Financial transactions live forever on blockchains. The moments that make those transactions meaningful do not. The Relational Protocol fixes this by preserving transformation stories on-chain forever.
Creators pour years into work that transforms people. Yet the proof disappears. A reader emails: “Your essay changed how I think about community.” That testimony sits in a Gmail archive. A listener comments: “This album helped me through the hardest month of my life.” The platform deletes their account. Three years later, when applying for grants or explaining their impact, creators have metrics—likes, follows, sales—but no evidence of meaning.
Financial transactions live forever on blockchains. The moments that make those transactions meaningful do not. The Relational Protocol fixes this.
The Relational Protocol is open infrastructure on Base that creates a permanent, public archive of transformation. When someone's work genuinely changes you, you document it on-chain via Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS). That testimony lives forever. No platform can delete it. No algorithm can hide it. No database can disappear.
The protocol registers creator tokens, indexes attestations, stores contextual snapshots, analyzes patterns across the network, and provides query functions. Anyone can build applications on top. Anyone can read the data. No permission needed. No API keys. Completely open.
You've experienced this: someone tells you your work changed their life. You screenshot the message. A year later, when you need to explain your impact for a grant, residency, or investor, you have Twitter analytics (engagement theater), token trading volume (speculation noise), and that one screenshot you saved.
Now you can have hundreds of on-chain attestations documenting real transformation. Time-stamped proof showing when breakthrough moments happened. Cross-creator validation showing who else influenced your audience. Exportable credentials providing verifiable proof for grant applications, press kits, fundraising. Your impact becomes part of the permanent record. Anyone can query it. Forever.
Your journey through culture matters. The essay that rewired your thinking at 23. The album that carried you through grief. The artist whose work made you feel seen for the first time.
With the Relational Protocol, you own your attestations permanently. Your cultural lineage becomes part of your on-chain identity. You can prove who shaped you, when it happened, and how it changed you. Creators see the impact they had on you specifically. This isn't “content engagement.” This is preserving what actually shaped you as a human. On-chain. Forever. Yours.
When thousands document transformations, the patterns tell the real story. Researchers see how ideas move through networks. Curators discover genuine communities instead of trading groups. Movements become visible—how one idea branches into five more.
For the first time, we can see influence as it actually works—not as platform metrics pretend it works.
Step 1: Creator Launches Token
You're a creator. You've launched your creator token. Your token is trading. People are buying. But there's no way to capture why they bought or what it meant.
Step 2: Upgrade Your Token to the Protocol
You register your creator token with the protocol. Connect your wallet (must be token admin or owner). Call the upgrade registry contract: registerCreatorToken(yourTokenAddress). The protocol verifies you control the token. Your token gets indexed. Attestations are now enabled. What "upgrade" means: your token contract doesn't change at all—no code modifications, you keep admin access, mechanics stay identical. The protocol simply adds your token address to its registry. Think of it as giving your token a memory layer.
Step 3: Someone Buys Your Token
A reader discovers your work. They buy your tokens (normal ERC-20 purchase). The protocol sees this transaction on-chain because everything is public.
Step 4: They Attest
Weeks later, one of your essays hits them different. They're ready to document it permanently. Using any interface that interacts with EAS (could be a custom app, a general attestation tool, or a creator-specific dashboard), they create an attestation describing the transformation. They can add a link to the specific work, semantic tags, and the protocol automatically captures which creator token this relates to and how many tokens they bought. They sign via EAS, pay gas (approximately $0.01 on Base), and the attestation is recorded permanently on-chain. The resolver verifies details and indexes the relationship. Key requirement: you can only attest if you've actually bought the creator's tokens.
Step 5: The Network Grows
More attestations accumulate. The protocol indexes them automatically. Patterns emerge from the on-chain data: breakthrough moments, cohort discovery, long-tail impact. Anyone can query this data. Apps can visualize your influence map. Researchers can study cultural movements. Grant evaluators can verify impact claims—all from the same on-chain source.
Permanent Impact Record. Every attestation about your work lives on-chain forever. You can query them anytime. Export them for grants, press, investors. No platform controls this data. You don't even need to run infrastructure—just query the contracts.
Verifiable Metrics. Anyone can verify your impact claims by querying the protocol. Grant committees can check: “Did 247 people really attest to this creator's work?” Yes, here's the on-chain proof. No trust required.
Pattern Discovery. The protocol's pattern analysis contracts reveal breakthrough moments, cohort overlap, thematic resonance, and influence graphs. Query examples include resolver.creatorTokenAttestations(yourToken), filtering by timestamp, and patternAnalysis.analyzeCreator(yourToken).
Owned Testimony. Your attestations belong to you, not a platform. They're signed by your wallet and reference your token holdings. They prove your journey through culture. No one can delete them.
Cultural Identity. Your attestation history becomes part of your on-chain identity. Prove you supported a creator before they were famous, that a work transformed you in 2022, or that you're part of a cultural movement.
Context Preservation. The protocol captures wallet context when you attest, preserving the full picture of your cultural journey.
Portable Data. Your attestations are on Base. Any application can read them. You can build your own tools, export to other platforms, and visualize however you want.
Open Infrastructure. No API keys. No rate limits. No permission. Just query the contracts on Base. All attestation data is public, indexed, and discoverable.
Composable Data. Build analytics dashboards, discovery tools, governance systems, reputation layers, archive explorers, and more. Everyone reads from the same source.
Verifiable Claims. Every attestation is cryptographically signed. Every relationship is on-chain. Every pattern is reproducible.
Smart Contracts on Base. The protocol runs on Base L2 using Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) canonical contracts. Base provides low gas costs (approximately $0.01 per attestation), fast confirmations (approximately 2 seconds), and EVM compatibility. EAS provides battle-tested attestation infrastructure.
The Relational Protocol registers a schema with EAS that defines attestation structure including attestation text, work reference, creator token, token amount, context hash, semantic tags, and timestamp.
Creators upgrade tokens via the registry; participants buy tokens and create attestations via EAS; the resolver validates and indexes; ContextRegistry captures wallet snapshots; applications query aggregated data or subgraphs.
Only token owners can upgrade tokens. Attestations must be backed by token ownership and are signed by participants. Participants can revoke attestations; creators cannot censor them. Privacy options exist via fresh wallets or hashed context data.
The resolver is pausable in emergencies, never holds tokens, and only indexes data. Access is permissionless—anyone can query or build.
The protocol works with any ERC-20 token where the creator has admin access. Compatible tokens include Clanker.world deployments, custom ERC-20 contracts, bonding curve implementations, factory-deployed tokens (if you're the factory owner), and any creator token with admin privileges.
Incompatible tokens include Paragraph creator tokens, Zora standard deployments, third-party managed tokens, and tokens with frozen admin functions. Admin access prevents spam and ensures attestations map to real creator-fan relationships.
The core infrastructure: UpgradeRegistry, RelationalResolver, ContextRegistry, PatternAnalysis, VisualizationAssembler. Supporting tools include a subgraph, official SDK, documentation, integration guides, reference implementations, and example applications.
Creators can build custom attestation interfaces, private community dashboards, grant application generators, press kit automation, and custom analytics suited to their community. The protocol provides the infrastructure; creators build the experiences.
Applications can include discovery tools, archive explorers, research platforms, governance systems, reputation layers, curation tools, and analytics dashboards. All builders query the same on-chain data.
Twitter/X: Testimonies live in platform databases, owned and deletable by the platform, with no open API access.
Discord: Feedback locked inside servers, limited export options, disappears if servers are deleted.
Paragraph: Partial creator ownership but still platform-controlled, limited attestation structure.
Mirror: Content is permanent but lacks a native attestation layer.
Data on Base L2, users own attestations, anyone can query, fully composable, designed explicitly for documenting transformation and measuring cultural impact. Open infrastructure for the entire ecosystem.
What does "upgrade" actually do to my token? Nothing. Your token contract is unchanged. The protocol simply adds your token address to a registry.
Can I upgrade someone else's token? No. Only the token owner or admin can register a token.
Do attestations cost gas? Yes, approximately $0.01 on Base. Participants pay when creating the attestation via EAS. Applications can choose to subsidize gas via relayers.
What if I launched via Paragraph or Zora? Those platforms don't give creators admin access, so you can't upgrade through the protocol (yet). Deploy via Clanker or your own contract.
Can creators delete attestations? No. Attestations are owned by participants. Only they can revoke them.
Can I un-upgrade my token? Not unilaterally. Removing a token would break existing attestations.
How is this different from on-chain social graphs? Social graphs track connections. Relational Protocol tracks transformations—who changed who, and how.
What prevents fake attestations? You must hold creator tokens to attest; economic cost and pattern analysis deter spam. Communities can build reputation systems on top.
Can applications build their own discovery algorithms? Yes. The protocol provides raw data; applications choose how to surface it.
Who runs the protocol? The smart contracts run autonomously on Base. Governance is community-driven.
Platforms measure attention. The Relational Protocol measures transformation. When someone's work genuinely changes you—rewires your thinking, helps you through darkness, makes you feel seen—that moment deserves to be remembered. Not in a screenshot folder. Not in platform archives that disappear. In the permanent record.
The protocol exists so creators can prove their impact, fans can own their stories, and culture gets its receipts. Open infrastructure. On-chain data. Permanent memory. Built on Base. Powered by EAS. Open to everyone.