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Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

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Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#101

Post by jancsika »

publiush wrote: post #44
panick21_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checkout out the Gnu Name System from GNUNet?

The website for GNUnet seems to be down/404, but it looks like ownership of names is controlled by a central authority ( https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/gnunet/gnunet-namestore... ).

It's fully decentralized from what I remember.

Looks like Christian did a quick 4 minute synopsis here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB9SC4kD27Y

If you like the idea of both the decentralized resolution and using the DHT as a PIR, you might look into it.

Also-- if you find it's the case that it's not currently usable (which I'm guessing is the case), it might be worthwhile to mention on your README that you looked at this as an option and then briefly state the reason(s) why you can't use it in practice. If enough prospective users of gnunet do this it may motivate the maintainers to do something about the current state of the documentation and usability...

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#102

Post by everfree »

publiush wrote: post #81
rglullis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but PoS will not solve the problem of gas fees. Gas fees only come down when network capacity is higher than its demand. Layer-2 systems (which allow some of the operations to happen off-chain) is how Ethereum developers are trying to scale the network capacity.

My worry with Ethereum is that moving to proof of stake changes the project from a decentralized one to something a little less so.

Are you not concerned about the decentralization of Handshake's PoW consensus, considering that it uses a custom hashing algo that seems to be dominated in hardware production by a single company, Goldshell?

I believe you may be missing the forest for the trees by worrying about Ethereum's decentralization when compared to Handshake's.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#103

Post by everfree »

Aeolun wrote: post #73
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this literally uses a cryptocurrency (handshake) for domains

I thought Handshake looked nice, but it turned out to be just more crypto and coins.

How would you solve the problem of spam and squatting without the network requiring payment for domains?

Subsequently, how else besides using a crypto coin would it be feasible for a decentralized network to take payment?

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#105

Post by ipaddr »

schleck8 wrote: post #85
dane-pgp wrote: post #64

This looks like a great project, thank you. One aspect of censorship resistance is the ability for people to publish and read content anonymously (or pseudonymously). Could you add something to the README about that threat model? Also, I see that your IRC channel is hosted on Freenode. That seems an odd choice for a project that is opposed to censorship. Please consider a network with a better track record in that re…

> censorship resistance Can someone tell me what is going to happen if let's say a terror group decides to use this for propaganda purposes, along the lines of religious fundamentalism/executions as we've witnessed before? Who is going to take the blame for providing them with what is advertised as an unblockable platform? Has abuse even been factored in?

Your terror group is someone else freedom fighter. What is celebrated today is scorned tomorrow.

Asking what if some group we want to stop uses a technology misses the point. Paper can be used by terrorist to make plans for terror and communicate should we reconsider paper? Who is to blame when paper and pen are used to do things we disapprove of?

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#106

Post by jancsika »

duskwuff wrote: post #68
summm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do anything decentralized, I highly recommend to read all of the scientific papers from the gnunet authors. They theoretically solved a lot of problems a long time ago that modern distributed projects keep repeating. About the name system: It is a bit more complex than that. Everybody can "create" a domain, but others must import it's public key, somewhat compatible to a hosts file. The trick is that e…

> The trick is that each domain can have arbitrary subdomains, also stored in the DHT. Now one can construct arbitrary deep trees. And everyone can choose a list of their trusted TLDs, and use them to resolve names. Say site.alice.bob.gnu (where .gnu is shipped with the client as default) and if I personally decide to trust Alice directly, I put her public key into my config file and from now on I can use site.alice…

In practice it'd probably end up like the sources.list in Debian. E.g., an enormous number of users just use whatever pasta is copied in there by default. Then special devs change it or copypaste a Debian spell to magically add repos for whatever special cases they have.

And let's be honest-- if someone on HN were to post, "OMG the security updates repo got DDOS'd in Debian" it's not like the entire comment section is going to be filled with confused responses like, "Wait, do you mean the security updates for the gitlab repo that I added for my gitlab instance, or Debian's security repo for Debian the Universal Operating System?"

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#107

Post by Aeolun »

everfree wrote: post #103
Aeolun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Handshake looked nice, but it turned out to be just more crypto and coins.

How would you solve the problem of spam and squatting without the network requiring payment for domains? Subsequently, how else besides using a crypto coin would it be feasible for a decentralized network to take payment?

Good question, I’m just not satisfied with this answer.

Requiring some form of payment is fine, but I’d like the ‘currency’ to be locked into the network so it doesn’t become something you can trade.

Maybe contribute to the network in exchange for a balance, that you can then exchange for domains after which it’s gone.

Ideally also figure out a way to limit people simply creating many accounts and using that, guess you can require upkeep for all domains, so when you stop contributing they disappear.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#108

Post by serverholic »

wyager wrote: post #100
schleck8 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> censorship resistance Can someone tell me what is going to happen if let's say a terror group decides to use this for propaganda purposes, along the lines of religious fundamentalism/executions as we've witnessed before? Who is going to take the blame for providing them with what is advertised as an unblockable platform? Has abuse even been factored in?

Yes, censorship resistant means censorship resistant. Over time it becomes more apparent that the desire for a "middle ground" between extremely regressive censorship and absolute freedom is incoherent, because if you give people even the slightest wiggle room, they can create systems like this. I personally prefer a world where I'm allowed to have a general purpose computer, and incidentally it's also possible for I…

Reminds me of government trying to get companies to install cryptography back doors. If the good guys can get in, then so can the bad guys.

Same with this. If bad guys can be censored then so can good guys.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#109

Post by toolz »

schleck8 wrote: post #94
publiush wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important debate that comes up all too often. I do think this is the proper forum for this, so I'm glad you brought this up and I would be happy to share my thoughts. The more information people have had in the history of humanity, the more freedoms and liberties we have also had. We would likely still be living in monarchies if not for the spread of information -- North Korea is a prime example. If inform…

> Just because there are gun abusers, you wouldn't want to take away the 2nd amendment which keeps the government in check I don't think this is a good comparison. The second ammendment was appended in 1791 if I'm not mistaken, i. e. shortly after the war for independence on american soil against an empire, which was fought with militias (hence the third ammendement). That's a totally different scenario than the 21st…

Why are school shootings the bar here? Do we care about murdered children, or very specifically only murdered children in school by a gun? Certainly the US has tons of room for improvement, but it seems very disingenuous to cherry-pick a subset of what people actually care about just to oversell your point.

Re: Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

#110

Post by serverholic »

iskander wrote: post #39
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this literally uses a cryptocurrency (handshake) for domains

I think the evolution of "decentralized" infrastructure will start to bring out a lot more overlap between "traditional" decentralization communities (building stuff like Beaker browser) and some of the useful bits of crypto.

> some of the useful bits of crypto

There is actually a ton of interesting and useful innovation happening in the crypto space that isn’t necessarily crypto-specific. If hacker news wasn’t so die-hard anti-crypto then more people would see that.

- zero-knowledge proofs

- quadratic funding

- verkle trees

- etc.

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