Yeah, great questions, I should add some of them to FAQ. > From a frontend and user experience perspective, most of the existing Spasm forums appear visually outdated. Is there an established roadmap for improving UI/UX, or is the expectation that developers build fully custom frontends on top of the protocol? I love the current forum UI, been using it for 5 years now. It was inspired by CryptoPanic and LIHKG, but yeah, many people say that it's outdated. There are plans to provide alternative UI options, so admins can switch different themes with a click of a button. In fact, the new web admin panel already provides a lot of customization options via GUI. It currently applies to colors, favicons, header images, titles, descriptions, and other small things, but there will be more options later this year. Ideally, we should have 2-3 completely new UI themes. And yes, this is just an official web client, but devs can build whatever they want. In fact, people are already doing that. Moving forward, even if custom frontends become mainstream, the official Spasm client will provide admins with an easy option to manage nodes. As for the roadmap, the current focus is on growing the network by providing easy deployment methods since multiple communities expressed interest in joining the network, but faced challenges when deploying nodes. **Admin panel** The web admin panel has already been fully reworked, so admins don't need to touch `.env` file beyond specifying admin pubkeys. You can check a new web admin panel at: https://forum.spasm.network/admin **Docker/Podman** We just released a Docker/Podman deployment option last week, essentially a "one-click" setup for existing servers. It's not just easy to deploy and manage, but also highly secure: the frontend and backend run in isolated containers. If you use Podman, it runs rootless and daemonless. Containers are on an isolated network and don't expose any ports to the host. They communicate via Docker's DNS and only expose a single port (33333) to the host via an Nginx proxy container. The result is maximum security with minimal effort since admins only need to map one port to a domain name. We're still testing it, though, so it hasn't been announced yet, but you can already check the git repo: https://github.com/spasm-network/spasm-docker **Ansible** I'm also completely reworking the deployment method on a new server for people without much DevOps experience. We're finally moving away from older bash scripts to Ansible playbooks. This new "one-click" approach handles full idempotent deployments from scratch. It automates everything: building the server, applying hardening, and pushing the app. It will also include server management scripts to simplify the process. The new Ansible deployment method should be released this or next week. **Federation via GUI** For years, federation required manual config files, but it's finally moving to the web admin panel. This will drastically simplify the process and help the ecosystem grow. **Skill** We also started working on SKILL for AI agents, but we paused to prioritize deployment tools since that was the community's biggest request right now. Once Ansible and GUI federation are live, SKILL will be finished and released. After that, we'll tackle other feature requests. Anyway, we always consider suggestions from the community, so let us know what exact features are you looking for. > On that note, can Spasm be seamlessly integrated into a completely custom frontend (non-forum style)? Are there any existing themes, frameworks, or production-level examples that demonstrate this being done successfully? Yes, Spasm can be integrated into any frontend. There is npm library that can be installed into any project. https://www.npmjs.com/package/spasm.js If you don't use any frontend framework, then there is a bundle that you can import into a browser. https://github.com/spasm-network/spasm.js/blob/master/dist/spasm.min.js We don't build alternative frontends ourselves, but Spasm is already powering other projects. For example, the Unblocked team started integrating Spasm into their IPFS-hosted ENS templates in early 2026. We are not affiliated, but their project has very interesting architecture. I'm not sure whether they opened source it yet, though, but you can check an example here: https://jsunblaze.eth.limo/ Check out the CID player section. Each track is a Spasm event fetched directly from their Spasm instance. Each event has an IPFS link to an audio file. Essentially, ENS used as DNS, IPFS as hosting for website and media, and Spasm handles social aspects like posts, comments, likes. By the way, Spasm can handle media as well, but they prefer IPFS for that. And you can also fetch Spasm events from different Spasm instances. In fact, they are doing exactly that for a different Spasm search project. Anyway, as I already mentioned, we're not affiliated, so I'm not up-to-date with all the things they build. > I’m also looking for clarity around real-world use cases. Beyond forum-style discussions, how is Spasm currently being leveraged in live applications (e.g. social feeds, content and media platforms, comment systems, follow systems etc.)? I already provided examples above, but in general, you can build anything with Spasm. You mentioned ethcomments, so I assume that you come from the Ethereum ecosystem. Have you heard about Nostr? It's pretty cool despite being developed by Bitcoin maxis. You can build almost anything with Nostr even though it's a closed ecosystem. Think of Spasm as Nostr, but a generation ahead. Spasm has fully agnostic architecture supporting multiple private keys, protocols (Spasm, RSS, Nostr, Dmp), networks, etc. In other words, Spasm is a truly open ecosystem and the endgame of social media. And yes, this isn't just marketing - it's the reality. > Can comments be retrieved and displayed via API in external applications? Yes, you can get events from any instance via API as an array of SpasmEnvelopeV2 using many different filters like categories, actions, activity levels, etc. https://github.com/spasm-network/spasm-forum-server/blob/master/docs/api.md Once you fetch an array, you can convert it to an array of SpasmEventV2. The function will also verify all the signatures and sanitize malicious stuff. ``` // Spasm Envelope is a compressed version of Spasm Event. // It's used to reduce bandwidth when exchanging events. // Spasm Event is an uncompressed version of Spasm Event. // It's important to convert received envelopes to Spasm // events because that will verify signatures. // Convert one event to Spasm Event const spasmEvent = spasm.convertToSpasm(event) // Convert many events to Spasm Events const spasmEvents = spasm.convertManyToSpasm(events) ``` In fact, spasmjs npm library also provides a function to convert a legacy RSS feed to an array of Spasm events in case if you need that `spasm.convertRssFeedToSpasm(rssFeed)`. By the way, SpasmEventV2 has a very complex structure, but spasmjs npm library provides tons of utils to simplify the development process, so it should be fairly simple to integrate Spasm into your frontend with the help of AI agents, especially if you're only planning to support one private key like Ethereum. There is also a universal `spasm.fetchEvents()` function, which just fetches whatever you want from Spasm instances to legacy RSS feeds and converts all of that into array of SpasmEventV2. I've started developing it while working on SKILL, but then got distracted with Docker/Podman/Ansible, so the function is not finished yet, but it will significantly simplify the development process once it's ready. > Does the network automatically propagate and synchronize posts across multiple Spasm instances? Well, you can integrate Spasm events with your own solution for events storage and propagation. You can even store Spasm events onchain. That said, if you want to use existing Spasm instances, then they are very flexible since the network is based on optional federation. Admins can tailor federation rules to fit their needs, for example: - Fetch only "rising" posts in the "DeFi" category from Instance A every 10 minutes. - Pull only "hot" posts from the "Privacy" category from Instance B hourly. - Fully mirror a third instance. - Apply custom moderation policies. Once Federation GUI is live in a web admin panel, you will easily understand how it works. > What level of control do developers have over how content is indexed, filtered, and displayed across different frontends? Admins of instances can impose any moderation rules they want. If you're building a frontend-only solution, you can connect to any instance using filters you define. You can also implement any automated moderation policy on a client-side. However, to provide specific details on moderation options, I'd need to know more about your architecture. > How does identity and authentication scale (wallet-based, signatures, etc.) across different apps and nodes? I'm not sure if I fully grasped your question, but on the official Spasm forum, users can directly connect Ethereum and Nostr apps. For example, Ethereum browser extensions (Rabby, MetaMask), mobile apps (MetaMask), desktop apps (Status), etc. On your own frontend you can implement whatever you want from modern solutions to legacy MEW-style keystore files. > Are there any limitations or bottlenecks when building high-traffic applications on top of Spasm? Years of development have taught me one thing: there's nothing we can't solve. The only potential bottleneck might be adjusting database indexes for faster retrieval on high-traffic nodes, but that's a minor detail. Again, I'd love to know more about your specific architecture to give you a better answer. > This looks very interesting and simular to other projects like ethcomments.xyz but they use a more centralized behavior. We like the node system and instances populating as a decentralized concept. Yeah, Spasm started in 2021. It's the most open ecosystem and represents the most advanced generation of decentralized social media. It always bugged me why so many people choose closed ecosystems and outdated solutions. I suspect people are more drawn to tribalism than to true freedom. > Lastly, where is the best place to review technical documentation, architecture breakdowns, or developer resources that go beyond the basic forum. Can you direct us to a Spasm system being used outside of the basic forum structure ? You've probably seen our docs, so I'm not gonna mention it. We also have a new git repo with reference modules, but it's still fairly new: https://github.com/spasm-network/sperms In general, reach out to `degenrocket` on Session if you want to chat. We also have a few groups there with admins, devs, and early adopters.