Introduction

UNAVI is an open-source, peer-to-peer 3D social platform and a reference implementation of The Wired: the spatial hypermedia layer of the Internet. Where the Web links two-dimensional hypertext documents, The Wired links three-dimensional spaces, the objects inside them, and the agents that move between them.

A 3D Internet

Portals connect spaces. Moving through a portal transports the agent into the destination space without a reload. An object in a space is a document that holds content, carries a script that defines what it does, and occupies a position that can be moved to. Data, behavior, and presentation share one model; files, applications, identity, and the network each take a spatial form rather than a windowed one.

Peer to Peer

Nothing is centrally hosted. Every space, and everything in it, lives on a peer — a personal machine, someone else’s, or a server — and peers sync directly with one another, making the network peer-to-peer. The Wired is an open standard others can build against; the client and the rest of the stack are open source.

Scripted Behavior

Objects in a space can carry behavior with them, written as scripts. A scripted object reacts, animates, responds to being touched, and works the same way in any space it is carried into.

One Identity

A single identity spans the network, rooted in a DID (decentralized identifier) and traced to a key or a domain the person controls, not an account a service holds. The same identity, and the identity documents it resolves to, follow the person across every space and store.

Spatial Organization

Spatial layout carries meaning a file tree or a URL does not. A space keeps related objects within reach of one another, in a layout that persists between visits, and presents many at once; the equivalent content in a browser is a stack of tabs. People organize and recall by position more readily than by path, and a space presents more information simultaneously in a stable arrangement.

Principles

Four properties of the design recur through the protocol:

• Open — the protocol is documented conventions, not a proprietary format; both documents and HSD are defined by it.
• User-sovereign — capabilities, not access-control lists, govern who can read or write a document.
• Interoperable — a store never interprets what it hosts, so no format can be rejected and no host can lock anyone in.
• Generative — objects carry their scripts with them as portable WebAssembly, rather than depending on a platform to run them.

Protocol covers how these pieces work and how to build on them.