MetaLife™ SOCIAL NETWORK
Last updated
Last updated
MetaLife is a Web3.0 decentralized, autonomous and inclusive social platform that comprises of toolkits and consensus to support interactive communication, community building, and complete set of creator economy and at the same time enforce privacy, security, fairness, and self-governance. Users have access to private and public messaging, full autonomous on how their messages should be shared among their friends and/or public. Data created by users are owned by users, only they can determine if they want to monetize or create a business around these data via MetaLife NFT and DAO toolkits, all done without writing a single line of code. These toolkits (social network, NFT and DAO) and the built-in wallet at the protocol layer breakdown silos in DApp and promotes liquidity in the MetaLife token economy.
The following are MetaLife value propositions for the fully decentralized, autonomous, and inclusive Web3.0 social networking platform.
MetaLife is a diverse and heterogeneous social networking platform that embrace commonality while preserving differences among diverse social groups globally. To realize intercommunity communication and an inclusive universe for all things, MetaLife will be independent of and embraces all communication protocols. Currently, MetaLife has identified and will work with mesh protocol and the three most vital and influential decentralized communication protocols – SmartMesh, Secured Scuttlebutt (SSB), Diaspora and ActivePub, and will expend to other protocols in the future.
Planet is the integrated decentralized framework in MetaLife ecosystem; it consists of components like Pub, Pod and Server from the three communication protocols. Through Planet, participants can navigate freely across social ecosystem barriers such as offline social networking, federal universe, and diaspora ecosystem, realizing the social space of different dimensions. Ultimately MetaLife will become the aggregator of social networks, enabling interaction between maniverse towards realization of metaverse.
Apart from shattering the communication protocol shackles, MetaLife social network will also implement the new social governance mechanism to embrace freedom and broaden social interaction. The governance mechanism realizes autonomy and co-governance of vast majority from the communities by implementing both subjective and objective governance, which will be executed via 3 channels – DAO election, smart contracts and MetaLife platform. Please refer to Governance and Rewarding Systems section for detail.
Unlike many proposed social networking solutions that offer only certain degree of decentralized elements, MetaLife is the only social network with decentralization spans across connectivity hardware layer to data layer, data dissemination and governance protocols. It leverages blockchain as the underlying data and information layer and can store all user profiles, contents, social interaction activities, comments and attributes on-chain, should user choose to do so (i.e., options for private or public messaging).
Beside the decentralized ledger, MetaLife social network leverages three most decentralized communication protocols like SSB, Diaspora and ActivePub to forms the foundation for interactive communication and information propagation where messages are disseminated via peers and Pubs/Pods/Servers operated by users – a decentralized mechanism in information dissemination. MetaLife gives user the choice to send private or public messages and determine if his/her messages should be stored locally or on-chain. For more information about these protocols, please refer to MetaLife Technology Overview.
MetaLife Maniverse communication is a peer-to-peer communication protocol where data is spread and synchronized in a distributed network formed by trusted friends (peers). The protocol is developed with offline-first approach to work well without or with sporadic internet connectivity, where fully encrypted data is stored locally and synchronized when network becomes available, like the structure of social connections in the real world. MetaLife supports numerous modes like LAN, DHT-based direct P2P, Bluetooth, Pub and Room invitations to discover and establish connections with each other.
MetaLife relies on peers to work on disseminating data and since not all peers may be online to provide such services, there are public peers like Pubs or Pods or Servers in the network which are essentially nodes that run at public IPs and operate as meeting places where peers come to discover others and get updated with latest data. To ensure consistent QoS, MetaLife implements several governance and reward mechanism for the operators to maintain high uptime to service the community.
No network should claim decentralized if it can only operate when internet, a centralized infrastructure, is available. Leveraging on SmartMesh’s HyperMesh infrastructure and its decentralized communication protocol, MetaLife allows user to communication and access to information in an offline situation, i.e., without internet, making MetaLife the only mean to bring social network to rural communities and the 3.7 billion unconnected population. MetaLife protocol provides an efficient data transmission between peer-to-peer, should parties find each other in a local or mesh network, data can be transmitted between parties thereby reducing unnecessary data load on internet as well as reducing communication cost.
Since user profiles, assets and shared content data are owned by user and stored on-chain, no one DApp on the platform can manipulate the data or block access to such data. Once contents are created and shared on-chain by user and with user permission, any DApp on the platform can have access to the same set of data thereby create a level playing field for all DApp developers from both start-ups and incumbents to compete on unique offering rather than data monopoly.
MetaLife supports offline and off-chain messaging and is the best resolution to many rural areas without or with sporadic internet service. MeshBoxes that form the mesh network and social network nodes (Pubs) can be deployed in such areas to provide connectivity services and support applications like offline communication and social interaction, offline payment, off-chain smart contract and edge computing (Regional and local operation) etc. MetaLife provides users with autonomy to determine if they like to keep the contents on or off-chain, giving user access to optional on-chain storage secured with full data encrypted.
Blockchain based solutions are often put off by non-seasoned blockchain users, especially having to deal with different identities and numerous digital wallets in different DApps. User experience on MetaLife social network will be a seamless one with single onboarding process just like any application users are familiar with. The moment user signed up, a programmable NFT representing the user’s identity is created for and owned by the user. User can customize their appearance in each DApp by creating different name addressable by ‘@username’, and by purchasing or designing his own avatar. The programmable NFT stores user profile, which includes all attributes, credential, activity history, ownership, and wallet information, all these data define a user in MetaLife ecosystem. Such NFT together with the built-in wallet are accessible across the whole ecosystem.
Besides the convenience of single sign-on, wallet at the protocol layer extends utility of token and token economy across the whole ecosystem, such that user can now earn tokens from one DApp (e.g., posting in social network) and spend the same tokens in another DApp (e.g., buying a weapon in a game DApp) without having to transfer tokens between wallets. In addition, an asset that he acquired from game DApp can be auction off in a secondary NFT marketplace in the ecosystem, or other marketplace via cross-chain feature available in Spectrum blockchain without having to move the NFT between wallets.
User activities in the ecosystem are securely stored in his NFT and can be used for identity verification and check across the ecosystem. For example, a user can leverage his activities and Reputation he earned in other DApps and be recognized as a trusted player even when he starts as a new player in a game DApp.
MetaLife regards personal and data privacy as its top priority. In the ecosystem, user retains all his/her personal privacy where none of his/her identity and other personal attributes (e.g., location among other common personal attributes) are exposed to anyone. MetaLife also provide toolkits for user to define alias, pseudonym, and create or purchase avatars that represent his/her appearance in the ecosystem, users can change their appearance to anyone they desire to be at any time. Additional privacy protection features (detailed in Content Curation Consensus section) like connection blocking, content blocking, and location hiding for creators are put in place to further protect their own interests from malicious spreaders in an unforeseeable situation.
In terms of communication, MetaLife supports both private and public messaging hence creates a clear boundary between the private and public domain. Private messages are stored locally among parties involved in the conversation; they are fully encrypted and protected with passphrase, only parties in the conversation can read it while other peers only notice transmission of the private message. With private messaging built in the protocol layer, DApp in the ecosystem can leverage the facility for peer-to-peer secured and encrypted private messaging. E.g., An interested buyer might reach out (PM) to the seller to strike a deal prior to start of auction. Both seller and buyer can initiate negotiation within the DApp seamlessly with confidence that no one else will have access to the content and terms in the negotiation.
In MetaLife anyone can take on roles as a creator, developer, entrepreneur, or investor. Creators have ownership to all contents created by them and only they have autonomous on how their contents are shared and monetized. By utilizing toolkits (NFT, DAO, wallet) available on the platform, creators can create an economy around their creations and monetize from it while other users can have the opportunity to participate in such creator economy as investor by owning a piece or a fragmented piece of NFT representing the asset, for example. With a full set of economy toolkits available, innovative shared economy (e.g., subscription, auction, founder/creator royalty etc) can be created to generate sustainable cashflow for creators and investors, even when the assets are transacted in secondary markets. Read more on how NFT+DAO can support the creator economy in the following section.
MetaLife is an open-source platform that is highly developable and composability. Started by the MetaLife team, the platform will ultimately be owned and operated by the MetaLife community (DAO) where members of the DAO can influence the operation and development of the platform through proposals and voting. Voted features can be developed by any qualified users (vetted by the community) and be rewarded for their contribution. For more information on governance, please refer to Governance and Rewarding Systems.
