Show HN: A decentralized semantic web built atop Activity Pub

• chatternet-client-http

  8 150 10.0 TypeScript
  

• chatternet-server-http

  1 14 10.0 Rust
  

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• pinafore

  11 1,023 0.0 JavaScript

  Alternative web client for Mastodon (UNMAINTAINED)

• spec

  6 153 4.1

  User Controlled Authorization Network (UCAN) Specification (by ucan-wg)

  

..which builds on https://ucan.xyz/ for auth. I’m also curious to learn what Chatternet does differently, and whether that’s necessary.

• did-core

  50 390 0.6 HTML

  W3C Decentralized Identifier Specification v1.0

  

It solves the problem of relying on 3rd party platforms to establish user identity. That is, when Alice wants to hear from Bob, they both have to be authenticated by some 3rd party Acme Corp. Alice can't know that a message is written by Bob unless she gets the message from Acme Corp. In that case she needs to trust that Acme Corp correctly vetted and authenticated the user Bob, and that their database isn't corrupted. This reliance on Acme Corp. is what has lead to walled gardens, de-platforming, bot farms, etc.

I will also add that, when done right, 3rd party platforms managing user accounts does come with benefits over Chatter Net's decentralized approach. So I consider Chatter Net an experiment to better understand the alternative.

There are some interesting features that come out of Chatter Net's approach, like the self-moderation idea discussed in other comments. I think exploring them could be rewarding.

As a final note, Chatter Net is inventing very little here. It's mainly packaging together a DID (https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/) and Activity Pub (https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/) implementation into an opinionated library which is ready to deploy on existing web tech.

• crypto-ld

  1 35 0.0 JavaScript
  

For authenticating messages, Chatter Net uses Linked Data Proofs (https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-integrity/#proofs). The JS client uses this implementation: https://github.com/digitalbazaar/crypto-ld. And the Rust server uses this one: https://github.com/spruceid/ssi.

I hadn't seen ucan yet, I think the space of JWT adjacent protocols is growing, and I'll be interested to see where it all goes!

• ssi

  2 175 5.4 Rust

  Core library for decentralized identity.

  

For authenticating messages, Chatter Net uses Linked Data Proofs (https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-integrity/#proofs). The JS client uses this implementation: https://github.com/digitalbazaar/crypto-ld. And the Rust server uses this one: https://github.com/spruceid/ssi.

I hadn't seen ucan yet, I think the space of JWT adjacent protocols is growing, and I'll be interested to see where it all goes!

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

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