What's Portrait?
This section is written to be a high-level overview of Portrait.
Portrait allows anyone to create, host, and interact with micro-websites—called Portraits—easily and securely on any device, helping you share meaningful experiences and build deeper, authentic connections with the people you care about.
An open, peer-to-peer, visual-first social network
Portrait is an open, peer-to-peer, visual-first social network that combines a protocol and an application into one unified system. Designed from the ground up to embrace the principles of decentralization, it enables anyone to fully own, design, and share their digital self in a network that is both resilient and participatory.
Protocols like Farcaster and AT Protocol have pioneered this combined approach with Warpcast and Bluesky, respectively, showcasing the potential of uniting protocols with powerful user interfaces. Portrait builds on these learnings by removing the need for distinction between the protocol and the application: both are one and the same; Portrait is the protocol and the application.
This tight integration ensures a seamless experience for users while remaining open and composable for developers who wish to expand on the Protocol.
A user-centric, privacy-first, and visually immersive network
Portrait is built by a team of human computer interaction researchers, designers, and engineers who believe that the future of social networks should be decentralized, user-centric, privacy-first, and visually immersive. The network is designed to be a place where users can share their true selves, connect with others, and explore new ideas in a way that is both meaningful and engaging.
Portrait supports a new kind of interaction, where users take part not just as followers but as active participants: hosters.
On Portrait, hosting goes beyond the interactions and engagement of traditional social networks. Instead of following or liking, users actively allocate a portion of their storage space on their device to host the Portraits of others. If needed by the network, these Portraits are then served to other users over a privacy-first peer-to-peer communication protocol: Waku.
This peer-to-peer mechanism strengthens the network while fostering deeper, more authentic connections. Hosting someone’s Portrait is a statement of trust, support, and engagement, turning relationships into tangible commitments within the network.
Think of it as torrenting, but for personal micro-websites. Just like how the best torrents are seeded by users who support them, hosting a Portrait means dedicating your resources to ensure someone’s digital identity is accessible and resilient. By participating as hosters, users directly contribute to the durability and decentralization of the network, ensuring that no single party has control over the data.
Built for a New Internet
Portrait represents a shift in how social platforms are designed and governed. Portrait expands the vision of a New Internet by designing interfaces, interactions, and incentives from the ground up to prioritize user autonomy, privacy, and decentralization.
The mission statement of Portrait is to enable autonomy in everyday internet usage.