Big data expert Thomas Silkjær says a fork of the XRP codebase could serve as the backbone for a blockchain-powered social media network.
Silkjær examines the possibilities in a new post on Coil, and says the ledger could be utilized to create a unique token-based rewards system. To mitigate the fact that social networks require huge amounts of data, he says posts could have a limited lifetime unless the creator pays a fee or the post becomes popular.
“If you make a post, maybe with a photo, the fee could be determined by the size of the post (storage requirement), and you could add to the fee to pay for a guaranteed lifetime. And every time people respond, share, or otherwise react, the lifetime will increase…
If fees are burned, posting content, the network would eventually die. Hence the fees in the network should be collected and redistributed – maybe to users based on account activity and nodes for storing content.”
Silkjær explains that in order to achieve true decentralization, the ledger cannot be hosted in a big data center.
Although he believes such a project is possible to build using the XRP Ledger’s memo features, Silkjær says similar projects have struggled to gain traction. He believes the XRPL should remain a financial ledger and says a fork is likely the better route.
Back in July, an anonymous developer released a tool that essentially allows users to upload images to the XRP Ledger, although it has yet to receive much adoption.
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