The Tribes Ecosystem
Overview
Section titled “Overview”At its heart, Tribes is meant to be a decentralized system. One of the biggest problems with the internet is that the very communication between people has been monetized and turned into an asset for large multinational corporations. This is the Commerical Internet.
Tribes hopes to act as a counter balance to this. This page will go over the different pieces of Tribes ecosystem and how they work together to create a cohesive network.
Tribes server admins
Section titled “Tribes server admins”These are the people who create the spaces for people to congregate. The Tribes server software is designed to have a small footprint and is able to be run on everything from laptops to a Raspberry Pi. Because of this, server admins can run Tribes servers very cheaply. Now, the software has an upper limit of how many people can join a single server. This limit leaves space for other server admins to create servers on the same topics. This means that there shouldn’t be a cadre of 2-3 servers that monopolize a topic.
Server registries
Section titled “Server registries”A server registry is a service that provides an easy way for people to remember the address of a Tribes server. Instead of remembering an IP address or an onion address, a person can share a link like they would a link of the Commerical Internet.
Server registries can also act as a promotion tool and discovery tool for people. If you are into 90s anime movies, then you can go the server registry that specializes in that particular genre and find all of the servers that have registered with them.
These registries can also offer proxy services so that a Tribes server running on the Tor network can be accessed by others without downloading Tor. The server registry would act as a middleman, making the connection for you and keeping it private.
Server registries are an optional thing though. No server admin is under any obligation to register their Tribes server.
ID Registries / Messaging
Section titled “ID Registries / Messaging”This service is also optional but plays an important part in the ecosystem by moving communication outside of the confines of the Tribes server and into the greater internet.
For those people who want to keep the conversations going beyond the Tribes server, they can join one of these services. The ID Registries allow someone to present a centralized view of their identity in the Tribes network. ID Registries can act as beacons of truth. If someone is trying to impersonate you on the Tribes network by saying “send messages to this new public key”, then the ID Registry will be the final say on this, i.e. the public key listed on the registry is where people should send messages if they want it get to you.
And that leads us to messaging. Every Tribes client will have a section where you can encrypt and decrypt messages sent to your public key, but the question is how will someone send these encrypted messages to you?
They will have to use another message medium to do that. They could encrypt a message and send it via email, or via Signal chat, or text message or via Whatsapp. You would then have to copy that message into the client to decrypt it.
Messaging services seek to be the medium to send encrypted messages back and forth outside of the tribes client. This makes it so people can talk “across” the different Tribes servers that they are members of. Because services like this will most likely have to be paid, I don’t expect a lot of people to sign up. But the ones that do will probably be the social glue of the entire network.
Proxy server admins
Section titled “Proxy server admins”I mentioned before that server registries could offer proxy servers as a part of the value proposition for Tribes server admins to join. Proxy server admins are people who set up proxies to other encrypted networks that happen to be running a Tribes server.
Want to access a Tribes server that is on the Tor network? You will need to go through a proxy server to get it. If you have the technical experience, you can set up your own, or you can use a proxy server set up by someone else. These may or may not be paid. They may be only accessible to members of a certain Tribes server. They may be open to everyone. It is totally up to the proxy server admin.
Tool and client developers
Section titled “Tool and client developers”This group is for very technical people. The Tribes protocol is open source, so anyone can develop server software extensions and clients for people to use. This way a person who uses the Tribes network will have a variety of choice.
The open source nature of the project means that the nature and scope of the network will change with time. It will actually represent how people are using the network.
Conclusion
Section titled “Conclusion”Most “decentralized” social media networks fail because they are not truly decentralized. Look at Bluesky. They have the AT Protocol, but for all intents and purposes, everyone just goes to the same server. Functionally, it is just like Twitter was. Tribes was designed so that there is a place for everyone to grow the network.