Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

blog.printf.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 174 posts

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#2

Post by doragcoder »

I need to go more in-depth on the proposal. But the first thing that strikes me, is if you're going to use the Blockchain (with a capital "B") as storage of usernames and such. Why not use namecoin? It has the process for name consensus down. Also it won't pollute the main Bitcoin blockchain.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#3

Post by cjbprime »

doragcoder wrote: post #2

I need to go more in-depth on the proposal. But the first thing that strikes me, is if you're going to use the Blockchain (with a capital "B") as storage of usernames and such. Why not use namecoin? It has the process for name consensus down. Also it won't pollute the main Bitcoin blockchain.

Hi, author here.

I have a mild bias against altcoins, and have heard bad things about Namecoin in particular: that the anti-spam incentives aren't good, leading to illegal files stored in the blockchain itself, and that there's no compact representation (like Bitcoin's Simplified Payment Verification) for determining whether a claimed name is valid without consulting a full history.

As I understand it, these two design flaws combine to mean that you have to store some very illegal files to use a namecoin resolver, which doesn't sound good to me. (I may be mistaken, since the bad things I heard about Namecoin came from Bitcoin people..)

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#4

Post by jMyles »

cjbprime wrote: post #3
doragcoder wrote: post #2

I need to go more in-depth on the proposal. But the first thing that strikes me, is if you're going to use the Blockchain (with a capital "B") as storage of usernames and such. Why not use namecoin? It has the process for name consensus down. Also it won't pollute the main Bitcoin blockchain.

Hi, author here. I have a mild bias against altcoins, and have heard bad things about Namecoin in particular: that the anti-spam incentives aren't good, leading to illegal files stored in the blockchain itself, and that there's no compact representation (like Bitcoin's Simplified Payment Verification) for determining whether a claimed name is valid without consulting a full history. As I understand it, these two desi…

The notion that a file can be illegal makes as much sense to the internet as a plant being illegal makes to the earth.

Especially when it has the side effect of inhibiting what otherwise might be a compelling solution.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#6

Post by vezzy-fnord »

cjbprime wrote: post #3
doragcoder wrote: post #2

I need to go more in-depth on the proposal. But the first thing that strikes me, is if you're going to use the Blockchain (with a capital "B") as storage of usernames and such. Why not use namecoin? It has the process for name consensus down. Also it won't pollute the main Bitcoin blockchain.

Hi, author here. I have a mild bias against altcoins, and have heard bad things about Namecoin in particular: that the anti-spam incentives aren't good, leading to illegal files stored in the blockchain itself, and that there's no compact representation (like Bitcoin's Simplified Payment Verification) for determining whether a claimed name is valid without consulting a full history. As I understand it, these two desi…

There aren't any inherent protections to storing illegal data in the Bitcoin blockchain, either (short of evading the issue by using a thin client, I suppose). The nature of what is illegal being so encompassing, in that you can ultimately encode the information into some integer of sorts either way, means it's impractical or unnecessary to provide full protection for such things.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#7

Post by cjbprime »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #6
cjbprime wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, author here. I have a mild bias against altcoins, and have heard bad things about Namecoin in particular: that the anti-spam incentives aren't good, leading to illegal files stored in the blockchain itself, and that there's no compact representation (like Bitcoin's Simplified Payment Verification) for determining whether a claimed name is valid without consulting a full history. As I understand it, these two desi…

There aren't any inherent protections to storing illegal data in the Bitcoin blockchain, either (short of evading the issue by using a thin client, I suppose). The nature of what is illegal being so encompassing, in that you can ultimately encode the information into some integer of sorts either way, means it's impractical or unnecessary to provide full protection for such things.

No inherent protections, just different incentives. Storing a 4MB image at 80 bytes per $0.08 OP_RETURN transaction would cost you $4000. Why would you do that when you can use namecoin for practically free?

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#10

Post by sytse »

shmerl wrote: post #5

> There are philosophical reasons, too: GitHub is closed source, so we can’t make it better ourselves. There is GitLab.

GitLab CEO here, thanks for mentioning us as the open source alternative. We think in the short term multiple organizations hosting their own GitLab is the way to go. It is hard to do issues and pull/merge requests in a decentralized way (the OP is impressive but it shows distributed git instead of distributed GitHub). I would like to see federated merge requests http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...
Post reply on HN