July 3, Tardigrade: Orbital Meshnet forDecentralized Social Medias
Taylor Hulsmans
Abstract
I have spent the majority of this week composing a whitepaper fora pure vision of the CAW manifesto. Called Tardigrade: Orbital Mesh-net, nodes and vertices of a rudimentary social graph integrate with anycryptographic primitive. This exposes the social media tech stack to com-posability and competition- contribute to an algorithm of ones’ choice,offer an array of moderation services. IPFS pubsub passing of EIP-712signatures of funds under a timelock opens an array of ’loose but cheap’metagames like tip jar and honour-box. I conclude with a remark on thecentral desire to ’break open’ the verticalized tech-stack of social mediato market forces to receive more configurability.
0.1 Where it started, where its ended up
What started out as simple and rudimentary nodes of user names and verticesof connections spiraled exponentially into big data in very centralized locations.Analysis is always playing catch up, with its ethics concerns in tow. What be-came photos with friends became, amygdala hijacking advert algorithms, hackerwizard analytica, and updatesubscription doom-scroll. The desire of a user topotentiate a network has become lumped in with alot of other code, that is,in the end, better off being broken up and exposed to free market and deficomposability principles.
Figure 1: How many times has one seen the exact same text, firstly wrappedin a Tweet, and secondly a 4chan post, and ascertained an entirely differentmeaning? How many times has one prejusticed a text simply by virtue of whaturl it is hosted at? Tardigrade brings control of the medium to producers andconsumers.
0.2 Where can we go
Thus than, is the enabling power of Tardigrade, to tear back the social net-work graph into its most rudimentary form, and than expose all of the extra-erroneous state to composability and competition with any cryptographic valueprimitive. A platform can offer multiple options of moderation services, a usercan contribute to algorithms they find useful, creators can find more options incryptographic incentivization strategies. If the medium is the message, than itmay be worth reducing the switching costs of the medium.
Figure 2: Inject Tardigrade for defi composability, or build with it natively.Whether ad algorithms trying to scare you into junk food ads, or regex filtersshadowbanning your post, keep your network intact when caused to leave it
0.3 Where should we go
Tardigrade targets the problem statement that current social media is too ver-tically integrated on too few firms, and attempts to break open the tech stack
Figure 3: The choice of a user to potentiate a network often is associated withdeep neural net behaviour analysis, moderation practices, and perhaps drivenby incentive structures ill befitting of the knowledge they desire to purloin.Tardigrade potentiates the environment to pick and choose their data streamand analysis stack from side to side, instead of all or none up and down.
to composability and competition. Algorithms- open, transparent, swappable,creatable. Moderation-integratable, layerable, configurable. Long term to shortterm platforms of various incentive structures all become subject to free marketcompetition principles that a user can choose between without having to giveup their connections. Hopefully, such a technology will offer a synthesizing prin-ciple on the often polarizing questions of user censorship, content moderation,fast vs slow content production incentives, algorithmic transparency, brand bag-gage, GPT botnet swarms and offer ways towards digital identity and big datacollection that aren’t so implicitly Orwellian.
0.4 System Definition
At its core Tardigrade is an Ethereum Composable IPFS Pubsub Mesh Networkfor horizontally scalable social medias. Username nodes and connection vertices-a rudimentary social graph is zksnarked into the blockchain, the rest is up toeveryone else.The username than roots itself as a deposit box for an array of IPFS Pubsubbased EIP-712 value chaining defi metagames, enabling the highest level ofcomposability with defi value primitives. The configurability and composabilityof the value system than makes it more palpable to independently monetize coreelements of the heavily verticalized social media stack.Release a token, integrate Tardigrade, build an algorithm people want theirdata being vacuumed into, start a new moderation service, deploy a social media
Figure 4: Tardigrade provides the rudimentary base state of a social graph andexposes it to defi primitives, by integrating a vault system, it unclocks a classof metagames that can be played by chaining deadlines of EIP-712 signaturestogether (Ergo Tip Jar, Homeless in storm game Topologies) over IPFS publish-subscription message passing models such as Orbit-DB. Users can cultivate anetwork through Tardigrade that retains the persistency of critical data oversocial media life cycles. Some say reputation can even cross the Prisoner’sdilemma itself
that donates to a charity, or funds a common knowledge. Tardigrade is at itsheart infrastructural, providing the tightest focal point coded around the fewestcore principles. No token, just an idea that a very basic zero knowledge proofsocial graph on the ethereum blockchain is a good idea, there to join you andyour friends across many social medias as they come and go, break apart andcome together.
0.5 Conclusion
The case of existence for Tardigrade: Orbital Meshnet is discussed through ahistorical, technological and practical basis. What was a rudimentary databaseof usernames and friends, spiraled into heavily moderated forums of deep neu-ral net data harvesters, leaving users little options but to tolerate update sub-scription doom scroll or lose their network. Tardigrade, Orbital Meshet, Is apersistent database for the most rudimentary and important part of the socialgraph, the username and its connections, hopefully using privacy preservingwith zero knowledge proofs. At the same time, Tardigrade breaks open the social media tech stack to competition and composability, the advert algorithms,the moderation services, the data hosting, the platform hosters, to competitionand composability with cryptographic incentives all competing for both a usersattention and crypto. If the medium is the message, than hopefully Tardigrade,Orbital Meshnet can drive an ecosystem where the medium and be created,grow and retired in a decentralized fashion