protocol

These services exist outside of the protocol and depend on a few centralized and trusted authorities. Another solution that is arguably more resistant to capture and censorship would be to use a blockchain to manage user name aliases - like Farcaster is doing with fnames.[1] [1] https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#22-farcaster-names

One idea would be something like RSS that supports social media like activity (posts, reposts), but with a user alias namespace that is registered by a shared and distributed ledger. I wrote about this here: https://mirror.xyz/mattdesl.eth/_F9vQAUeeBB9AJNwMNaE_G5kTcl1... Related, see the protocol spec and design for Farcaster, which aims to be a "sufficiently decentralized social network": https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol

one XMPP server gets big and usernames get squatted and dealt with at the discretion of the server admin. Only solution is something like how Farcaster does it where you at least get to keep your public key the same and usernames are optional. https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#3-identity Or go the urbit route and make the addresses totally user owned.

That's sad to hear, but it makes total sense to shut down the server given its sensitive data, rather than hand it off to another person. Mastodon/ActivityPub is a poor fit for a social network IMHO. - Accounts should not be tied a single server and their continued maintenance. - Private data and DMs should be end-to-end encrypted rather than entrusted with a single administrator. - People don't want to self-host. The core problem of a lot of social networks comes down to name aliasing, and who controls the name registry. In the case of nostr[1] this is not a problem because everything is using public keys. Another protocol is Farcaster[2] which plans to use a smart contract to maintain a name registry without requiring a single controller. [1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr [2] https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol

a simple mechanism is using a smart contract to map your key (0x123) to an identity (@alice). the contract can allow you to transfer that identity to a different key (important for key rotation) and also to set up a recovery key that is also authorized to transfer the key if the primary key is lost. our recovery system for Farcaster has a few more bells and whistles, and you can read about it here: https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#33-recovery

author here - happy to answer questions folks have. we've also been building a sufficiently decentralized protocol called Farcaster, and you can check it out here: https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol we've also built the first clients for this protocol, which are still in beta. if you have an ENS name and are interested in trying them out, DM me on twitter https://twitter.com/varunsrin