View Proposal

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Proposer

Zi Hau Chin

Title

VeriPost: A Reputation-Aware Decentralised Social Platform with Verifiable Content Provenance and Community Moderation

Goal

Design and Evaluation of a Decentralised Social Platform with Content Provenance, Sybil-Resistant Reputation, and Community Moderation

Description

This project aims to develop VeriPost, a Decentralised Message Board (DApp) that leverages blockchain technology to store public messages. Unlike centralised platforms, VeriPost ensures that messages are immutable (cannot be changed or deleted), transparent (publicly viewable), and censorship-resistant. A key feature will be a "like" system, allowing users to express support for messages, with the like counts stored and updated directly on the blockchain. This project will involve two main components: 1. Smart Contract (Solidity): A program deployed on an Ethereum-compatible blockchain (e.g., Sepolia Testnet). This contract will define the rules for posting messages, storing them, and tracking unique "likes" for each message. 2. Web-based/Mobile Application (Web3.js, HTML, CSS, JavaScript; Flutter, React Native...): A simple frontend that allows users to connect their Web3 wallet (like MetaMask), submit new messages, view all posted messages with their like counts, and interact by liking a message (once per user per message). A fully on-chain message board is technically simple but has serious limitations. Storing complete messages on a public blockchain is expensive, difficult to scale, and impossible to remove if users publish personal information, illegal material, or abusive content. Immutability should therefore be applied to content provenance, not necessarily permanent public display. VeriPost should preserve verifiable evidence that: -A particular account submitted a post -A specific content version existed -A post was edited -A post was hidden by a moderation decision -Users reacted to the post -A community note or challenge was attached -A moderation decision was appealed The content itself can be stored on IPFS or another off-chain service, while its hash and version history are recorded on-chain.

Resources

OpenZeppelin contracts, hardhat, ipfs/kubo, graphprotocol/graph-node, sliter, echidna

Background

JavaScript or TypeScript and web or mobile development; Solidity and smart-contract fundamentals; Blockchain wallets, signatures, and transactions; Databases, event indexing, and decentralised storage

Url

Difficulty Level

High

Ethical Approval

Full

Number Of Students

1

Supervisor

Zi Hau Chin

Keywords

web development, app development, web3, blockchain, smart contract, decentralised social media, content provenance, ipfs, on-chain reputation, sybil resistance

Degrees

Bachelor of Science in Computing Science