📬BBS Protocol

Read every single word before you decide to jump in. This is an experimental, inaugural instance of a social network on the Ordinals-Bitcoin interface. Its novelty is no guarantee of its utility or value, and any engagement is at your own risk.

This is a playful and exploratory experiment showcasing the potential of constructing social networking features via inscriptions on the Ordinals-Bitcoin network. It should not be mistaken as the definitive model for social networking on this platform. Indeed, there may be alternate designs and optimization strategies that could improve upon this model. Given the fluid nature of this experiment, it is strongly discouraged to make any definitive assertions based on this design. However, the Bitcoin-Ordinals community is invited to dabble, explore, and experiment with this idea until a community consensus emerges about its efficacy, or until it is collectively dismissed.

Idea

This experiment seeks to evaluate whether ordinal theory can facilitate a decentralized social networking system, termed as Recursive BBS (Bulletin Board System), on the Bitcoin blockchain.

• Construct a Recursive BBS with the "create_board" function. The creation of a board on the BBS system does not alter the state of any participant or the overall system, similar to the deployment of a brc-20.

• Generate a post on the BBS with the "post" function. Posts are analogous to minting an amount of brc-20, adding content to the system. The post function inscription's content gets credited only to the initial owner of the inscription.

• Facilitate interaction on the BBS via the "reply" function. This function allows users to respond to posts and can be seen as a type of transfer, subtracting from the original poster's balance of replies and adding to the responder's. The process is as follows: 1. Inscribe the reply function to the responder's address. 2. The responder replies to the post.

A participant's activity state within the Recursive BBS can be discovered by aggregating all these function's activity together, much like the brc-20 balance state.

How to

Joining and interacting with the Recursive BBS requires the following steps:

• Create a Board: Inscribe the create_board function to your Ordinal compatible wallet. The parameters for board creation need to be set at this stage.

• Post a Message: Inscribe the post function to your Ordinal compatible wallet. Ensure that the board identifier matches a) the board you created, or b) any board that accepts posts.

• Reply to a Post: Inscribe the reply function to your Ordinal compatible wallet, ensuring the reply function inscription information is valid before inscribing. Like the transfer function in brc-20, the reply function serves to engage with the original post.

Notes

• Do not send inscriptions to non-Ordinal compatible wallet taproot addresses.

• Each post and reply inscription can only be used once.

• The first board created with a unique identifier claims the identifier. Identifiers are not case sensitive.

• If two events occur in the same block, prioritization is assigned via the order they were confirmed in the block.

• The post function and the reply function are the only events that cause changes in the state of the board.

• There are no valid actions via spending of an ordinal via transaction fee.

• In case of spam or inappropriate posts, board moderators can be established, with the power to inscribe "delete_post" or "ban_user" functions to maintain the health of the network. The implementation of moderation would need to be a community consensus decision.

This is just a fun experimental standard demonstrating that you can create off-chain social networking systems with inscriptions. It by no means should be considered THE standard for social networking on Bitcoin with Ordinals, as there are almost certainly better design choices and optimization improvements to be made. Consequently, this is an extremely dynamic experiment, and I strongly discourage any decisions to be made on the basis of its design. I do, however, encourage the Bitcoin community to tinker with standard designs and optimizations until a general consensus on best practices is met.

Operations

Create Board

• Everyone could create one BBS board permissionly

• There are no special permissions for the board creator

{ 
  "p": "bbs",
  "op": "create",
  "board": "Ordinals",
  "desc": "Anything about Ordinals"
}

Key	Required?	Description
p	Yes	Protocol: Helps other systems identify and process bbs events
op	Yes	Operation: Type of event (Create, Post, Replay)
board	Yes	Uniq BBS board name, created based on first come first serve rule
desc	No	BBS board description

Publish Topic

{ 
  "p": "bbs",
  "op": "post",
  "board": "Bitcoin",
  "title": "How to publish one new topic",
  "content": "You need to inscribe one topic inscription to publish one new topic",
  "tags": ["Bitcoin", "Ordinals"]
}

Key	Required?	Description
p	Yes	Protocol: Helps other systems identify and process bbs events
op	Yes	Operation: Type of event (Create, Post, Replay)
board	Yes	Board name
title	Yes	Topic title
content	Yes	Topic content
tags	No	Tags from user, no strict restriction

Reply Topic

{ 
  "p": "bbs",
  "op": "reply",
  "href": "/content/<INSCRIPTION_ID>"
  "content": "Agree with you"
}

Key	Required?	Description
p	Yes	Protocol: Helps other systems identify and process bbs events
op	Yes	Operation: Type of event (Create, Post, Replay)
href	Yes	Recursive specific topic
content	Yes	The content of this reply