Looks very interesting! I stumbled across your webpage a few months ago while looking into the state of peer-to-peer. Glad to see p2p projects are still active.
Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
61–70 of 302 posts
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#62I 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
This is cool!
OK, time for inception... 9social on freenet-git
¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#63Is there any way to run this in the browser rather than downloading an app?
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
To be fair, I see some goodwill, e.g.:
> To ease the transition the old freenetproject.org domain was redirected to hyphanet’s website, while the recently acquired freenet.org domain was used for the new architecture.
So in that aspect it seems more user friendly than a hard fork.
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#65Can 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 p…
> Or to put it very bluntly: what is this, why should I care, and why not just use the old one?
If you don't mind I'll quote the FAQ[1]:
The previous and current versions of Freenet have several key differences:
Functionality: The previous version was analogous to a decentralized hard drive, while the current version is analogous to a full decentralized computer.
Real-time Interaction: The current version allows users to subscribe to data and be notified immediately if it changes. This is essential for systems like instant messaging or group chat.
Programming Language: Unlike the previous version, which was developed in Java, the current Freenet is implemented in Rust. This allows for better efficiency and integration into a wide variety of platforms (Windows, Mac, Android, MacOS, etc).
Transparency: The current version is a drop-in replacement for the world wide web and is just as easy to use.
Anonymity: While the previous version was designed with a focus on anonymity, the current version does not offer built-in anonymity but allows for a choice of anonymizing systems to be layered on top.
> 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.)
The new version doesn't claim to provide anonymity as part of the platform itself although anonymity systems can be built on top of it. I'd also refer you to this FAQ [2].
[1] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-do-the-previous-and-curre...
[2] https://freenet.org/about/faq/#how-does-freenet-handle-harmf...
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#66Is there any way to run this in the browser rather than downloading an app?
Not currently, but installation is very quick - the binary itself is just 10MB.
I am thinking about making a public proxy available so people can try the network itself without installing it, but we've made installation as quick and painless as possible.
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#67I 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.
Not sure how you can say it's unrelated given that it was created for the same purpose by the same person with many design similarities.
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#68Can 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).
But not a problem in theory for Android and Ubuntu Touch systems?
Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#69Very 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 operatio…
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Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps
#70Is this similar to how Napster worked?
Yes in the sense that users pool resources for the network, but no in the sense that Napster relied on a centralized database of content - whereas Freenet is entirely decentralized.
Also Freenet is much more general, you could think of Napster like a shared hard drive, whereas Freenet is like a shared computer capable of running decentralized applications like group chat, social networks, search engines, etc.