Pubky: The Next Web

John Carvalho
Pubky
Published in
11 min readNov 5, 2024

Imagine waking up in a world where every piece of information you encounter is carefully filtered by faceless algorithms. Your online interactions are curated not by your preferences, but by the agendas of corporations and governments. You can only speak within the walls of platforms that commodify your every word, every click. This isn’t a dystopian novel — it’s the current reality of the internet.

Now, imagine a different world. A world where you hold the keys to your digital kingdom. A place where your identity, content, and interactions are entirely under your control. This is the world Pubky aims to create, and it starts today.

Pubky is designed to redefine the web by creating a self-sovereign system where users have full control over their data and interactions. This document is the master reference for all things Pubky, encompassing the scientific, economic, and network/system design aspects of the project. Pubky uses foundational technologies like Public Key Addressable Resource Records (PKARR), Mainline Distributed Hash Table (DHT), homeservers, and indexers to create a decentralized, user-owned internet.

  • The State of the Web: The current web is dominated by centralized control, leading to issues such as censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and lack of user privacy. Big Tech algorithms are described as ‘poisoned algorithms’ that prioritize corporate and state interests while compromising user control. Platforms also lock users into walled gardens, limiting freedom and commodifying data.
  • The Vision of Pubky: Pubky represents a new paradigm for the web — one where you are the algorithm. Individuals have full control over their data, identity, and social interactions, breaking free from Big Tech platforms. Your public key is your self-sovereign domain name, signifying ownership over your digital presence.

The Problem: A Captured Web

Pubky addresses significant shortcomings in the current web infrastructure by focusing on user empowerment, privacy, and resilience.

  • Poisoned Algorithms: Imagine algorithms that decide what you see, driven by corporate profits and government interests. Big Tech algorithms encourage toxic engagement, prioritize clickbait over truth, and limit user control. Users are manipulated by broken algorithms that are breaking us instead of connecting and empowering us.
  • Censorship: Platforms and governments dictate what is allowed online, compromising free speech. The net is compromised by entities that control what can be said. Imagine being silenced just because your opinion doesn’t align with what’s “acceptable” to the gatekeepers. Pubky aims to change this narrative by giving the voice back to the user.
  • Walled Gardens: The dominance of Big Tech locks users into closed ecosystems, limiting freedom and commodifying data. This creates a scenario akin to digital serfdom where users have no ownership of their digital identity or content. You are stuck in a system where your data is their asset, and you are just a tenant in their walled garden. Pubky breaks down these walls, giving you complete ownership.

Let’s Fix The Web! Attempts so far…

Several initiatives have attempted to fix these problems, each making some progress, but with tradeoffs. Here’s a quick overview of the decentralized web ecosystem today:

ActivityPub (Threads, Mastodon)

  • Key Features: Federated servers, open-source platform.
  • Strengths: Provides community control with federated servers, allowing more user-driven moderation.
  • Limitations: Centralized moderation still exists at the server level, limiting portability of identity and data. Users remain at the mercy of server admins and siloed platforms.

AT Protocol (Bluesky)

  • Key Features: Decentralized identity (DIDs), portability (PDSs), elaborate moderation options
  • Strengths: Decentralized identity and potential for user control; funded
  • Limitations: Depends on a centralized PLC directory, making it vulnerable to failure. Bias toward moderation and social networking. DIDs are hosted either on the servers or on DNS, vulnerable to censorship.

Holepunch (Keet)

  • Key Features: Platform for building peer-to-peer applications without centralized infrastructure, routing over Hyperswarm DHT, with torrent-like data replication.
  • Strengths: Direct, efficient peer-to-peer communication. Secure, real-time data synchronization through an append-only log structure, ideal for distributed applications and popular data.
  • Weaknesses: More complex to implement than most protocol options. Append-log structures bring risk of forks and more complex identity and room management. Self-hosting requirements bring security and privacy considerations.

Matrix (Element, FluffyChat)

  • Key Features: Decentralized communication, end-to-end encryption, intended as a replacement for traditional chat systems.
  • Strengths: Offers decentralized real-time communication with strong privacy & encryption.
  • Limitations: Federation still relies on larger servers with centralized control aspects, and the complex infrastructure can be challenging for users to run their own servers.

Nostr (Primal, Yakihonne)

  • Key Features: Key-based identity, lightweight and easy to get started.
  • Strengths: Simple, provides portability & censorship resistance via basic key-based identity.
  • Limitations: Scalability/incentive challenges that result in only a few centralized relays, lacks key-delegation and identity-based routing, inviting censorship and data loss.

Peergos

  • Key Features: End-to-end encryption, privacy-focused, familiar cloud file storage capabilities.
  • Strengths: Excellent privacy features, including first-class encryption and familiar cloud storage experiences like streaming.
  • Limitations: Centralized PKI (this will be addressed with IPNS or PKARR). The file system API complicates cursor pagination compared to ordered key-value stores.

Pubky Core (Pubky App)

  • Key Features: Decentralized identity management, data routing, and hosting using PKARR, Mainline DHT, and homeservers.
  • Strengths: Complete user control over data and identity, resilient to censorship, portable across platforms, and ensures credible exit. Uses a well-established DHT for scalability and decentralized discovery.
  • Weaknesses: Users must manage & secure keys, run or select a homeserver, adding complexity to onboarding. Managing master keys and revocable sessions may require learning a new UI.

Secure Scuttlebutt (Manyverse)

  • Key Features: Decentralized social network protocol, emphasizing privacy and offline-first capabilities.
  • Strengths: Fully decentralized, offline-first design that allows data replication and privacy. Focuses on secure, private communication.
  • Weaknesses: Scalability challenges as the entire social feed is replicated by all users. Lacks easy onboarding, and the user experience is not intuitive for non-technical users.

SimpleX (SimpleX Chat)

  • Key Features: Secure messaging platform focusing on privacy without metadata collection.
  • Strengths: Strong emphasis on privacy by eliminating metadata collection. Peer-to-peer communication without requiring centralized servers or exposing IP addresses.
  • Weaknesses: Limited scalability for large social networking use cases. Mostly focused on private messaging, lacking broader support for social graph or content publishing.

Web5

  • Key Features: Combines Bitcoin and identity technologies to create a self-sovereign internet using decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and decentralized web nodes (DWNs).
  • Strengths: Emphasizes user sovereignty with portable identity and data. Built on Bitcoin for a secure, open ecosystem. Supports PKARR via DID:DHT method.
  • Weaknesses: Bitcoin reliance is an unnecessary complexity. Complex specifications, bias toward formal digital ID and altcoin use cases.

Unlock The Web With Pubky

Pubky is a key-oriented, user-controlled web where individuals own their data, identity, and content, breaking free from Big Tech platforms. It’s not just another app or platform; it’s a paradigm shift — a new kind of web that puts you at the center. You are no longer a passive participant; you are the algorithm. Pubky is made of two major aspects:

  • Pubky Core:
    The decentralized protocol infrastructure that powers identity management, data routing, and hosting.
  • Pubky App:
    A flagship web application for interfacing with, and publishing to, the Pubky web, enabling personalized content feeds, social tagging, and web-of-trust-based curation.

Pubky Core

Pubky Core comprises the foundational protocols and technologies that power the decentralized Pubky ecosystem.

  • PKARR (Public Key Addressable Resource Records): PKARR enables users to associate content, identities, and resources with cryptographic keys, ensuring verifiable ownership. PKARR handles key revocation through a distributed update mechanism, where changes are signed and propagated via Mainline DHT. Master keys are kept in cold storage, and access is delegated through revokable homeserver sessions, minimizing exposure and maximizing security.
  • Your public key is your self-sovereign domain name, representing your ownership of identity, data, and content in a censorship-resistant manner. Imagine having an online identity that is entirely yours — one that no platform can take away.
  • Mainline DHT Integration: Pubky uses Mainline DHT as its backbone for distributing and locating user data. This technology, which powers the BitTorrent network, enables decentralized data discovery, scalability, and fault tolerance, ensuring that Pubky’s network remains resilient and efficient under any conditions.
  • Decentralized peer discovery ensures that the network scales seamlessly, supporting millions of nodes globally.
  • Signed DNS Records for Self-Sovereign Domains: Pubky leverages signed DNS records to create self-sovereign domain names linked directly to user public keys. Unlike traditional DNS systems, Pubky eliminates reliance on certificate authorities, mitigating risks such as cache poisoning and registrar hijacking.
  • Homeservers: Homeservers are web servers that store and serve user data based on the rules set by the user. Anyone can host a homeserver, and there is no network-effect moat favoring a particular provider. This guarantees users a credible exit by providing full portability of identity and data.
  • Users can seamlessly migrate their data, social graph, and identity to a new homeserver if needed, ensuring resilience and availability. If one server goes offline or bans you, your digital life doesn’t miss a beat.

Pubky App: Your Portal to the Pubky Web

Pubky App provides the interface through which users interact with the Pubky ecosystem, manage content, and curate their online experience.

  • Progressive Web App: The Pubky App is a browser-based or locally installed tool that allows users to interact with the Pubky ecosystem. It offers publishing, social tagging, and curation features, letting users control every aspect of their web experience.
  • You Are the Key: Users represent themselves as public keys, removing the need for email or phone numbers and creating a self-sovereign identity that is consistent across the entire network.
  • Posts & Post Types: Users can publish content in various formats: short notes, articles, images, videos, or links. The tagging system allows for enhanced curation and discoverability.
  • The Taggable Web: Forget the black-box algorithms of traditional platforms. With Pubky, users engage in social tagging, building a network based on their own values and preferences. Tags allow users to curate content and relationships, effectively making users “the algorithm” by deciding what content is relevant and how it is presented.
  • Tagging Posts and Users: Tagging is central to the Pubky experience. Users can tag content or other users, enhancing discoverability and establishing trust within the network. “You Are the Algorithm” means that user-created tags influence what content appears and how it is prioritized.
  • Nexus Indexers: The Pubky App integrates with Nexus Indexers to enhance the Semantic Social Graph, improving data discovery and content curation. Users create and save custom content feeds, filtering content based on their preferences. The Nexus Indexer acts like your “personal librarian,” crawling the pubkyverse and querying the Semantic Social Graph to help users find content, connections, and data relevant to their interests. Unlike centralized search engines, indexers can be run by anyone, democratizing the process of content discovery.
  • Custom Feeds and Curation: Users have the ability to create and save custom feeds, building their own lens into the web, shaped by the people they trust and the content they value.

Semantic Social Graph (SSG) and Contextual Web of Trust

The Semantic Social Graph (SSG) lies at the core of Pubky’s social infrastructure, allowing users to curate and manage their online interactions based on shared context and trust relationships.

  • Tags and Relationships:
    Users categorize content, label relationships, and establish connections using cryptographically signed tags. Tags serve as filters that let users create custom perspectives, defining how they view the web. Users can establish weighted relationships that reflect trust and personal relevance, making Pubky a semantic social graph driven by user intent.
  • Contextual Web of Trust (WoT):
    Pubky allows users to establish a Contextual Web of Trust through tagging and direct interactions. Trust relationships are updated dynamically based on ongoing interactions and can be retracted as needed, ensuring that the trust graph remains current, meaningful, and secure.
  • Graph Dynamics and Social Incentives:
    The SSG structure encourages engagement through social tagging, transforming content discovery into a collaborative experience. Users curate content that matters to them and establish their own networks of trust, putting the power of “the algorithm” directly into the hands of the community.

How Pubky Fixes the Web

  • Poisoned Algorithms?
    You Are the Algorithm.
    Pubky empowers users through social tagging and personalized feeds, effectively eliminating the control that Big Tech algorithms have over what content is presented.
  • Censorship?
    Cancel Cancel Culture.
    With PKARR identities and decentralized homeservers, censorship becomes ineffective. Users can maintain their data, contacts, and followers even if a server tries to block or ban them. By commoditizing hosting services, Pubky ensures there is no financial or control incentive for hosts to censor users — if your homeserver bans you, you simply move to a new one, taking everything with you. This credible exit removes power from gatekeepers and puts it back in the hands of users.
  • Walled Gardens?
    Unlock the Web.
    Pubky enables true portability of identity, social graphs, and content. Users are no longer locked into any single platform’s ecosystem. With Pubky, your data, identity, and social relationships are entirely yours — they move with you, not with the platform. It’s time to unlock the web and reclaim your digital autonomy.
  • Semantic Social Graph for Personalized Discovery: Pubky’s Semantic Social Graph (SSG) revolutionizes the way we discover and interact with content online. By leveraging a decentralized web of contextually rich tags and user-defined relationships, Pubky offers an experience that is genuinely tailored to individual interests and values. Users define how they interact with content and build a personalized, context-rich internet that serves them.

Get in here, loser, we’re taking back the web!

  • Pubky Core — Demos & Libraries:
    -
    https://pubky.org
    - https://github.com/pubky/
    - Dev chat: https://t.me/pubkycore
    Pubky Core is open source and available now. Contribute to Pubky Core to help build user-controlled applications. Whether it’s social networks, content curation, or new peer-to-peer services, Pubky’s open-source tools give developers new power to innovate.
  • Pubky App — Private Beta:
    -
    https://pubky.app (sneak peak)
    - General Chat: https://t.me/pubkychat
    Pubky App is conducting an invite-only private beta this Winter, moving towards a public beta release in Q1 2025.
  • Awesome Pubky Link List:
    -
    https://pubky.tech

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John Carvalho
John Carvalho

Written by John Carvalho

This is a blog about how Bitcoin dynamics and how people interact with it. I am currently CEO at Synonym.

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