Fardels - a decentralized private social network

screenshot of Fardels homepage

This project is a demonstration of building a social network using a private contract on Secret Network.

What the heck is a fardel?

A fardel is a small bundle or collection of information that you can carry to the decentralized web to share with others.

The contents of a fardel can be a link to a file, an image, or even a short piece of text like the punchline to a joke. It is something others are willing to pay a small price to access (no more than 5 scrt), and because the price is low there is little risk in unpacking one. There are no limitations on what kinds of contents are shared. It can be a link to an immutable file on IPFS or a simple Dropbox link. Thus, they can be permanent on the blockchain or they can be ephemeral. They can be copyable, deletable, sharable. You can think of them as anti-NFTs. :P

The Fardels contract creates a social network where users can carry (post), unpack, rate, and comment on fardels created by the community.

Ever since the creation of smart contracts there has been a promise of building new kinds of decentralized social networks. In practice what has been built have been impoverished clones of existing social networks (e.g. EtherTweet) that lack key features, such as the ability to follow others. That is because most smart contract networks do not keep user data private. Plus, they do not innovate around using the features of the blockchain to rethink the types of relations that the social network aims to foster. With Fardels we aim to improve on both counts. By building on Secret Network, important aspects of user data can be kept private. And just as Twitter innovated around sharing short pieces of information, Fardels is designed to foster a culture of sharing digital items of small value. If the contents are a let down or disappear (for example, it contains a link to a Dropbox file that no longer exists), well, you can write a negative comment and rate it down. It didn't cost much so no great loss. But if it was something that made you smile, that you found useful, or simply valued in some way then you can leave a positive comment and rate it up, so others will know it is something they might want to unpack as well. Fardels with a link to an immutable file on IPFS are marked as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It was great just getting all the pieces wired together, especially the unpack functionality sending funds correctly to the owner of the Fardel. Furthermore, the backend data structure mapping handles to accounts is another aspect that I was excited to get working.

What we learned

Lots about coding secret contracts!

What's next for Fardels

There's much more work needed to be done on both the contract and client before it is production-ready. Since the contract functionality is fixed once uploaded, it is important to incorporate community feedback in the design. It might be possible for users to store generic data, such as JSON data in the Fardel for which new unanticipated UI front end could be developed in the future. Furthermore, this project will benefit from developments on Secret Markets recently posted on the secret network forum: link