This talk introduces Neighbourhoods: a proposed organizing principle for social spaces on the distributed web using Holochain. We envision “groupware” (like calendars, simple games, chat, collaborative docs, etc.) decoupled from reputation and group culture metrics (e.g. entry and exit rules, engagement incentives, likes or claps, visibility and feed ordering); in social platforms on the centralized web, these distinct functions are typically combined. To facilitate neighbourhoods, we are building a language and “interchange” for reputation data on Holochain such that users can connect a portable reputation extension to bundles of Holochain groupware.

Groups can then use the neighbourhoods framework to bundle p2p modules with reputational and cultural inputs that relate to their particular use cases and style of relating. This also means individuals’ reputation and activity records are stored on their devices, and so can be ported to other neighbourhoods and verified using Holochain’s gossip protocol for data validation. Neighbourhoods is centered on the Holochain ecosystem, but it may also be of interest to dWeb communities and projects aspiring to traffic in “richer” data than ownership claims & token counts - especially when those data support community collective intelligence.

Much of the system remains to be built, but the core language - rep_lang - has been integrated with Holochain. We’ll close with a brief demo showing one key aspect of the system: rep_lang computations being validated by multiple agents on Holochain.