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Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

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Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#51

Post by hosh »

jimpick wrote: post #48
hosh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking at integrating IPFS with sandstorm (sandstorm.io). The sandstorm (and other homelab/homeserver) community have an interest in self-hosting. IPFS allows people that are interested in seeing something stored to pin it themselves. But yes: bundling IPFS with the app is pretty much what would need to happen. As they are now, neither the IPFS ecosystem or sandstorm are really decentralized -- or maybe I should…

I've been doing some experimentation along the same lines ... I've got a small proof-of-concept working where I can sync Earthstar databases between multiple Sandstorm instances - each "grain" acts as a pub, and you can use "webkeys" as pubs. I'm using powerbox-http-proxy to request capabilities for connections, so it works even with fully sandboxed client-side networking (ALLOW_LEGACY_RELAXED_CSP=false). It's madden…

I was wondering about that. I suppose, things that the user wants to share publicly can be done so (via powerbox), but otherwise, everything else would not be.

Are you using the grain model for each individual files to be shared?

(I looked up your email and I would like to continue chatting about this).

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#52

Post by hosh »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #37
hosh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll check out CollapseOS! The sandstorm community is still going. The app developers are interested, but the platform itself has not received much love. For my own goals, (1) getting ARM support (which includes customizing seccomp for the ARM; patching the sandstorm app package format; and getting a good developer story), and (2) enabling IPFS. A kind of practical user-facing goal for integrating IPFS would be to de…

Honestly, the biggest pain point around adding ARM support is that it'll be a pain to create ARM-compatible packages for all the apps. I definitely think the largest unanswered question in ARM support for Sandstorm.io is "how do we make it convenient for app developers to release packages for multiple architectures?" That being said, I'd be super excited at the possible expansion of the community ARM support would br…

I'm not a security engineer, so the seccomp stuff isn't something I know a lot about. Given that limited experience. whitelist sounds more sensible than blacklist, and I presume that it would be more portable on different architectures.

I have a lot more confidence when it comes to tooling, packaging, testing, developer environments, CI/CD systems etc. since that is the kind of thing I do at work.

Within that old Github thread:

- A suggestion that there is a metadata field that can be purposed for architecture

- There was a suggestion for using QEMU with the vagrant tool

I'm a bit weirded out by a packaging tool that tries to automatically look for all the files related to it -- though I think there might be a good reason for it. You do lose the ability to have reproducible builds and any kind of continuous integration or delivery. I kinda wonder if just switching to something like Nix would work better.

Reproducible builds would make it easier for the app ecosystem to be rebuilt on a different arch. ARM and RPI is great, but I expect RISC-V to be gaining traction over the next couple years. As far as my personal goal of helping develop resilient infrastructure, being able to quickly adopt new architectures would help a lot.

I have not floated this in the sandstorm-dev mailing list yet, but I'll get some conversation started over there.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#53

Post by WJW »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #22
encryptluks2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say there are very few IPFS sites where hosting doesn't still end up being the primary responsibility of a single party. That was the point I was trying to make. If you have to pay someone else to pin it and keep giving them funds then it is still your responsibility. If you have a website that you want to scale and load fast for all your users on IPFS then it will still end up being your responsibility. Ther…

Would you call torrents decentralised?

Some torrents. There are many torrents basically held up by a single peer and those are not in practice decentralized. They could become so if more peers start seeding the torrent, but just because the architecture provides for decentralisation does not make all torrents decentralized.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#54

Post by oscargrouch »

endisneigh wrote: post #21

I wish there was something like this but with Webtorrent - I find torrents easier to grok for whatever reason.

I hope i can share something here more on this line pretty soon. Its not just databases and blobs over torrent but a whole web based application platform based on chrome for native applications. The SDK will start with Swift but the C interface can be used by other languages.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#55

Post by lovemenot »

hosh wrote: post #12
hartator wrote: post #7

I wonder if it would be possible to build a decentralized search engine with a decentralized crawl on top of it.

I've been wondering the same thing too! Maybe if there is a way to share indexes, or some way to put out a call for searches through the DHT, and then the requestor aggregates the results. A couple examples: Web crawler -- seeded through a curated or personal bookmark list. Knowledge base -- the permaculture community have amassed a knowledge base on growing plants: USDA hardiness zones, heat zones, humidity, soil re…

>> Maybe if there is a way to share indexes...

What does a SE index look like? Any designs in the open?

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#56

Post by oilbagz »

I like this, but I feel its important to point out that this is effectively unusable by the very people who would benefit from it most: non-web developers.

If this were a drop-in C/C++ library, I'd use it immediately in my native apps and adopt it as a widespread platform technology. I want to be able to do this, and if it were truly a working technology, I'd put it in every single app I use.

But as a Node/JS library, it is off limits.

Please, decentralization guys, consider native languages first, and toy languages next. These technologies are never going to be embraced unless they treat native platforms as first-class systems for their manifestation.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#57

Post by christophilus »

oilbagz wrote: post #56

I like this, but I feel its important to point out that this is effectively unusable by the very people who would benefit from it most: non-web developers. If this were a drop-in C/C++ library, I'd use it immediately in my native apps and adopt it as a widespread platform technology. I want to be able to do this, and if it were truly a working technology, I'd put it in every single app I use. But as a Node/JS library…

What is the definition of a toy language? That’s a new term for me.

I (thankfully) haven’t written C++ in over 20 years, but if I had to drop back down to a low level language, it’d be C or a compile-to-C language. C is the language these things should target, in my opinion.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#58

Post by StavrosK »

christophilus wrote: post #57
oilbagz wrote: post #56

I like this, but I feel its important to point out that this is effectively unusable by the very people who would benefit from it most: non-web developers. If this were a drop-in C/C++ library, I'd use it immediately in my native apps and adopt it as a widespread platform technology. I want to be able to do this, and if it were truly a working technology, I'd put it in every single app I use. But as a Node/JS library…

What is the definition of a toy language? That’s a new term for me. I (thankfully) haven’t written C++ in over 20 years, but if I had to drop back down to a low level language, it’d be C or a compile-to-C language. C is the language these things should target, in my opinion.

> What is the definition of a toy language?

A language that doesn't require as much hair-pulling to learn, so you can't feel as smug for knowing it.

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#59

Post by argvargc »

StavrosK wrote: post #58
christophilus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the definition of a toy language? That’s a new term for me. I (thankfully) haven’t written C++ in over 20 years, but if I had to drop back down to a low level language, it’d be C or a compile-to-C language. C is the language these things should target, in my opinion.

> What is the definition of a toy language? A language that doesn't require as much hair-pulling to learn, so you can't feel as smug for knowing it.

So... not Javascript then?

Re: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web

#60

Post by argvargc »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #38
calibas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said that IPFS hosting is the "primary responsibility of a single party". The whole idea behind peer to peer is to avoid precisely that.

Not really, if you want something to be perpetually available in any p2p network you need to ensure that you're still hosting it. That goes for torrents, ed2k, freenet, and ipfs too.

This isn't true of most blockchain p2p networks, eg, Bitcoin. Anything uploaded to these lasts as long as the entire network does.

The reason this works is it costs some amount to initially print the data to the network, limiting that kind of abuse.

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