Support for Open Protocols

Among calls to break up big tech, there have been proponents for opening up big tech companies (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/04/11/should-big-technology-companies-break-up-or-break-open/). It’d be really cool to create a social protocol on Blockstack where users store their own status updates, images, videos, followers, etc… Users would be able to use any app that uses the protocol. They would be able to post content on one app and see it on another app using the protocol.

I believe that right now this is only possible if all data were made public in users’ Gaia storage hubs, but not if users wanted to make data private. My understanding of private storage is that decrypting data requires an app specific private key that is created during a user session and requires the domain of the site the user is on to be the site listed in the users Gaia storage hub. (Please correct me if this understanding is wrong in any way)

I’d love to hear if building open protocols on Blockstack is possible right now, if you’re considering adding support for them, or if there are any technical limitations.

Thanks

This open protocol is called “Collections” and under development in feature branches across repos, e.g. https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack.js/tree/feature/collections-api?files=1

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