Private Social Graphs and Consent in Ethereum Communities

Manu Alzuru presented a session on private social graphs at Devcon, hosted by the Ethereum Foundation. The discussion focused on how Ethereum communities coordinate through informal trust, such as vouching, hosting, inviting, funding, protecting, and holding responsibility. When digitized poorly, these processes turn into social-credit mechanics, exposed relationship graphs, or platform-owned identity. Drawing from work with ETHBarcelona, Blockravers, Lovepunks, FightPandemics, and DAOs, the session shared a practical model for consent-based private social graphs. This model features situated vouches, revocable access, local stewards, expiring claims, and community memory to help people coordinate without creating surveillance. Builders received design questions for wallets, DAOs, events, pop-up cities, grant programs, and artist communities regarding public versus local data, claim makers, consent withdrawal, and avoiding gatekeeping infrastructure.