Ever since the creation of smart contracts there has been a promise of building new kinds of decentralized social networks. In practice what has been built have been impoverished clones of existing social networks (for example, EtherTweet) that lack key features, such as the ability to follow others. That is because most smart contract networks do not keep user data private. Plus, they have not innovated around the strengths of the blockchain to rethink the types of relations that the social network aims to foster.
With Fardels we aim to improve on both counts. By building on Secret Network, important aspects of user data can be kept private. And just as Twitter innovated around sharing short pieces of information, Fardels is designed to foster a culture of sharing digital items of small value.
A fardel is a bundle or collection of information that you carry to the decentralized web to share with others. The contents of a fardel can be a link to a file, an image, or even a short piece of text like the punchline to a joke. It is something others are willing to pay a small price to access (e.g., no more than 5 scrt), and because the price is low there is little risk in unpacking one. There are no limitations on what kinds of contents are shared. It can be a link to an immutable file on IPFS or a simple Dropbox link. Thus, the contents can be permanent on the blockchain or they can be ephemeral, copyable, deletable, sharable. You can think of them as anti-NFTs, because the content creator earns money based on the demand of the users to unpack the fardel, not because of its high value.
If the fardel was something that made you smile, that you found useful, or simply valued in some way then you can leave a positive comment and rate it up, so others will know it is something they might want to unpack as well. And if the contents are a let down or disappear (for example, it contains a link to a file that no longer exists), well... you can write a negative comment and rate it down. It didn't cost much so no great loss. Over time content creators who create quality content will get good ratings and will begin to gain social capital in the community. People will trust them and want to unpack more of what they have to offer.