SEI: Social Element Identifier

Social Element Identifier

The Social Element Identifier (SEI) is a protocol specifically designed for identifying social elements. The existing Decentralized Identifier (DID) protocol assigns an immutable ID to each element. While the data associated with a DID can be stored off-chain, the DID itself must be recorded on the blockchain, which incurs certain costs. Given the significant costs associated with storing information on the blockchain, it is not economically feasible to store all content generated by a social organization in this manner.

Instead, we connect off-chain social elements to tokenized assets, enabling these elements to initiate asset transactions within a social context. Many social elements are currently stored off-chain; therefore, our protocols introduce SEIs to facilitate the identification of off-chain elements when interacting with on-chain contracts. This ensures that interactions involving on-chain elements are both SEI and DID compatible.

To establish this effective link, each social element is assigned an SEI, a string that uniquely identifies a specific social element. The specific composition of an SEI is demonstrated below:

Component	Description
Prefix	All Clover SEIs start with the prefix SEI
Domain	A platform name with unique identifier, or a DID
Element Type Identifier	UserProfile: user Post: post Chat: chat Group: group Community: community Message: message Livestreaming: live Activity: activity Comment: comment
Element ID	The unique ID of the element

sei:<Domain>:<Element Type Identifier>:<Element ID> constitutes a complete SEI. Some examples are below:

• User Profile: sei:clover.space:user:12345887737123

• Post: sei:clover.space:post:1231783164781283

• Message: sei:clover.space:message:47293749762361

Using a unique SEI allows us to easily bind social elements to smart contract interactions.

SEI & DID

According to the W3C DID standard, a user can be represented by their Decentralized Identifier (DID). As SEI is DID-compatible, if a user is represented by their DID, we may express that user using the following template:

• sei:<did>

• Where <did> is a complete DID string containing the did URI scheme identifier, as shown in the following format:

Acquisition of a DID is handled by the DID provider. For more details, please refer to DID specifications and associated provider agreements.

SEI & Decentralized Name Service

Decentralized Name Services, such as the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and BNB Name Service, aim to enhance the reading of and the use of addresses by offering services akin to the traditional DNS. SEI plans to support these decentralized Name Service protocols, ensuring compatibility with existing solutions.

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) is a decentralized, open, and scalable naming protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. It assigns human-friendly names like 'alice.eth' to machine-readable identifiers, including Ethereum addresses, addresses of other cryptocurrencies, content hashes, metadata, and more. Additionally, ENS enables 'reverse resolution,' allowing for the association of metadata, such as canonical names or interface descriptions, with Ethereum addresses, thereby enriching the blockchain's usability and interactivity.

Our protocol's SEI supports the ENS format, utilizing the syntax <SEI>:<ENS>. When it is identified that an SEI domain is in the ENS format, our protocol automatically recognizes this and queries the relevant services in an effort to retrieve the data mapped by ENS.

• Format: <SEI>:<ENS>

• Example: sei:subdomian.nick.eth

How an SEI Obtains the Corresponding Social Element Information

To allow any application to display social elements, apps supporting our protocols can return social element data corresponding to an SEI using a data access API.

• Agreed API

  • https://domain/sei?sei=urlencode(<sei>)

• Data Returned:

Field	Type	Description
status	int8	Status: 1: Success 101: Associated social element not found 102: Information not public 103: Other error
sei	string	Requested SEI
element	object	Specific social element data, returned when status=1
chainInfo	object	Blockchain related information:{ "chainId": Chain ID， "contractAddress": Contract Address} This is the blockchain data associated with the returned social element. If there is none, it is not returned. It is used primarily for contracts, posts, and messages. When social elements are returned, then any contract information can also be returned.
nonce	int64	Random integer (related to signature)
signature	string	The signature with subject "<sei>|nonce" is a string containing the entire SEI. The data is signed by the organization specified in the domain section, who guarantees trust and authenticity. For more information, please see Validation of Agent and Platform Certificates and Signatures.

• When an element returns information, it returns its basic fields in accordance with the following:

Field	Type	Required	Description
id	string	Yes	Social element ID
type	string	Yes	UserProfile: user Post: post Chat: chat Group: group Community: community Message: message Live streaming: live Activity:activity Comment: comment
image	string	No	Image address, if type=user, then this is a required field
name	string	No	Name, if type=user, chat, group, community, live, or activity then this is a required field
content	string	No	The content of the post, message, etc.

The following is an SEI request that returns user data:

// user example
{
    "status": 1,
    "sei": "sei:clover.space:user:1236465788746889931",
    "element": {
        "id": "1236465788746889931",
        "type": "user",
        "image": "https://clover.space/p/296429520384023842165927850.webp",
        "name": "Utaiu",
    },
    "nonce": 1710756874,
    "signature": "MGUCMC57rvo92gCigOSl1OvP1ROFv1zS0l6wSsIvzWzxT3h027VwzGBCSR/AsLgWhEXQUQIxAM5bI61tA0LvCWn3GM8p48E5OxsYRKE869ekejXfzt6vt42i51OsyTgksAT6vL48oA=="// sei:clover.space:user:1236465788746889931|1710756874
}