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Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

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Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#51

Post by dave1010uk »

aleqs wrote: post #5

Very cool project! > We've developed a unique (AFAIK) solution to the consistency problem, every contract must define a "merge" operation for the contract's associated state. This operation must be commutative, meaning that you can merge multiple states in any order and you'll get the same end result. Where can I learn more about this? How is this different from CRDTs/CmRDTs?

It looks a lot like a CvRDT (i.e. a state-based CRDT).

They describe it as a commutative monoid, which means it has associativity and commutativity. CvRDTs also need idempotence, so they can handle duplicate data. Either they are idempotent too (which would make it semilattice-like), or the network protocol handles the deduplication outside of the data itself.

Letting the payload/application define the merge operation is clever. I assume it would mean contracts could opt in to idempotency if it doesn't already exist.

The other bit Freenet has added is doing all this with DHT routing and subscriptions, rather than a more basic peer mesh. This is very different to a blockchain and means it probably isn't suited for anything transactional.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#52

Post by rcakebread »

I wrote a web browser for Freenet called Snarfzilla. I guess it may have been the first web browser for "the dark web". [1]

I integrated "Fair Tunes", which tried to pay musicians for mp3 files, long before any label was selling mp3's.

(Edit: I just remembered Freshmeat automatically rejecting Snarfzilla because they were so sick of projects ending in *zilla. The owner thought it was cool and added it after I emailed. No idea why I used 'snarf'. I've never said it out loud.)

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/snarfzilla/

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#54

Post by noosphr »

duskwuff wrote: post #13
dariosalvi78 wrote: post #6

I wrote a short University essay on Freenet in 1998 I think it was... I may still have the document somewhere. Good stuff, very pioneer!

Unfortunately, this is an effectively unrelated project.

That project had nothing to do with the freenet that ran after 2006 either. It's not the first ground up rewrite with major breaking changes using the same name.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#55

Post by dminik »

sanity wrote: post #20
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #16

Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, in favor of a rewrite from different developers, without asking anyone on the original team. It was an ivory tower decision which was announced on the mailing list without prior discussion. The old team did not agree, yet it was forced through by a decision of the "board". The "board" was a group of people…

> Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]: Why was Freenet rearchitected and rebranded? In 2019, Ian began developing a successor to the original Freenet, internally named “Locutus.” This redesign was a ground-up reimagining, incorporating lessons learned from the original Freenet and addressing…

> This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]:

I'm sorry, but nothing following that even comes close to proving that it's a false narrative. Quite the opposite actually.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#56

Post by sanity »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #48
sanity wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different codebase, same purpose. This isn't even the first time we did a ground-up redesign/rewrite of the Freenet codebase, we did this in 2008 with the 0.7 release.

Repeating a bad decision does not make it any wiser.

History will be the judge, and so far it's looking very promising given our progress.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#57

Post by sanity »

dharmatech wrote: post #50

I definitely think we should be exploring decentralized approaches to services we use. I also would like to see an emphasis on local-first approaches. This experiment, in the spirit of UNIX, composes git and text files to form a social network: https://github.com/dharmatech/9social Video demo: https://youtu.be/q6qVnlCjcAI

Interesting, we've also experimented with hosting git repos on Freenet, see: https://github.com/freenet/freenet-git

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#58

Post by pikdum »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #16

Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, in favor of a rewrite from different developers, without asking anyone on the original team. It was an ivory tower decision which was announced on the mailing list without prior discussion. The old team did not agree, yet it was forced through by a decision of the "board". The "board" was a group of people…

Yeah, I'm not a fan. Feels like this project is trying to get popular off of Freenet's name recognition rather than its own merits.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#59

Post by andai »

Can you tell me about the old Freenet? I've read up on Wikipedia and it seems to be very much in the line with the 90s/2000s p2p file sharing software. Except that you can store stuff on other people's computers and it's encrypted?

Which then led to people storing Bad Stuff, and this is somehow addressed in the new version? (I also read some stuff about friends and trust in the previous one, but haven't looked into properly.)

I think understanding the old one and the issues it ran into would be helpful for understanding the context, and the motivations for the changes.

Or to put it very bluntly: what is this, why should I care, and why not just use the old one?

Thanks

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#60

Post by sanity »

maelito wrote: post #53

Can this be used to sync the data of an app from mobile to desktop without a server ? And vice-versa.

In principle but we don't yet support mobile except experimentally, in part due to mobile OS restrictions (eg. iOS apps can't embed webassembly).
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