Portable Communities Protocol

P2P Platform

Conceptual proposal for a protocol enabling persistent, composable, application- and platform-independent online communities represented as graphs. Proposes that communities (humans + relationships) become first-class objects within and between networks using DIDs, verifiable credentials, and object capabilities. Currently at concept/proposal stage with no implementation .

Community
Links
Visit Community

Details

License N/A (no source code; concept paper only)
Dev Status 📋 Planned
Dev Status Detail Concept / Proposal (no implementation exists)
Owner Unknown / community proposal (references noo.network for initial graph visualization experiments)
Country Unknown
Start Year 2023
Stack TBD (proposed PoC uses centralized ArangoDB; no protocol stack defined yet)
Funding Unknown / unfunded at concept stage
Last Investigated Mar 9, 2026

Use Case Domains

Group Formation & Governance Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Affordances

Composable groups Data portability Cross-instance federation

P2P Platform Attributes

Origins Motivated by Richard Bartlett (Loomio co-founder) observation that synchronizing group membership across platforms is the critical gap in collective organizing software
Database ArangoDB (for initial centralized PoC experimentation only; intended to export to JSON)
Query Language TBD
Data Formats Graph representation: nodes (humans/collections) + edges (relationships) with type and freeform key-value data attributes; JSON export
Collaborative Live Editing TBD
Rich Text Editing TBD
Mobile Support TBD
Web Support noo.network used for graph visualization experiments
Native Apps TBD
Terms TBD
Funds Unknown
Based On Spritely Institute (OCapN infrastructure); DIDs; Verifiable Credentials (W3C); Object Capability model; ArangoDB (PoC); graph theory
P2P Architecture Proposed: decentralized personal online datastores for nodes; graph representation mappable to DAOs and smart contracts; each human node owns and controls its outbound edges
Development Tools TBD
Deployment Options TBD (proposed: decentralized personal datastores; initial PoC centralized)
Authentication & Identity Proposed: DIDs for sybil-resistant cross-community identity; Verifiable Credentials for membership verification; GreenCheck concept using 3-friend authentication
Storage Model Proposed: personal online datastores per node; centralized ArangoDB for PoC with JSON export
Interoperability Proposed: communities as portable graphs interoperable across applications via Object Capabilities (principle of least authority); boolean operations across community graphs (intersection, federation)
Social Graph Yes (core concept): communities modeled as social graphs — nodes are humans, edges are weighted/typed relationships; supports multi-community membership, graph intersection, and federation