Oasis is a libre, encrypted, peer-to-peer social network. There is no central server, no account anyone can close and no company holding your data: your Oasis lives on your device and talks directly to the devices of the people you support.
Your identity is a keyThe first time it starts, Oasis generates a key pair. That key is your identity: no username, no password, no email, no phone number.
Everything you publish is signed with it and chained to what came before:
{ previous: "%...", sequence: 42, author: "@...", signature: "..." }Each message points at the previous one, so your history can only be continued, never rewritten. For the same reason, if you lose the key nobody can get it back for you: keep a copy before you need one. See Backups.
Peer to peer: who keeps whatYou don't connect to a place; you sync with people. Every device keeps its own copy of what it cares about:
Your whole historyThe history of those you followThe history of those they follow, up to two hops by defaultThat distance is called hops and you set it. Anything you already hold can be read and written offline; when you meet someone again, you catch up with each other. On a local network, nodes find each other over UDP without touching the Internet.
What nobody replicates disappears. That is why who you support matters.Federation: PUBsTwo people who are never online at the same time need someone awake in between. That is a PUB: an Oasis that stays on, replicating and relaying, without ruling over anything.
It owns nothing: it only stores and passes on what is already publicAnyone can run oneYou can be on several, or on noneBeyond that, the Multiverse module connects your Oasis to Mastodon and Telegram, so you can read and post there without leaving.
EncryptionPublic messages are signed, not encrypted: whoever replicates you can read youPrivate ones are sealed with each recipient's key; not even the PUB carrying them can open themTribes add a symmetric key of their own, handed out only to membersShared files travel encryptedWhat encryption does not do: hide your IP from whoever connects to you, or unread what someone already read.
Clearnet: the window outwardsBy default, Oasis does not show on the web. If you want it to, under Profile → Edit you switch on, module by module, what may be seen from outside.
A PUB then serves a read-only HUB at /c, where anyone with a browser can read, watch and listen, but never write. Those preferences travel with you, so they hold on any PUB that replicates you. Nothing else in your log is exposed.
InvitesNobody gets in through a signup form. You get in because somebody opens the door:
An invite code from a PUB hooks it into your network and it starts replicating youA tribe invite also carries the key to read its contentAnd you can always follow someone by hand with their identifierThis article in other languages: index.