Glycos: The basis for a peer-to-peer, private online social network

Abstract

Typical Web 2.0 applications are built on abstractions, allowing developers to rapidly and securely develop new features. For decentralised applications, these abstractions are often poor or non-existent. By proposing a set of abstract but generic building blocks for the development of peer-to-peer (decentralised), private online social networks, we aim to ease the development of user-facing applications. Additionally, an abstract programming system decouples the application from the data model, allowing to alter the front-end independently from the back-end. The proposed proof-of-concept protocol is based on existing cryptographic building blocks, and its viability is assessed in terms of performance.