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5chan

5chan is a serverless, adminless, and fully decentralized imageboard that runs on the Bitsocial protocol. It follows the familiar imageboard directory structure while introducing decentralized ownership — anyone can create a board, and multiple boards can compete for the same directory slot through a voting mechanism.

Downloads​

PlatformLink
Web5chan.app
DesktopAvailable for Mac, Windows, and Linux
MobileAvailable for Android

How boards work​

5chan organizes content into boards using a classic directory layout (e.g., /b/, /g/). Unlike traditional imageboards where a central admin controls every board, 5chan allows any user to create and fully own their own board. When multiple boards target the same directory slot, they compete for that position; see Directories.

Creating a board​

To create a new board, you need to run bitsocial-cli as a peer-to-peer node. This ensures your board is hosted in a decentralized manner without relying on any central server.

Directory assignments​

Each directory's candidate boards are listed in a 5chan-directories/5chan-<code>-directory.json file in the bitsocialnet/lists repository, and a board joins a directory through a pull request to that file. 5chan also runs a vote contest for each directory with @bitsocial/pubsub-voting: each 5chan Pass holder gets one vote, and voting for an unlisted board nominates it. The contests currently run on the Base Sepolia testnet, where tallies are shown but do not reorder the list.

Internals​

Under the hood, 5chan uses the shared Bitsocial protocol client layer for its network interactions. The web app at 5chan.app runs a Helia node in the browser by default, so a normal tab joins the network as a peer: it loads boards from other peers and publishes over pubsub, with no centralized IPFS gateway in the content path. See Browser Peer-to-Peer for what that involves and what a browser node still cannot do.