DSNP (Decentralized Social Networking Protocol)
Federated Protocol
Community
Details
License Permissive (Apache-2.0); https://github.com/LibertyDSNP — specification repository; Frequency blockchain implementation open source
Dev Status 🟢 Active
Dev Status Detail Released / Active (DSNP specification v1.x published at dsnp.org; Frequency blockchain production live; MeWe integration with 500K+ migrated users; ongoing Governance Working Group specification evolution)
Owner Project Liberty Institute (501c3 non-profit steward); originally co-created by Braxton Woodham and team at Amplica Labs (McCourt Global); Frequency blockchain implementation by Amplica Labs
Governing Body Project Liberty Institute (501(c)(3) non-profit steward; Advisor Summit governance process)
Country USA (Project Liberty Institute; Amplica Labs / McCourt Global)
Start Year 2020
Stack Language-agnostic specification; Frequency (Substrate/Polkadot L1 blockchain for consensus and state); JavaScript/TypeScript (Frequency SDK, Frequency Access); Parquet (batch announcement format); Protocol Buffers
Funding Philanthropy / Corporate (McCourt Global / Frank McCourt personal funding; Project Liberty Institute 501c3; no disclosed VC rounds for the protocol itself)
Last Investigated Jul 1, 2026
Federated Protocol Attributes
Origins Decentralized social networking (motivated by Frank McCourt's campaign to build user-controlled digital identity infrastructure; reaction to centralized platform control of social graphs; Project Liberty's mission to "win the fight against Big Tech")
Database Blockchain state (Social Identity contracts, social graph operations, and announcement batch roots stored on Frequency blockchain; announcement content off-chain in batch files addressed by hash)
Query Language Frequency RPC API (on-chain state queries); off-chain batch files addressed by content hash
Data Formats Parquet (batch announcement files); IPFS/content-addressed storage for announcement batches; on-chain: Substrate-encoded messages; Dead Drop Announcements use encrypted payloads
Collaborative Live Editing N/A (social networking protocol; not a collaborative editing tool)
Rich Text Editing N/A (announcement content is application-layer; protocol specifies structure not rendering)
Mobile Support Yes (Frequency Access mobile-friendly; MeWe mobile apps; protocol is transport-agnostic)
Web Support Yes (Frequency Access web-based onboarding; web applications as BAPs)
Native Apps Yes (MeWe native apps; Frequency SDK for app developers)
Terms Free / Open source (Apache-2.0 specification; Frequency Access free for users; application developers may have own terms)
Funds Not separately disclosed (McCourt Global is a multi-billion dollar private equity firm; Project Liberty is a multi-year initiative; specific DSNP protocol budget not public)
Based On Frequency / Substrate / Polkadot (blockchain consensus layer); IPFS / content addressing (off-chain announcement storage); Smart contracts (Social Identity ownership)
Content Addressing Yes (off-chain announcement batches content-addressed; on-chain roots provide tamper-evidence; IPFS integration for batch file hosting)
E2EE Partial (Dead Drop Announcements support E2EE private messaging; public announcements and social graph are public on-chain; DSNP extends E2EE to prevent service providers from reading message contents or knowing communicating parties)
Signature Substrate / sr25519 (Frequency blockchain transaction signing); smart contract ownership via blockchain wallet keypairs
Permissions Smart contract / Cryptographic capabilities (Social Identity ownership enforced by blockchain; delegation model allows apps to act on behalf of users within granted permissions; revocable at any time)
Semantic Web Compatibility N/A (Parquet/binary format; no RDF or linked data vocabulary in core spec)
Federation Model Shared Heap / Blockchain (all Social Identity and social graph state stored on shared Frequency blockchain; announcement batches off-chain but anchored on-chain; apps query shared state rather than federating between servers)
Instance / Server Requirements Moderate — applications need Frequency RPC node access; Frequency full node runs on Substrate stack; no per-application server required for read access; write access requires Frequency tokens and transaction signing
Account Portability Full portability (Social Identities are blockchain-native and owned by user cryptographic keys; not bound to any application; any DSNP-conformant app can access same social graph)
Discovery / Relay Architecture Blockchain-native (social graph and announcement roots stored on Frequency; apps discover content by querying on-chain announcement batches and resolving off-chain Parquet files; no relay or gateway required)
Server Authority Model User-controlled (Social Identity is a smart contract owned by user wallet; no app can remove or modify another user's identity; apps can only read/write on behalf of delegated users)
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Proprietary Open Standard (published specification at dsnp.org; Advisor Summit governance process; 500K+ production users via MeWe/Frequency; Apache-2.0; Project Liberty Institute stewardship; not submitted to W3C, IETF, or IEEE; Governance Working Group ongoing)
Data Sovereignty User-controlled via blockchain (Social Identities and social graph owned on-chain by user key; announcement content stored by apps but anchored by user-controlled on-chain hashes)
Relationships
How this tool connects to other tools and organizations, from relationships reviewed by the OpenHaven data steward. They describe how projects connect, not how good they are.
- Speaks protocol