specs/standards/application/OpChan.md

title	name	status	category	tags	editor	contributors
OP-CHAN	OpChan Decentralized Forum	raw	Standards Track	waku		Jimmy Debe <jimmy@status.im>

Abstract

This document specifies the architecture of OpChan, a decentralized forum application. The specification is transport-agnostic, with Waku as the reference delivery mechanism.

Background

In a decentralized forum, content is hosted on multiple nodes, making it difficult for a user's post to be censored. Users own their post data, so data cannot be removed by a third party, and forum boards will not rely on moderators remaining active.

OpChan clients distribute content through a peer-to-peer network rather than relying on centralized server storage. OpChan supports ephemeral anonymous sessions using a locally generated ED25519 key pair for identity and signing. Additionally, OpChan supports wallet-backed identities and identity key delegation.

Terminology

• Channel: A discussion board or channel that hosts posts and moderation controls.
• Post: User content created within a forum.
• Comment: A reply to a Post or other Comment (threaded discussion).
• Participant: Any user able to publish or consume messages (anonymous or wallet-backed).
• Anonymous session: A client-generated ed25519 keypair used as identity for a user without a wallet identity.

Specification

The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

OpChan distributes forum content amongst peers using a publish-subscribe messaging layer. All messages are cryptographically signed using ED25519 keys generated by the client locally.

OpChan supports two types of messages, content and control messages. Content messages are user-generated content on the forum. The message types include the following:

• Channel: Includes the metadata information like name, description, and admins of a forum feed.
• Post: User content created within a channel.
• Comment: Users reply to a post or another comment.
• Vote: To cast upvote or downvote for a post or comment.
• User: Includes username, delegation proofs, and identities. See the Identity section for more information.
• Bookmark: A user bookmarking a post or comment.

Control messages consist of the user activity/interactions on the forum. This includes the management of the current forum state, permissions, and moderations. The message types include the following:

• Create Channel: The initial event of creating a new channel within the forum.
• Delegation Events: Channel admins granting or revoking channel rights.
• Moderation Events: Channel admins are able to hide, remove, pin/unpin a post or comment, promote new admins, and change the ownership of a channel.

Message Format

Each channel is assigned a unique topic identifier that clients MUST subscribe to in order to discover messages from that channel.

All messages MUST include the following envelope fields:

{
  "id": "string",
  "type": "CHANNEL_CREATED | POST_CREATED | COMMENT_CREATED | VOTE | BOOKMARK | MODERATION | DELEGATION",
  "timestamp": "uint64"
  "author": "string" // author public key or wallet address
  "signature": "bytes" // ed25519 signature
  "delegationProof": "bytes" // optional wallet signature authorizing the browser key
  "body": object // The message content
}

Every message SHOULD be signed using signature owned by the publishing user. Clients SHOULD verify the signature against the author public key and, when present, verify delegationProof.

Signing Flow:

1. Serialize body fields in stable key order.
2. Construct signing bytes with: type, timestamp, author and body.
3. Sign with the user's cryptographic keys, signature, for the session.

Identity

There are two types of identities for users: anonymous session and wallet delegation. A wallet delegation MAY be an ENS (Ethereum Name Service) verified user. An anonymous session generates an ED25519 keypair locally with the client. The key is used to sign all messages and a username MAY be attached to the post or comments. An anonymous user SHOULD NOT be granted an admin role, create moderation events, or create a channel.

A wallet delegation is a user blockchain wallet's private key used to sign a message, which is the delegationProof. The delegationProof SHOULD be a short-lived message, RECOMMENDED a few minutes to a few hours. Once a delegationProof is generated, the client SHOULD be able to sign messages, without the need for repeated wallet prompts requesting to sign.

Delegation Flow

1. The client generates a new browserKey, which is an Ed25519 keypair.
2. The client generates a delegation request to authorize browserKey to sign.
3. The user's wallet signs the delegation request and returns a delegationProof with an expiration timestamp, expiry.
4. The client stores the delegationProof, browserKey, and expiry.

A delegationProof could become revoked by the wallet owner or after the expiry time. If a wallet delegation is revoked, clients SHOULD ignore subsequent messages from the revoked delegation key.

Moderation & Permissions

A post MAY have moderation message types assigned by the channel admin. The moderation types include:

• HIDE: Hide a post or comment from the channel feed.
• REMOVE: Permanently remove a post or comment.
• PIN: Pin a post to the top of a channel feed or pin a comment to the top of a thread.
• UNPIN: Remove a PIN from a post feed or comment thread.
• CHANGE_OWNERSHIP: Change the author of a post or comment.

Moderation messages MUST be signed by an admin, who is recognized as the author of the channel. Clients SHOULD validate the admin before applying moderation events locally.

User Flagging

Users MAY flag content for review by moderators. A FLAG is user-initiated and distinct from admin moderation actions. Flagged content SHOULD be queued for moderator review but does not automatically result in content removal.

Relevance Score

A post can gain better visibility on the forum channel and the forum's search through the content relevance score. Clients with verified wallet identities MUST be favored over an anonymous session identity.

There are a few RECOMMENDED areas that collect points when calculating the relevance score of a post:

Basic points include the activities that each user is able to engage in.

• A channel has a score value of 15
• Each post within a channel has a score value of 10
• A base value if comments are present within a post boosts the relevance score by a value of 5

Engagement points include the different user activities for each post or comment.

• Each wallet delegation upvote adds a score value of 1.
• Each individual comment adds a score value of 0.5.
• The total number of posts multiplied by 0.5. The total number of upvotes multiplied by 0.1. These two values are added together.

For identity verification points, participants of posts or comments that use wallet-based identities, including an optional ENS, the score is boosted over the anonymous identities. If a participant has a verified ENS and a verified connected wallet, only the ENS multiplier SHOULD be applied.

• Participants who have a verified ENS name gain a value multiplier of 1.25(25%).
• For wallet connect participant the multiplier is 1.1(10%).
• For verified upvote participants the multiplier is 0.1.
• For verified comment participants the multiplier is 0.05.

There is a time decay that reduces the relevance score over time. The older a post or comment was made the lower its score.

\text{timeDecayMultiplier} = e^{-\lambda \cdot \text{daysOld}}

Where \( -\lambda \) is the time-decay rate per day.

There SHOULD be a moderation penalty that reduces the score when a post or comment is moderated with a value of 0.5(50%). This penalty is applied once a post is HIDDEN, REMOVED or flagged by users to be reviewed by a moderator.

\text{moderationPenalty} = \begin{cases} 0.5, & \text{if moderated} \\
1,   & \text{otherwise} \end{cases}

Below is the final relevance score based on the RECOMMENDED points above:

\text{Total RelevanceScore} = (\text{basic} + \text{engagement} + \text{verifiedUpvote})
\cdot (1 + \text{verifyIdentity}) \cdot \text{timeDecay} \cdot \text{moderationPenalty}

Waku as Delivery Mechanism

This section describes how OpChan MAY use the Waku protocol as the delivery mechanism.

OpChan clients MAY use the 10/WAKU2 network for the distribution of forum content amongst peers. The messages are 14/WAKU-MESSAGE objects. Users SHOULD use the 19/WAKU2-LIGHTPUSH protocol to send messages to Waku nodes storing the forum's content.

Message routing and discovery are handled by 23/WAKU2-TOPICS. Each channel is assigned a content_topic that clients MUST subscribe to in order to discover messages from that channel.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

References

• RFC 2119
• ED25519
• 10/WAKU2
• 14/WAKU-MESSAGE
• 19/WAKU2-LIGHTPUSH
• 23/WAKU2-TOPICS