How it Works
Tribe Protocol uses a hybrid architecture that balances on-chain security with off-chain performance.
The Trust Model
Content on Tribe is stored off-chain on Hubs to ensure speed and low cost. However, every piece of content is cryptographically signed and verifiable against the user's on-chain identity.
On-Chain Registration
User registers a TID and an App Key (ed25519) on Solana.
Off-Chain Signing
User signs a message (e.g., a tweet) with their App Key secret.
Hub Verification
The Hub verifies the signature and checks that the App Key is valid on Solana.
Gossip Synchronization
Hubs sync over a pull-based WebSocket gossip protocol — every 5 seconds, peers exchange four frame types. The result is eventual consistency without a central broker.
Handshake — exchange hub IDs and last-seen vector clocks.
Broadcast BLAKE3 hashes of recently-stored envelopes.
Reply with hashes the peer is missing.
Full signed envelopes flow back to fill the gaps.
New hubs catch up immediately via tribe sync --peer all, which forces a 30-day HAVE blast at every connected peer instead of waiting for the next 5 s tick.
The Settlement Loop
Ephemeral Rollup operations follow a strict 10-second settlement cycle to ensure on-chain finality.
Operation Received
ER Server receives a signed follow/unfollow and updates optimistic state.
Batching
Server batches multiple operations into a single Solana transaction.
L1 Settlement
Transaction is signed by the sequencer and sent to Solana L1.