Inside the Upcoming DNS.xyz Social Protocol
Cached copy of an article from Tezos Commons, Inside the DNS.xyz Social Protocol, 2022, served from ramine.net so it stays readable if the original goes offline.
A closer look at the new social application built on Tezos from the DNS.xyz team that blends a unique adaptation of Spotify and Instagram.
7 min read
Dec 28, 2023
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We highlighted some of the work done around DNS.xyz’s new social platform earlier this year. As time has progressed, the team has now released a private beta for the platform, with a launch upcoming shortly after that.
Being one of the most sophisticated applications we’ve seen built within the Tezos ecosystem, the platform utilizes Tezos in virtually every aspect and even includes some novel features such as ‘no gas fee mints’ and an in-house designed layer 3 rollup.
In this article, we’ll highlight the upcoming platform and why it’s a novel solution for engaging and creating more robust communities around NFTs on Tezos.
Igniting Web3 Communities on Tezos
One of the most interesting aspects of NFTs is the underlying concept of ownership. When it comes to purchasing an NFT from a new user, it generally takes 10–30 minutes to learn how to set up a wallet to buy a token that represents the artwork that appeals to the user. Once done, we have a newly acquired NFT as a result, however, we’re limited in how we can interact with other similar-minded collectors who may have the same one or want to showcase and connect with others.
Thus, the problem isn’t on the underlying technology itself; more so the issue revolves around the question of how do we bridge a group of unique users together in one place and provide the same ebb and flow of social media platforms like X or Instagram? Even more so, what should a user be able to do with the NFT beyond ownership? In the same sense during the mp3 era, no one was buying mp3’s but they were buying the music instead. We need to treat NFTs as a feature that lets you retain ownership of what you’re using, not the thing in of itself and this is where DNS.xyz comes in.
Solutions like Lens Protocol have semi-addressed this issue through the creation of social graphs, introducing a timeline where you can come in and follow people, like posts, and comment. What if we took it a step further and enabled every post to become its own NFT? Not only would that post become an NFT, but comments and likes would induce a transaction on the Tezos blockchain. Imagine if all this happened without you needing to even own tez as well?
From a technical lens, having more than just the site itself, rather a hybrid application and protocol. Under this model, one could be able to offer to create more apps using the technology on Tezos as well. In a similar way to how Facebook can have multiple apps that focus on different aspects, which enable the possibility to implement things like Patreon, blogging, and more on top, this is what DNS.xyz is setting out to do. That’s the vision of DNS.xyz and their new social protocol. Let’s highlight some of the features of the hybrid protocol and applcation in more depth.
The First Iteration of a Layer 3 Rollup
To accomplish making likes and comments on-chain, the DNS team decided to implement an in-house rollup on Tezos. In a blog post a few months ago, they discussed the rationale behind this approach and included some insight from a former core developer on Tezos, Daniel Hines.
With an L2 like Arbitrum, people are routing to a centralized sequencer. This is the dominant pattern for L2s, but nothing is stopping anyone from routing transactions through some kind of sequencer on their own to get instant results and then settling on an L1 later. Doing this on an L1 like Tezos, where it’s cheap, and verifiable on Michelson contracts makes a lot of sense and you’re the first people to do this to my knowledge. And because you’re running your own sequencer, you can still manage content moderation. You’re processing sequences of transactions (the likes, comments, and replies) using the Tezos L1 for timestamping. Basically, you reimplemented tzstamp for social by computing off-chain and posting the results. Now your server logs are public information where anyone can audit your data it canonicalizes the data. You might tamper with it on your server, but not once it’s posted, because changing that requires a ⅔ attack on Tezos. — Daniel Hines
By definition, a rollup is a scaling solution that handles transactions off-chain and bundles them together into a single batch on-chain. We may wonder, why pursue this model if everything is not entirely on-chain? This question is an important one and addresses some of the inherent limitations of sticking to a L1.
As a social platform, you would want to see likes and comments delivered instantaneously. Having to wait between 15–30 seconds would hinder user experience and thus conversely, would make people not want to interact with the platform. DNS.xyz’s approach with their layer 3 rollup takes this user experience aspect in mind while limiting tradeoffs in terms of security and decentralization.
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Through DNS’s layer 3 rollup, when a user likes and comments on a post:
- The likes and comments appear instantaneously on the site
- The action gets added to a large list
- The list is bundled and added to IPFS every 10 minutes
- Actions are visible in GraphQL
- The resulting additions to IPFS are added to a Tezos contract every 10 minutes
The data is available for anyone to be able to operate on as they wish, transparent and timestamped on the Tezos blockchain.
Introducing Lazy Minting
Within the new DNS.xyz platform, there are no gas fees when users create a post or mint on the platform. This is thanks to a unique feature called “lazy minting”. Lazy minting roots can be traced to NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea. Shokunin of DNS.xyz highlighted more about this unique feature in his recent X space.
When you create an NFT on the OpenSea platform, it also creates a placeholder NFT which enables the gas fee for the NFT to not be immediately spent. What it does is you sign the contract indicating you intend to mint this item. What’s cool about that is people will see the item as lazy-minted and if they want to buy the item, the money they spend on it is used for the gas to create the NFT. So, now you can create NFTs and posts without spending gas or owning tez. You can just have a wallet, click create and it mints. That’s really neat because until now you’d have to have tez to mint and jump through all the associated hurdles in obtaining it. Obviously, we don’t think you should have to do that, that’s not a good experience. If I go on Twitter, I can start tweeting. I don’t have to put money in there to start doing something.
The neat thing about this system is it doesn’t add extra costs onto either the user or buyer of the NFT. The gas fee remains negligible because it’s on Tezos and the buyer will not be able to notice a difference. Comparative to Ethereum, this is a large difference where the fee would be much more noticeable for the buyer of the NFT.
Speaking on some of the blockers to the broader adoption of blockchain technology, Shokunin gave a few thoughts on his approach to making things that people want to use.
More generally speaking, we have to create things that people want to use. I don’t think DeFi as an example is the answer for stuff like that. When I look at web3, usually it’s really difficult to use. Because I need to have a wallet and have a token. I’ve essentially converted money to some token and I’ve moved that token from an exchange to my wallet. I then log in to the website from my wallet and then I finally start using the stuff. It’s super complicated and tends to be slow with so many confusing terms. It’s all these arcane concepts that are not as easy as say TikTok. Why does web3 have to be complicated terms and difficult to use with wallets and concepts? Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.
I think this hits a lot of points many of us have, especially those exposed to the blockchain space for some time now. Coming from a design background, Shokunin can articulate and relate to most target users who, broadly speaking, are not Ethereum power users. The Tezos social protocol by DNS.xyz takes a unique approach here and I find it exciting to see how it works when it rolls out.
Looking Forward
The DNS.xyz team’s new social protocol on Tezos is one of the most ambitious consumer apps in the Tezos ecosystem we’ve seen yet, merging the best aspects of platforms like Spotify and Instagram with blockchain technology. Focusing on providing a seamless user experience with novel features like gas-free NFT minting and an innovative Layer 3 rollup, the DNS team has been hard at work to design something unique and enjoyable for users of all backgrounds. Be sure to stay tuned for more updates from the DNS team as their launch draws closer!