Private Topics

What are Private Topics?

Private Topics are gated discussion spaces inside a Common community. They enable project teams, contributor pods, community inner circles, and all forms of working groups to collaborate privately in the same forum infrastructure used for public coordination.

This feature allows for private onchain communication with access managed by Common Groups that can be created with NFTs, tokens, allowlists, and base chain tokens.

Why Private Topics?

While public threads foster community transparency, sometimes teams need discretion for early-stage ideas, sensitive coordination, or contributor alignment.

Private Topics enable:

• DAO working group discussions

• Stealth project coordination

• Token holder exclusive conversations

• Pre-launch partner collaborations

• Alpha sharing or NFT-holder exclusives

• Gaming Guilds

All of this happens on Common, without needing to jump to Telegram, Notion, or gated Discords.

How to Create a Private Topic

Prerequisites

• You must be a community admin.

• At least one Group must exist in your community.

Setup Steps

1. Navigate to the Topics in the community's sidebar

2. Enter basic topic information in Create Topic drawer or an existing one in the Manage Topics drawer

3. Click the Private Topic checkbox

4. Select a Group that will gate access

5. Click Next

📝 All group members (plus admins/mods) will be able to participate within this topic and access the topic's content through search. Non-members will see nothing.

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Permissions Overview

User Type	View Threads	Create Threads	See in Search	See on Profile
Group Member	✅	✅	✅	✅
Admin/Mod	✅	✅	✅	✅
Rejected Member	❌	❌	❌	❌
Non-Member	❌	❌	❌	❌

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Platform Behavior

✅ Members

• Approved group members can:

  • View, post, and search for content in private topics

  • See private content on their profile and others’

  • Participate fully just like in public threads

• Admins automatically retain access even if not part of the group

🛑 Non-Members

• Topic pages are hibben

• Threads are not visible in global search or profile pages

• Cannot interact, react, or view private content

• Receive error when topic is selected in thread creation page

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Other Product Behaviors

🗣️ Mentions & Reactions

• Private topic threads show up in mentions only for members

• Non-members cannot participate via API

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Edge Cases & Notes

• Threads posted before a topic is made private are still publicly visible in members' profile pages, but gated based on the new setting

• If you’re using multiple wallets or SSO identities, ensure you're signing in with the address that’s in the group gating the private topic

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🔄 Removing Privacy

You can change privacy settings by:

1. Navigating to the Group gating the topic

2. Removing the topic from the Gated Topics list

3. Saving changes

⚠️ This will make previously private threads publicly accessible — use with care.