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Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

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Re: Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

#13

Post by zerognowl »

notwhiteknight wrote: post #2

Interesting. Can someone explain how IPFS works? Is it like Tor? I don't have any interest in running some sort of distributed content farm that might place CP on my computer. Even if the chance of that happening is 0.00001%.

> "As seductive as a blockchain’s other advantages are, neither companies or individuals are particularly keen on publishing all of their information onto a public database that can be arbitrarily read without any restrictions by one’s own government, foreign governments, family members, coworkers and business competitors"

https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/15/privacy-on-the-blockcha...

Re: Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

#14

Post by rmc »

notwhiteknight wrote: post #2

Interesting. Can someone explain how IPFS works? Is it like Tor? I don't have any interest in running some sort of distributed content farm that might place CP on my computer. Even if the chance of that happening is 0.00001%.

I don't think it's anonymous, and AFAIK you don't store random files, so you can't store child pornography unless you request said files.

Re: Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

#17

Post by lgierth »

dwills wrote: post #7

Another false headline. "serverless"? Nope. A redis server must be running.

Hah, I agree with your resentment about the recent wave of "serverless" :)

By now redis has been replaced with native IPFS pubsub, which is provided by both go-ipfs and js-ipfs. The only remaining server-ish is some means of bootstrapping, i.e. entering the network.

I'm not sure how up-to-date the readme is, but the demo (orbit.libp2p.io) is out-of-date and still uses redis pubsub. I pinged @haadcode, who can go more into detail.

Re: Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

#18

Post by kefka »

aleken wrote: post #11
dwills wrote: post #7

Another false headline. "serverless"? Nope. A redis server must be running.

I imagine an IPFS chat software could store it's necessary information in... IPFS. So why involve redis?

Because IPFS only does distributed storage. It has no processing power or logic to handle data transformations.

Now, one avenue to handle that is js-ipfs. In order to update things like IPNS records, you need the private key of the node you're trying to change. Interestingly enough, and machine with the pub/priv key can submit an IPNS change.

So effectively, you could have a shared repo like Usenet, where everyone has the pub/priv key and pushes updates via js-ipfs. Although, I could imagine easily how that could get super-heavy.

_________________________

Another idea I had, was to build something akin to AWS lambda, except using Tor Hidden Services, and Erlang. It would be effectively a private computation cloud. The reason for the HS is so each machine, regardless of their location, could always talk with each other, using Erlang's built--in networking support. (I am using non-standard applications of Tor Hidden Services - read more what I'm doing here: https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker... )

Re: Orbit – Distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer chat application on IPFS

#20

Post by lgierth »

zerognowl wrote: post #13
notwhiteknight wrote: post #2

Interesting. Can someone explain how IPFS works? Is it like Tor? I don't have any interest in running some sort of distributed content farm that might place CP on my computer. Even if the chance of that happening is 0.00001%.

> "As seductive as a blockchain’s other advantages are, neither companies or individuals are particularly keen on publishing all of their information onto a public database that can be arbitrarily read without any restrictions by one’s own government, foreign governments, family members, coworkers and business competitors" https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/01/15/privacy-on-the-blockcha...

There is no blockchain in IPFS.
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