Inspiration
Events across the world, including the 2020 election in the United States, but also government interference and censorship in countries across the world, have demonstrated severe problems with current social media networks. Their content algorithms are easily hacked by bad actors spreading false and incendiary information. Governments easily censor and monitor their content via nationally-instituted VPNs and other controls. Users are the product and not the customers of these networks that use their data not only to sell products, but to influence behavior. Hedera Token Service (HTS) offers an infrastructure to build a new kind of social network.
What it does
ChitChat builds a decentralized social network using HTS. ChitChat has two components, each of which are HTS tokens: Chit and Chat. Chit and Chat combine in a phone-based app that is both a wallet and a light mirror node to manage topic subscriptions.
Chit is the basic infrastructure and uses the Hedera Memo field to construct messages in 100-byte units. It costs Chit to post, but Chit is cheap. Chit messages cost only the service fee for an HTS transaction. Users are awarded Chit when they sign up. New users are given enough Chit for 100,000 characters, or about 10,000 words, which can be carried on 1000 HTS transfers. Users can buy new Chit with US dollars or other currency, or they can convert their Chat token rewards into Chit to keep on posting.
Chat is the basis for an internal information economy. At account creation each user is given their own unique Chat token in addition to their start-up Chit account. Chat rewards cannot be purchased nor do they have any US dollar exchange value. The network pays the Hedera service fees for all Chat transactions. Chat rewards are given to users for Props (similar to "Likes") and Shares of their content. Every time another user Props or Shares a poster's content, the poster is rewarded with more of their own Chat token. If another user reshares or Props a Share, the sharer is rewarded with Chat. This creates a snowball effect that rewards each user for their participation in the network. With Chat participation rewards, users can buy more Chit for their own posts.
Chit posts move in 100-byte chunks, but are bound together by the original poster. Once a series of Chit-posts are bound together, they cannot be unbound. Bound and unbound Chit posts are aggregated in the wallet to produce the poster's original message that will appear in the user's newsfeed. Users can subscribe to the accounts of other users via a modification of a normal Hedera topic stream subscription. Posts can contain URL references, hashtags, and @-user tags. Eventually Chit posts can reference documents, images, videos, and games held in storage on a Hyperledger network attached to the ChitChat network.
The value of Chat rewards are managed through an internal DeFi protocol that manages the exchange rate between Chit and each user's unique Chat token. This protocol is expected to grow with the network. Chat value will be determined via the user-participating DeFi protocol (similar to the MakerDao protocol) in which users can stake their own Chat to share in the rewards given to the Chat tokens of major content providers and social influencers, including commercial media and advertisers. A wealth of user data and interaction-maps will be available via the Chat protocol. This data can be monetized, but it will be fully user-sovereign via privacy controls built into the user's Chat token.
Via the internal Chat DeFi protocol, ChitChat administrators can influence the Chat value of various content providers and can offer higher rewards for responsible content and thereby create virtuous circles of information circulation. While ChitChat values free speech and interaction, it reserves the right to suspend or delete accounts that create or share malicious or illegal content. In addition to the technical value offered by Hedera's high-performance DLT, Hedera's governing council offers an additional layer of responsible management, as it can also intervene in the management of any token, in accordance with the policies of the Hedera Council. We don't expect this to happen, but it is a deliberate element of our governance model.
Ongoing improvement of the ChitChat network will entail a Hyperledger-based backend for secure, distributed content storage, that will allow secure, authenticated sharing of documents, photos, videos, and games. A fairly easy value-added element would be the creation of HTS-based stablecoins denominated in local currency, in accordance with relevant local laws. The stablecoin could be integrated in the ChitChat wallet and be used for everyday purchases.
How we built it
We have not yet built the ChitChat protocol. But we have created the Chit HTS token and some initial user Chat tokens.
Challenges we ran into
A functional Chat DeFi protocol will take considerable thought and engineering expertise to work as intended. Not only will it take work to design the basic protocol, but it will take extensive thinking and experimentation to understand how ChitChat's internal economy can function to highlight responsible content while giving users the greatest leeway for the normal range of human passion, emotion, and reason. The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of current social media models, while building upon their world-changing ability to bring people together and create new kinds of community.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The concept is evolutionary and builds upon the global success of current social media networks, but improves on them in a paradigm-shifting way that gives users more control over their data and the network itself.
What we learned
There is much to learn here.
What's next for The ChitChat Network
The design of the mobile app, combining a wallet with a light mirror node, and the design of the internal DeFi protocol.
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