EtherForum is a fully decentralized, censorship-resistant public square powered by a single immutable smart contract on Ethereum. There are no servers, no admins, and no off-chain databases. Everything—accounts, posts, comments, reactions, follows, profiles—lives on-chain.

Contract: Single Solidity contract (pragma ^0.8.0) implementing users, posts, comments, reactions, and follows.

UI: A minimal web client that reads/writes directly to the contract via a standard provider. It reconstructs timelines via counters and contiguous IDs, batch-loads in slices on scroll, supports deep links (#post{ID} and #post{ID}/#comment{ID}), and refreshes the home feed on an interval.

Why this design is smart (and fast)

• Single source of truth: Ethereum state → zero drift, zero “event lag”.
• Zero ops: No indexer/DB/cron to run or maintain. Fewer moving parts; fewer outages.
• Symmetric clients: Any UI makes the same calls and gets the same answers. No privileged backend.
• Latency bounded by RPC: Batch read-only calls with Multicall to reduce round-trips.
• Forkable by design: Anyone can build a new client without permission; the chain is the API.

// Users
struct UserBasic   { uint256 userId; string username; uint256 accountCreationTime; uint256 accountCreationBlock; bool isRegistered; }
struct UserProfile { string nickname; string about; string website; string location; string profilePicture; string coverPicture; uint256 pinnedPost; }
struct UserStats   { uint256 postCount; uint256 commentCount; uint256 followerCount; uint256 followingCount; }

// Content
enum Reaction { NONE, LIKE, DISLIKE }
struct Post {
  uint256 globalPostId; address author; uint256 authorPostId; uint256 postTime;
  string content; uint256 commentCount; uint256 likeCount; uint256 dislikeCount; uint256 repostCount;
  bool isHidden; bool isRepost; uint256 originalPostId; string reposterContent;
  mapping(address => Reaction) reactions;
}
struct Comment {
  uint256 commentId; address author; uint256 commentTime; string comment;
  uint256 likeCount; uint256 dislikeCount; bool isHidden; mapping(address => Reaction) reactions;
}

// Key indices
uint256 private totalUsers; uint256 private globalPostCount;
mapping(string => address) usernameToAddress;           // case-insensitive lookup
mapping(uint256 => address) userAddressById;            // userId → address
mapping(address => mapping(uint256 => uint256)) userPostId; // per-user idx → global post id
mapping(uint256 => Post) allPosts;                      // global posts
mapping(uint256 => mapping(uint256 => Comment)) postComments; // per-post contiguous comments

// UI booleans
mapping(uint256 => mapping(address => bool)) hasCommentedOnPost;
mapping(uint256 => mapping(address => bool)) hasRepostedOnPost;

// Social graph
mapping(address => mapping(address => bool)) isFollowing;

The key: contiguous, monotonic IDs and authoritative counters make reads trivial and deterministic.

• Registration: createAccount(nickname, username) saves UserBasic, UserProfile, and UserStats, and assigns a monotonic userId.
• Case-insensitive uniqueness: Usernames are validated (≥5 chars, lowercase letters/digits). The lowercase form indexes usernameToAddress; display casing is preserved in UserBasic.username.
• Lookups: Resolve by username (getUserAddressByUsername) or by userId (getUserAddressById).

• Creation: createPost(content) increments globalPostCount and the author’s postCount; assigns globalPostId and authorPostId. Text must be non-empty.
• Editing & Hiding: Authors can editPost or hidePost. Hidden posts keep IDs/counters; getters return empty text when hidden.
• Reposts: createRepost(originalId, reposterContent) links to the original and increments its repostCount. editRepost updates reposter note.
• Pinning: pinPost(globalPostId) (or 0 to unpin) is enforced on-chain for the author only.

• Contiguous IDs: Each post tracks postCommentCount[postId] and stores comments as 1..N for deterministic pagination.
• Create/Edit/Hide: createComment, editComment, hideComment mirror post semantics (soft-hide returns empty text via getter).
• User comment history: getUserCommentCount(user) with getUserComment(user, i) provides a per-user jump table of (postId, commentId).

• Reactions: Per-item mapping(address => Reaction) supports constant-time checks. The API accepts "like"/"dislike" strings and adjusts counters on change.
• Follow graph: followUser(target, bool) flips isFollowing and maintains follower/following counters with underflow guards.
• Interaction flags: hasCommentedOnPost and hasRepostedOnPost provide O(1) UI gating.

• Soft hide: isHidden flags avoid breaking links or pagination; getters return empty text when hidden.
• Repost integrity: Reposts record originalPostId and bump the original’s repostCount.

Accounts

• createAccount(string nickname, string username)
• changeUsername(string newUsername)
• isUserRegistered(address user) → bool
• getUserAddressById(uint256 id) → address
• getUserAddressByUsername(string username) → address
• getUserBasic(address) → (userId, username, createdAt, createdBlock, isRegistered)
• getUserProfile(address) → (nickname, about, website, location, profilePicture, coverPicture, pinnedPost)
• getUserStats(address) → (postCount, commentCount, followerCount, followingCount)

Posts

• createPost(string content), editPost(uint256 id, string newContent), hidePost(uint256 id, bool)
• createRepost(uint256 originalId, string reposterContent), editRepost(uint256 id, string newReposterContent)
• getGlobalPostCount() → uint256, getGlobalPostId(address, uint256) → uint256, getPost(uint256) → (id, author, authorPostId, time, text, commentCount, likeCount, dislikeCount, hidden, isRepost, originalPostId, repostCount)

Comments

• createComment(uint256 postId, string text), editComment(uint256 postId, uint256 commentId, string newText), hideComment(uint256 postId, uint256 commentId, bool)
• getPostCommentCount(uint256 postId) → uint256, getComment(uint256 postId, uint256 commentId) → (...)
• getUserComment(address user, uint256 userCommentId) → (postId, commentId), getUserCommentCount(address) → uint256

Social & Reactions

• followUser(address target, bool follow), getIsFollowing(address follower, address followed) → bool
• reactToPost(uint256 postId, string reaction), reactToComment(uint256 postId, uint256 commentId, string reaction)
• getUserReactionOnPost(uint256 postId, address user) → string, getUserReactionOnComment(uint256 postId, uint256 commentId, address user) → string
• getHasCommentedOnPost(uint256 postId, address user) → bool, getHasRepostedAPost(uint256 postId, address user) → bool

• Routing & Deep Links: The UI supports #post{ID} and #post{ID}/#comment{ID} routes for single-post and single-comment views; other hashes map to usernames or sections.
• Feeds: Home feed walks backward from getGlobalPostCount() in batches on window.onscroll. User feed maps per-user indices via getGlobalPostId(user,i). Comments load contiguously using getPostCommentCount().
• Profile/Stats Widgets: “Recently Joined” reads getTotalUsers() then iterates downwards to fetch the latest addresses via getUserAddressById(). “Platform Stats” reads getTotalUsers() and getGlobalPostCount().
• Reactions: Buttons call reactToPost/reactToComment. Highlight state is re-derived via getUserReactionOnPost/...OnComment.
• Markdown: Post/comment text is parsed with marked; @mentions are auto-linked to #username. (If building your own client, add an HTML sanitizer after parsing.)
• Caching: The UI caches user display names/profile pics per address to reduce repeated calls.
• Auto Refresh: Home feed can auto-reload periodically on the home route.