9 ♣ · Coordination · Draft
Social Graph
A record of who knows, follows, or vouches for whom, stored so any tool can read it.
How it works
Each member is a point in a network, and each relationship is a line between two points. When one member follows, trusts, or vouches for another, that link is written to a shared ledger or database. No single app owns the result. The DAO can then query it: how many members vouch for this newcomer, who is connected to whom, which clusters exist. Rules can be built on top, such as needing three vouches to join. Because the links are portable, a member keeps their connections when moving to a new tool.
Use it when
- You need a sign that a newcomer is a real person, based on who vouches for them.
- Weight votes or rewards by trust between members instead of token count.
- Let members carry their followers and reputation between apps.
Watch out for
- Cliques: vouching rings let fake accounts vouch for each other and look real.
- A public graph exposes who knows whom, which can be used to target or exclude members.
Example
Lens Protocol. Lens Protocol launched in 2022 on Polygon, storing follows and posts as NFTs so apps like Orb and Lenster could share one portable social graph.