AO Profile

⚠⚠ WARNING ⚠ ⚠

This concept is in very early development and experimentation phase, and as such, will be buggy and most likely evolve in ways that may not be supported without losing data or having to re-create profiles. The current version includes some base profile metadata, can store assets, and supports single wallet as an owner.

Overview

AO Profile is a protocol built on the permaweb designed to allow users to create an identity, interact with applications built on AO, operate as a smart wallet, and serve as a personal process. Instead of a wallet address owning assets or having uploads, the profile will encompass this information. This means that certain actions require first interacting with the profile, validating that a wallet has authorization to carry it out, and finally the profile will send a message onward to other processes, which can then validate its request.

A separate Profile Registry aggregation process is used to keep track of the new profile processes that are created, as well as any updates. This registry process will serve as an all encompassing database that can be queried for profile data. You can read profile metadata directly from the AO Profile process, or from the registry.

Profile Metadata

Field	Description
DisplayName	Profile display name
Username	Profile username
Bio	Profile description
Avatar	Profile Avatar TXID
Banner	Profile Banner TXID

Sample output from AO: "Data": "{\"Assets\":[],\"Profile\":{\"DisplayName\":\"tom-ao-profile-1\",\"Bio\":\"hello ao\",\"Avatar\":\"LzBub_drZ3xOE2mn_HW5xDNDWJ2pe3zN6NUQkMc3-C0\",\"Banner\":\"hAjf58dmqS-mkRTwPvmVLRZBPC-oZK4H-uDAceZoSPk\",\"Username\":\"tom-ao\"}}"

Profile Handlers

Handler	Description
Info	Dry-runable, returns profile metadata and assets as JSON.
Update-Profile	Accepts JSON in the data field to update profile metadata.
Transfer	Allows a profile to transfer some quantity of an asset they own to another profile or address.
Debit-Notice	Supports interactions with UCM, decreases asset count if marked for sale.
Credit-Notice	Supports interactions with UCM, decreases asset count if marked for sale.
Add-Uploaded-Asset	Allows an AO Atomic Asset to be linked to a profile.

Profile Registry Handlers

Handler	Description
Prepare-Database	Prepares the database schema by creating tables ao_profile_metadata and ao_profile_authorization if they don't exist.
Get-Metadata-By-ProfileIds	Retrieves metadata for profiles based on the provided profile IDs. Returns metadata as JSON or sends an error message if input data is invalid.
Get-Profiles-By-Address	Retrieves associated profiles for a given wallet address from ao_profile_authorization. Returns profiles as JSON or an error if none are found.
Update-Profile	Updates a profile's metadata or adds it if it doesn't exist. Links an authorized address if needed.
Read-Metadata	(Debug) Prints all rows from the ao_profile_metadata table.
Read-Authorization	(Debug) Prints all rows from the ao_profile_authorization table.

Creating a Profile process and setting metadata

AO Profile functions by spawning a new personal process for a user if they decide to make one. The wallet that spawns the profile is authorized to make changes to it. Prior to creating a process, you should check if the wallet address already has any profiles.

Here is an overview of actions that take place to create an AO Profile process and update the metadata:

1. A new process is spawned with the base AO module. (Sample Code)
2. A Gateway GraphQL query is executed for the spawned transaction ID in order to find the resulting process ID. (Sample Code)
3. The profile.lua source code is then loaded from Arweave, and sent to the process as an eval message. This loads the state and handlers into the process. (Sample Code)
4. Client collects Profile metadata in the data object, and uploads a banner and cover image.
5. Finally, a message is sent to update the Profile metadata. (Sample Code).

Fetching Profile metadata

By Profile ID

If you have the Profile ID already, you can easily read the metadata directly from the Profile process via the Info handler. (Sample Code)

By Wallet Address

If you have a wallet address, you can look up the profile(s) associated with it by interacting with the Profile Registry via the Get-Profiles-By-Address handler. (Sample Code)

Profile Registry process

The Profile Registry process collects and aggregates all profile metadata in a single database and its process ID is defined in all AO Profiles. Messages are sent from the Profiles to the Registry when any creations or edits to metadata occur, and can be trusted by the msg.From address which is the Profile ID.

The overall process looks like:

1. A message is sent with an action of Update-Profile to the Profile process with the information that the creator provided.
2. Once the Profile metadata is updated internally in the Profile Process, a new message is then sent to the Registry process to add or update the corresponding profile accordingly via its own Update-Profile handler.