Conversation

Maggie 🔜 visting SFO 🇺🇸
@Mappletons
1/ We've been working a new protocol at
@hashintel
It's called the block protocol (but NOT about blockchain or NFTs!) It allows you to build reusable blocks (aka. components) that are interchangeable across website/apps It takes a minute to explain, but I’ve drawn pictures…
Diagram of a set of individual blocks mapping onto the block protocol, and being inserted into multiple web apps like documents and website builders.
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Maggie 🔜 visting SFO 🇺🇸
@Mappletons
2/ Blocks are the fancy interactive elements you can add to most doc editors and websites nowadays – text, tables, checklists, images, embeds, etc. You’ve seen these in apps like Notion, Wordpress Gutenberg, and Coda
A web app with a series of individual blocks types inside, and a picture of the typical block picker menu that appears when you type slash into one of these editors.
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Maggie 🔜 visting SFO 🇺🇸
@Mappletons
3/ At the moment most apps create these from scratch and keep them contained within their ecosystem. You can’t move blocks from one app to another. So we keep reinventing the same blocks over and over. Everyone spends more time building. Fewer people get to use what’s been made
Three block based apps with three different table blocks inside them, with red crosses between them signalling that you can't move any of these table blocks between the applications
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Maggie 🔜 visting SFO 🇺🇸
@Mappletons
4/ The Block Protocol (BP) is an attempt to save us from this sad fate of walled block gardens. Blocks that follow the protocol can be embedded into any app that follows the protocol. It’s the DMZ of interoperability. Build a block once, embed it anywhere that accepts BP blocks
A diagram of a single block that displays a book cover, title, and author being embedded into three separate web apps that follow the Block Protocol.
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