The Polkadot ecosystem will quickly have a parachain devoted to decentralized social media named “Frequency,” the workforce behind the protocol mentioned Wednesday at Polkadot Decoded, its annual group occasion.
The Decentralized Social Community Protocol (DSNP), because it was recognized earlier than being named Frequency, had already chosen the Polkadot ecosystem as a house. It’s in all probability greatest often called the protocol underpinning actual property billionaire Frank McCourt’s Venture Liberty.
Venture Liberty, which has some $250 million in backing from McCourt, goals to “democratize” social media by growing a publicly accessible database of individuals’s social connections and difficult the facility of social media giants and surveillance capitalism.
Decentralizing social media
With the rise of the metaverse, the concept of decentralized social media – the place a consumer’s content material and social graph isn’t managed by a single firm – has gathered tempo. The likes of former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey and decentralized finance platform Aave have been speaking up the potential.
However balancing blockchain-based incentive fashions with the size wanted for social media is a problem. Because it occurs, Polkadot affords a chic resolution to the issue, mentioned Harry Evans, chief expertise officer at Unfinished Labs, the builder of the Frequency protocol. It is because the Polkadot mannequin of a relay chain and linked parachains comes with a set worth consensus.
Parachains don’t pay a separate payment for every block that will get validated as a result of that is all accounted for in the price of the parachain lease. Parachain leases have been settled through funds gathered from the Polkadot group and slot auctions, a course of Frequency has began, Evans mentioned.
Learn extra: Polkadot Parachains Go Reside, Capping Yearslong Tech Construct for Bold Blockchain Venture
“For functions like social networking, the place you might be extraordinarily value delicate, it provides you this functionality to essentially type of handle prices and work out how these are allotted in a approach that’s rather more tough in different blockchain ecosystems,” Evans mentioned in an interview.
Reasonably than charging transaction charges to ship messages, Frequency makes use of a token staking mannequin that earns “capability,” Evans defined, a renewable useful resource that will get refilled each variety of blocks. By way of addressing scalability, messages could be batched in channels much like layer two companion programs, whereas being anchored to the primary chain, he added.
Frequency (and DSNP) creator Braxton Woodham mentioned folks staking tokens to help the community creates potential for fascinating fashions down the road.
“It permits customers to vote with their pocketbooks for various functions which can be more practical and higher for society,” Woodham mentioned. “It additionally permits for a stage of transparency that avoids a number of the poisonous outcomes that we’ve seen within the present internet.”
