A social network concept · alpha
edgeless.social is a network of fluid groups that live on the servers you read from and publish to. Carry a cryptographic identity with you, inhabit many groups at once, wander to other servers, meet people — and decide, group by group, how open each conversation should be.
Openness is a dial, not a switch
By default, groups on edgeless.social are porous: outsiders can follow along, reply, and be seen by the group. But every group — and every server that hosts groups — can draw its own edge. Here are the rules the network understands, from most open to most closed.
Anyone can read posts, comments, and replies. Anyone can request to follow the group and interact. Wanderers from other servers see it in their explore feeds just like locals do.
rule: allow_read(all) · allow_interact(all)
Outsiders can read top-level posts, but comments and replies stay inside the group. Lurkers get the headlines; the conversation itself belongs to members.
rule: allow_read(threads:members_only)
Reading extends to people connected to the group through someone already inside — and, if the group chooses, one hop further (friends-of-friends-of-friends). Trust grows outward like ripples.
rule: allow_read(hops <= 2) · optional hops <= 3
Only members read and write. The group may run its own server — or congregate around one run by someone it trusts — so the content never leaves machines it controls.
rule: allow_read(members) · allow_write(members) · home: self_hosted
One person can belong to a level 0 group, a level 2 group, and a level 3 group at the same time — with the same identity, through the same client. Openness isn't a property of the network. It's a property of every group you're in.
Three pillars
No single server owns you or your social graph. The concept only works because identities, servers, and clients each carry a piece of the puzzle.
You are a keypair, not a row in a database. Your identity exists outside the realm of any server, so you can inhabit and publish to many of them at once — and leave one without leaving yourself behind.
Groups are defined by where they read from and write to. Join two servers and you inhabit two overlapping publics. Groups merge, split, and drift as their members and servers change.
Clients talk to many servers in different ways at the same time — merging timelines, resolving follow graphs, and honoring each group's openness rules. The protocol is boring; the client is clever.
hover the nodes
A wanderer with one keypair: posting to two home groups, reading three more servers, and following people scattered across all of them.
Writes are signed by your keypair and pushed to every server your groups live on.
Reads fan out in parallel; your client stitches the results into one coherent feed.
Follows are properties of you, not of any server — they survive migration.
Server software
Servers are interchangeable infrastructure — relays that store and forward signed events. Different implementations for different temperaments.
Layered, opinionated server with built-in group semantics. Enforces openness rules at the edge — porous by default, closed when asked. A good first home for a group.
Minimal, swarm-like relay. Runs on a laptop, a phone, a potato. Zooids coordinate to host groups collectively — perfect for closed groups that don't want a single point of trust.
A fast relay core with a plugin pipeline for filtering, shaping, and gating events. Maximal throughput, maximal flexibility — bring your own edge policy as a plugin.
Clients
Clients are the smart half of the network: they speak to many servers, in different ways, at the same time. You don't need a tailored client for every group — but tailored ones make each group feel like home.
A general-purpose client for inhabiting several groups at once. Unified inbox, group switching, wander mode for exploring foreign servers, and per-group privacy indicators built into every thread.
A raw, hackable client that shows the machinery: relays, subscriptions, event flows, rule evaluation. Jumble is how you test a new server, debug a group policy, or fall down the rabbit hole.
A calm, typography-first reading client. Verdana follows people across servers and assembles a longform reading experience — quiet, slow, and respectful of each group's edges.
Try it
Every group sits somewhere on this spectrum. Move the slider to see what a group's edge looks like from the inside — and from the outside.
Not quite. Servers don't talk to each other on your behalf — your client does, talking to many servers in parallel. Your identity, your follows, and your group memberships are yours, not per-server records. Servers are storage and policy, not landlords.
The same thing that happens with any cryptographic identity: you plan for it. The protocol supports rotating keys and announcing successors, and many people will delegate recovery to a server or a group they trust. Losing a key is losing a key — the design goal is losing a server never is.
A truly closed group needs more than a rule — it needs a home. That's why groups can run or congregate around their own server (or several): encrypt to members only, replicate only among trusted relays, and no outsider relay ever sees a cleartext reply. Hop-limited rules are softer: they leak a little, on purpose.
Because the intelligence is supposed to live in clients, there should be many of them competing and cooperating. hallway for daily life, jumble for tinkering, verdana for reading. Your groups work with all of them; a tailored client is a bonus, never a requirement.
The network itself has no edge — no center, no boundary, no one on the outside looking in by default. Edges exist only where people choose to draw them, one group at a time. Hence: no walls, just edges.
The alpha is open. Come inhabit a group, run a relay, or build the client you wish existed.