Protocol for Social Media Storage

A native-asset storage and access protocol is needed for low-cost, hassle-free mass adoption of social media on Cardano-based networks.

Plutus Pioneer, Social Media Entrepreneur, Software Architect with 25+ yrs global scale analytics and p2p development for EY, KPMG, others

Collaborate with IOG Team to design and produce a working Proof of Concept of a purpose-built Cardano Social Media Storage Protocol

Background
Decentralized Social Media projects across the blockchain ecosystem strive to address the concerns of the community by offering solutions that tout immutability, ownership, and monetization of personal data. While these goals are of the highest priority for members of the blockchain community, many times these platforms have difficulty fully executing on these promises.

Due to the intrinsic hub-and-spoke nature of social media platforms, data must be centrally gathered, stored, and then distributed to subscribers across the network. This can make it difficult to store, process, and provide access to data in a truly decentralized fashion. Some platforms utilize IPFS or other blockchain project based third-party solutions for decentralized storage, but the overall storage strategy is still controlled by the social media platform leadership.

Direct storage on the main blockchain of social media metadata originating from an individual user's app-session such as posts, links, statistics, voting, images, etc. would be more decentralized. However, this would be far more costly to maintain due to transaction frequency and size-sensitive fees and would require the social media platform hub to continuously query the blockchain for updates which makes this strategy unrealistic.

Furthermore, giving application users full control of the storage and marketability of their metadata may involve expenses and responsibilities that most users would find unpalatable, or even intimidating. So, it would seem, even if there were no concerns around the implementation of decentralized storage for social media, achieving this level of control for users may create a barrier to adoption in and of itself.

Taking all of these factors into account, it becomes apparent that a more complete, purpose-built solution may be needed to address these needs in a standardized and frictionless way on the Cardano network that will attract billions of users across a multitude of social media platforms.

Solution
Accordingly, a Cardano Protocol for Social Media Storage is proposed. The protocol will standardize metadata to be included in certain Cardano main chain transactions initiating the minting of NFTs representing slowly changing entities such as user accounts. User actions such as individual posts on a social media dApp can then initiate further NFT minting transactions on a side chain which refer back to the main chain slowly changing NFT. These secondary, app usage detail-oriented NFTs are then stored and maintained on the Cardano Social Media Side Chain Node operated by an SPO if the user has opted in for NFT storage with an SPO of their choice. SPOs would have the option to host Social Media Storage for multiple social media dApps which utilize the Cardano Social Media Storage Protocol.

Using this side chain/NFT approach greatly limits the volume and size of social media application-related transactions on the Cardano Main Chain, and facilitates sharding, encryption, and archival storage of the individual user's data across a stake pool style network of SPOs. Incentives can then be provided to SPOs and social media dApp users through opt-in licensing to access whichever classes of their NFTs the user wishes to monetize or not via a personal data dashboard. Since individual posts, photos, etc. are stored as NFTs, the user will have the ability to pull any NFT off of the stake pool and do with it what they will. Also, access rewards or purchase receipts for NFTs can be accumulated in a wallet feature of a social media dApp. The tokenomics of this model may vary from dApp to dApp but the gathering, storage and maintanence of the user data would follow the Cardano Social Media Storage protocol standard.

At a high level, the architecture to support the protocol beyond the scope of this proposal's POC deliverables could include but will likely not be limited to:
-Cardano Main Chain Node
-Cardano Social Media Metadata Side Chain Node
-NFT-based storage and schema for various user-owned digital assets for profiles, individual posts, subscriptions, voting stats, etc.
-Cardano Stake Pool Operator Management Console for social media assets (NFTs)
-Archived data extraction API to facilitate authorized user access to metadata contained within the NFTs

Roadmap
This proposal is for a realistic Research & Development effort for a new Cardano Protocol and will involve:

Month1
-Broadened Requirements Gathering & Due Dilligence
-IOG Metadata Team Collaboration
-Begin Architecture & Design

Month2
-Continue Architecture & Design
-Begin POC Development

Month3
-Continue POC Development
-POC Testing
-POC Delivery

Further development, testing, and rollout to be completed in future Catalyst Fund iterations

Ultimately, the POC should demonstrate the utility of the Cardano Social Media Storage Protocol for the purpose of developing highly decentralized social media distributed applications with Cardano. The POC will also comprise the base technology to make it possible for social media platform users to have simple, seamless storage options for their data that makes monetization and portability of owned data assets easy and fun.