epress world protocol (EWP)

Version 1.0 · Status: Stable Draft

The epress world protocol (EWP) defines how autonomous self-hosted nodes establish cryptographic identity, manage directed follow relationships, publish content with verifiable provenance, and replicate that content across a peer-to-peer network — without any central coordinator.

Why EWP?

Problem	EWP Solution
You don't own your social presence	Each node is independently operated, no central coordinator
Platform can delete your account	Identity anchored to Ethereum address you control
Content provenance is unverifiable	Every publication carries cryptographic Proof of Source
APIs are paywalled or rate-limited	All endpoints are open, no authentication required for reads

Core Concepts

Self-Sovereign Identity

Your Ethereum address is your identity. No username, no password, no platform account. You prove ownership by signing messages with your private key.

Proof of Source (PoS)

Every publication includes a Statement of Source signed by the publisher:

{
  "contentHash": "0x...",
  "publisherAddress": "0x...",
  "timestamp": 1735000000
}

Anyone can verify: this address published this exact content at this time.

Notify-Pull Distribution

Publishers broadcast lightweight proofs; followers pull full content on demand. No bandwidth spikes, works even when followers are offline.

Protocol Stack

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Application Layer                 │
│       (blogs, feeds, readers, crawlers, bots)      │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│           epress world protocol (EWP)              │
│   Identity · Connections · PoS · Replication       │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│         EIP-712 Typed Data Signatures              │
│              secp256k1 · SHA-256                   │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  HTTP / HTTPS                      │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Quick Start

Endpoints

Method	Path	Description
GET	/ewp/profile	Node identity and metadata
GET	/ewp/publications	Signed publication index
GET	/ewp/contents/:hash	Fetch content by hash
POST	/ewp/connections	Follow handshake

Reference Implementation

The epress project is the reference implementation of EWP v1.

Next Steps

• Read about Identity and Node
• Understand Content Provenance
• Explore the HTTP API Reference
• Learn about EIP-712 message types