Social And Economy
Two of Realm's jobs are remembering who relates to whom and tracking how value moves. Social covers the first, Economy the second. Once either one records something, the record is never rewritten — both only ever append.
Social
Friendship in Realm is one record per pair of people. Alice and Bob share exactly one friendship, no matter how many worlds or apps they both use.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Storage | Realm R-SOC-* |
| Shape | Ordered-pair uniqueness graph |
| Cross-world visibility | yes — same friendship in every world |
| Cross-app visibility | yes — same friendship in every Nimi app |
| Mutation | Through admitted Realm contracts |
What Social Does
- Tracks friendship and admission graph.
- Gates human-chat preconditions — chat between two users may require an admitted social state.
- Does not own the chat thread itself; chat is owned by Realm Chat.
Why Friendship Is Canonical
If friendship were per-app or per-world, two apps could disagree about whether two users are friends. Apps would need to sync; syncs would conflict; user experience would fragment.
Canonical friendship is one truth across the platform. Apps read; Realm is authoritative.
Economy
The canonical platform economy is append-only: every currency transaction, revenue attribution, and settlement event has explicit typed semantics.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Storage | Realm R-ECON-* |
| Shape | Append-only event stream |
| Event types | Explicit; admitted at kernel level |
| Settlement | Typed events |
| AI compute cost | Not modeled as Realm core truth (separate concern) |
What Economy Owns
- Currency transaction history.
- Revenue attribution and splits for creator content.
- Settlement events.
- Wallet balance projections.
What Economy Does Not Own
- AI compute cost (separate runtime concern).
- World-internal currencies (a world may have its own ticket stubs; those are not platform canonical economy).
- Subscription / payment processor internals (those live in their own admitted surfaces).
Append-Only Posture
The economy stream is append-only at the canonical layer. A mistaken settlement event does not get deleted; it gets superseded by a correction event. The full chain is reconstructible.
This matters because economic correctness is auditable. A creator who wants to know exactly how their revenue settled can read the event stream end-to-end without ambiguity.
Reader Scenario: A Friendship That Crosses Worlds
Alice and Bob become friends in World A, where they were both visiting.
- Friend request. Alice sends; Realm admits the request.
- Bob accepts. Realm admits; ordered-pair record created in
R-SOC-*. - Visible everywhere. When Alice visits World B, the friendship with Bob is visible. World B's local social rules may apply (perhaps "friend" grants different privileges in World B), but the canonical friendship is the same one record.
- Cross-app. Any Nimi app reading social state sees the same friendship.
A new app launching does not need to re-admit the friendship.
Reader Scenario: A Revenue Settlement
An admitted revenue source is attributed to a creator's content.
- Source attribution. Realm resolves the typed source origin.
- Settlement event. Per the active share plan, a typed settlement event is committed.
- Wallet projection updates. The creator's resulting balance is derived from the canonical ledger.
- Audit lineage. Source origin, settlement event, and share plan remain linked.
- Withdrawal. The creator can withdraw through the admitted withdrawal flow.
The revenue chain is reconstructible end-to-end. Nothing is silent.
Reader Scenario: A World With Internal Currency
A creator's world uses ticket stubs for in-world transactions.
- In-world tickets. The creator's world rules describe ticket stub semantics — local economy, local rules.
- Not Realm canonical. Ticket stubs are world-local; they do not appear in
R-ECON-*event stream. - Conversion if admitted. If the world admits a conversion event between ticket stubs and platform currency, that conversion appears as a typed canonical economy event.
- Cross-world standing unchanged. Tickets in World A do not affect Bob's canonical wallet balance unless an admitted conversion event records it.
The split is intentional. Worlds get internal economic creativity; the platform-canonical economy stays one auditable truth.
How Social And Economy Connect
Some events involve both:
| Event | Touches |
|---|---|
| Creator revenue settlement | Economy events may reference an admitted source owner |
| Becoming friends | Social event; may unlock social-gated economic features |
When an event touches both, the platform does not collapse them into one record. Each surface gets its typed event; the full chain links them through audit lineage.