Using xx Network to Ensure Privacy and Integrity for University Students in "Unipedia"

Hello xx Network Community,

I am developing a project called Unipedia, an innovative platform for university students. The core idea is to create a trustworthy and privacy-focused environment where students can rate and review their universities, faculties, campuses, and departments with 100% authenticity. I’ve been following xx Network for a while, and I believe its privacy-focused blockchain technology would be a perfect fit for this project. Here’s a summary of my project and what I aim to achieve with xx Network:

What is Unipedia?

  • Authenticity Verification:
    Students register with their official university email addresses. This ensures that they are truly enrolled at their university.
  • Document Hashing for Validation:
    To confirm their faculty and department information, students upload a document (e.g., proof of enrollment). Currently, this process is manual: I verify the document, hash it, and delete the original. This keeps the data private while ensuring the document’s validity is provable.
  • Reviews and Ratings:
    Students can post one review per university, campus, faculty, or department. These reviews are tied to verified users, ensuring 100% authentic feedback that cannot be tampered with.

Goals for Using xx Network in Unipedia

  1. Enhanced Privacy and Anonymity:
    Students must feel confident their personal information and reviews are private. With xx Network, I envision:
  • Using anonymized identities for students.
  • Storing hashes of reviews and documents on the blockchain to prevent tampering while preserving privacy.
  • Employing xxDK or similar tools to guarantee the anonymity of all interactions.
  1. Blockchain-Powered Integrity:
  • Reviews would be stored on a quantum-secure blockchain like xx Network to ensure that they cannot be altered or deleted.
  • A timestamp feature to validate when a review was created.
  1. Future Expansion:
    In the long term, I want to expand the platform to include:
  • Communication features where students can anonymously connect, form groups, share ideas, and collaborate.
  • Private groups (similar to Facebook Groups) and chat rooms for campuses, faculties, or departments, all protected by the anonymity and security provided by xx Network.

Why xx Network?

I believe xx Network’s quantum-secure blockchain and privacy-focused tools are ideal for making this vision a reality. I have no prior experience with blockchain but have been using Django and Next.js to build the platform. My questions for the community are:

  1. Where should I begin to integrate xx Network into my project?
  2. Are there specific resources, tools, or SDKs that could help me implement xx Network features such as hashing, anonymity, or timestamping?
  3. What is the best way to structure a blockchain integration for features like user anonymity and review storage?
    I’d greatly appreciate any guidance or suggestions you might have, as I truly believe xx Network can elevate this project to a new level of privacy and security for university students.

Thank you for your help, and I’m excited to bring this vision to life with the support of the xx Network community!

2 Likes

I do recognize this it states you are developing the project. The following suggests some existing user base so maybe a website exists.

Does the project have an existing website? Can you share more about the progress you and/or the development team has made?

A word of caution, the .com domain for the project name you propose redirects the visitor to what some refer to as a degree mill. I’m not suggesting you have any affiliation with that domain but it’s something to be aware of and keep in mind when designing a system that is expected to be able to, “confirm their faculty and department information, students upload a document (e.g., proof of enrollment).”

But with that said, this kind of “rate and review” platform is one that could certainly make use of the privacy preserving capability of cMixx and the xx network.

Tell us more!

There are several points of potential integration.

Personally I would start in the opposite order. Submitting reviews while your IP address or your email is known to the Web site (where service runs) is not going to be privacy-protected.

Note that cMix keeps data for 21 days (at this time), after which it expires. But that’s okay for discussions that do not need to be retained (for example, only reviews can be retained and that can be done elsewhere). cMixx isn’t meant for long term archival and serving of blobs.

If reviews are submitted from generic Web3 client, they can be posted to a Web 3 store (e.g. Storj), but you also need the ability to remove reviews (e.g. that contain illegal pornography).

So, to recap:

  • xx chain (not cMixx service) have on-chain identity which shares the API with general PolkadotSDK on-chain identity (not parachain such as People). This means that the workflow for proving identity would be to use external registrar or peers to prove on-chain identity, and cMixx users would refer to this identity.
  • Users can prove their identity in cMixx (chats) by signing their cMix codename from xx Network wallet. This isn’t hard to do because all Substrate-based wallets work the same way, and API examples are abundant. This could be done from PolkadotJs or similar Web3 browser extension.
  • Once in cMixx/Haven, privacy-protected discussion happens and to protect review repo (e.g. Storj) from spamming, a “community representative” would approve review by co-signing it, and then the user could upload it to Storj. This community rep would be a person elected by users (could be done in xx Network Wallet, the way Council is elected) or by service owner (“employees”). There are all sorts of governance and legal landmines here, of course
  • Web site could provide a simple search interface for online reviews. Because querying and downloading has cost, the user would need a Web3 wallet to either pay “membership” fees or pay for download themselves.

Yes, there’s a developer guide and there are examples such as here. You can also look at the Haven source code.

You don’t need any “timestamping”, all transactions are timestamped. The moment a signed review is pulled off the Web, date can be derived from block height (which can reveal time of generation).

As per above, I’d do external identity, chat app on cMix (maybe use modified Haven) and submit reviews to Storj or similar using co-signing (muti-sign, for example). I don’t know how you’d get paid for your work and running costs.

It’s not a simple app, and to be honest if you are asking where to start, I think your odds aren’t that great… Maybe it’d be easier to just run own Haven space without any registration, and gradually build from there.