NFT token ID) to their follow module contract address. The graph contract, which can be unique per user or shared, stores the actual follow and unfollow operations. When a user follows someone, they call a function on the target's follow module, which emits an event or updates an on-chain data structure. This design ensures the logic and data are user-centric rather than platform-centric.

Here's a simplified example of a follow module interface in Solidity. The core function is follow, which records a connection after checking it doesn't already exist.

solidityCopy
interface IPortableFollowModule {
    function follow(address follower, address target) external;
    function unfollow(address follower, address target) external;
    function isFollowing(address follower, address target) external view returns (bool);
}

A basic implementation would store mappings in the contract's state, such as mapping(address => mapping(address => bool)) public isFollowing;. Events like Followed(address indexed follower, address indexed target) are crucial for off-chain indexers.

For true portability, your module must implement a standardized interface. This allows any client to discover and interact with it predictably. Consider adopting or extending existing standards like ERC-6551 for token-bound accounts, where a profile NFT can own its follow module. You must also decide on a graph storage model: a shared contract for gas efficiency (like Farcaster's IdRegistry and StorageRegistry) or a modular approach where each user deploys their own contract (offering maximum customization but higher gas costs).

Integrating the module requires an off-chain indexer to process blockchain events and build a queryable graph database. This is essential for performance, as directly querying on-chain state for social feeds is impractical. The indexer watches for Followed and Unfollowed events from all user modules and updates a database. Applications then query this indexed API, similar to how The Graph subgraphs work. Your architecture must also handle spam protection, often via a stake or fee mechanism in the follow function, and access control to prevent unauthorized writes.

When architecting your system, prioritize gas optimization for user actions and decentralization of the graph data. Use gas-efficient data structures like packed bitmaps for storing follows if scaling to thousands of connections. Allow users to migrate or upgrade their module without losing their social graph. Finally, design for the broader Social Layer vision: your module should be agnostic to the content type, enabling it to represent connections for blogging, gaming, or DAO membership, thus fulfilling the promise of a portable social identity.

Architecting for portable social connections requires a fundamental shift from application-centric to user-centric data models. The core components are a decentralized identity layer (like Ethereum or Solana wallets), a verifiable credential system (e.g., W3C Verifiable Credentials), and a flexible, on-chain graph for storing connection attestations. By separating the social graph from the application logic, you enable a new paradigm where a user's network becomes a composable asset, usable in DeFi, gaming, and governance without starting from zero.

The next step is to implement and test these concepts. Start by defining your connection schema using a standard like EIP-712 for signed typed data or Ceramic's TileDocument streams. For a basic proof-of-concept, you can store connection data on a Layer 2 like Arbitrum or Optimism to minimize cost. Use a library like ethers.js or viem to handle signatures and interactions. For example, a simple smart contract function to create a connection might look like:

solidityCopy
function attestConnection(address to, bytes32 connectionType) external {
    connections[msg.sender][to] = connectionType;
    emit ConnectionAttested(msg.sender, to, connectionType);
}

This creates an on-chain record that any other app can permissionlessly read.

To move beyond a prototype, you must address key challenges: graph scalability (consider using The Graph for indexing), privacy (explore zero-knowledge proofs with zk-SNARKs via Circom), and spam resistance (implement stake-weighted or proof-of-work connection costs). Engage with existing standards bodies like the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) to ensure interoperability. Your protocol's success will depend on its adoption by other builders, so prioritize clear documentation, SDKs, and a grants program to incentivize ecosystem development.