TEPP protocol
Trust Extended Permissions Protocol
A future of digital parenting
TEPP is a protocol and developed as an open standard. Within Kubo it's designed to revolutionize how families approach digital safety regarding video content.
With TEPP we give parents the agency they need to construct digital domains for their children.
Introduction
The TEPP protocol is an open framework built on the Nostr ecosystem. Its goal is to enable trust-based online domains, starting with the challenge of providing children safe and suitable access to the internet — but extending to anyone who wants control over what they see, who they interact with, and how they appear online.
Rather than relying on centralized moderation, AI-systems, or government ID systems, TEPP establishes risk management through trust. It enables users — parents, educators, communities, or institutions — to assign three levels of trust to environments (servers) and relationships (people), while retaining the openness and interoperability of Nostr.
At its core, TEPP is not a single app but a protocol layer that connects relays, clients, and signing bunkers through Nostr-based moderation events.
The result is a decentralized, interoperable, and most importantly as safe as possible way to express who you trust, how far you trust them, and what a given profile is allowed to see and do.
The parent–child trust link
At the heart of TEPP is the multi-signature link between the parent and child keypairs.
This association event instructs the Nostr client and signing bunker to respect the associated moderation events.
Clients use this musig event to construct the child's personalized environment.
A child can then navigate freely within that predefined domain, while still maintaining autonomy:
- They can follow others within the approved circles.
- They can interact within Level 2 contexts.
- They can see but not engage beyond the boundary of Level 3.
The musig link provides the root of delegation and oversight — without central servers, databases, or government Ids.
Three-level trust system
Inner circle
- The child can view and interact with this entity.
- Additionally, the child's online domain is extended with the trust this person has assigned to other people and places. Level 1 is the main means by which the web of trust is used to scale the child's online environment
Used for: parents, close family, close friends, carefully vetted institutions.
"I trust you and I trust your judgment for my child."
Interact
The child can view and interact.
Used for: school contacts, sports club, known teachers, classmates, known brands.
"I trust you enough for direct interaction, but I don't automatically trust the people you trust."
View-only
The child can only see content from this person of place. This is the edge of the online domain
Used for: news outlets, public information relays, some platforms where comments / replies are not trusted.
"I trust the primary content to be non-harmful, but I'm not comfortable with open interaction."