URL Format for Web3 Browsers

Simple Summary

A standard way of representing web3 browser URLs for decentralized applications.

Abstract

Since most normal web browsers (specifically on mobile devices) can not run decentralized applications correctly because of the lack of web3 support, it is necessary to differentiate them from normal urls, so they can be opened in web3 browsers if available.

Motivation

Lots of dApps that are trying to improve their mobile experience are currently (deep)linking to specific mobile web3 browsers which are currently using their own url scheme.

In order to make the experience more seamless, dApps should still be able to recommend a specific mobile web3 browser via deferred deeplinking but by having a standard url format, if the user already has a web3 browser installed that implements this standard, it will be automatically linked to it.

There is also a compatibility problem with the current ethereum: url scheme described in EIP-831 where any ethereum related app (wallets, identity management, etc) already registered it and because of iOS unpredictable behavior for multiple apps handling a single url scheme, users can end up opening an ethereum: link in an app that doesn not include a web3 browser and will not be able to handle the deeplink correctly.

Specification

Syntax

Web3 browser URLs contain "dapp" in their schema (protocol) part and are constructed as follows:

request                 = "dapp" ":" [chain_id "@"] dapp_url
chain_id                = 1*DIGIT
dapp_url                = URI

Semantics

chain_id is optional and it is a parameter for the browser to automatically select the corresponding chain ID as specified in EIP-155 before opening the dApp.

dapp_url is a valid RFC3986 URI

This a complete example url:

dapp:1@peepeth.com/brunobar79?utm_source=github

which will open the web3 browser, select mainnet (chain_id = 1) and then navigate to:

https://peepeth.com/brunobar79?utm_source=github

Rationale

The proposed format attempts to solve the problem of vendor specific protocols for web3 browsers, avoiding conflicts with the existing 'ethereum:' URL scheme while also adding an extra feature: chain_id which will help dApps to be accessed with the right network preselected, optionally extracting away that complexity from end users.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.