PUBLIC VS PRIVATE PUB
A pub is just a relay — it never owns your data, only passes it along.
The difference between public and private is simple: who gets in,
and what content flows through it. Here's the plain-language breakdown.
Open to anyone with an invite. Content flows freely across the network.
You grab an invite code, paste it into OASIS, and you're connected — no admin has to
approve you. The pub replicates everything it can reach: posts, profiles, forums, media.
Think of it as the main gateway into the broader OASIS federation.
OPEN ACCESS
FULL FEDERATION
BLOB CACHE
Invite-only. Every member is approved manually by the admin.
No public invite exists. The admin follows you manually — that's your entry ticket.
The pub only relays content from feeds it explicitly trusts, so nothing from outside
leaks in. Built for closed communities, teams, or groups that need full control
over who is part of their network.
ADMIN APPROVAL
CURATED FEEDS
MINIMAL STORAGE
| FEATURE |
◎ PUBLIC PUB |
◉ PRIVATE PUB |
|
Who can connect?
How you get access
|
✓
Anyone with an invite code. No approval needed — one token and you're in.
|
✗
Only people the admin manually follows. No public token exists — unknown nodes are rejected outright.
|
|
What gets replicated?
Content scope
|
✓
All public feeds within 3 hops — posts, profiles, forums, media. Propagates automatically.
|
—
Only the approved follow list. Nothing outside that boundary ever reaches the node.
|
|
Media & files
Images, audio, video, attachments
|
✓
Caches blobs for all replicated feeds. Transferred on demand between connected peers.
|
—
Caches blobs only for approved feeds. Zero exposure to outside content or storage bloat.
|
|
Private groups (Tribes)
Encrypted channels
|
✓
Relays tribe ciphertext without reading it. AES-256-GCM encrypted client-side — the pub sees only opaque bytes.
|
✓
Same encryption. Plus an extra layer: you need to be on the follow list just to know a tribe exists.
|
|
Are joins logged?
Privacy on connection
|
✓
Nothing. Invite tokens are one-time auth only — no SSB message, no trace in any feed.
|
✓
Nothing either. The admin's follow is a local-only action, never broadcast to the network.
|
|
Config
server-config.json
|
pub: true · scope: public · external: your-domain.tld
|
pub: true · scope: device · autofollow: false
|
RUNNING Y0UR 0WN PUB
Any OASIS installation can be turned into a pub with a single command. Your existing identity
and local data are preserved — the ~/.ssb/ directory is reused as-is.
Choose public or private by setting scope in server-config.json.
⟁ LAUNCH PUB MODE
# Start OASIS as a relay pub:
sh oasis.sh server
# Key settings in src/configs/server-config.json:
"pub": true, "scope": "public", "external": "your-domain.tld"
