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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

#21

These sorts of things are still blockable through DNS and IP filters cutting off access to the root nodes and such I would guess. As such, what is the use case?

Wow that's a big huge dollop of nihilism, of why even bother. It's very unclear what your slam even means, what you are trying, technically, to express as the problem. Which makes your rejection even harder to handle with faith & respect.

I also don't think it's accurate. Handshake is a cryptographically certified way of establishing identity . Since torrents are now mutable via handshake, it seems like webtorrents can be updated & moved as needed. Further, peer-exchange processes mean that having the initial seeds up probably isn't even a requirement. Even if one particular ip address or site gets cut down, the swarm can use other webtorrent trackers to re-spawn & carry-on.

Aside from your criticism being either inaccureate or misleading, I'd also say the use case doesn't need to, imo, be 100% perfect in every way to be worthwhile. I'm glad someone did seek better, & bothered. A decentralized, updateable, browser-based torrent is incredible leap for a web of data, for interconnection. Even if it's not 100% completely uncensorable, it's many leaps in the right direction, towards decentralization. Especially decentralization without coordination/consensus, which I think is great & vast improvement over the harsh & strict type of computing that *coins have dominated the field with. This work is far more interesting to me.

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

#22

This is cool. I'm also working on a decentralized distribution mechanism based on torrents, and while i've being working on a different architecture, the network mechanism are basically the same with a couple of differences on the network level. In my case i'm working on a very customized version of chrome where the web api is actually available for native applications beyond Javascript.

That sounds interesting! I would love to hear more!

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

#25
post #8

This is what decentralization is about, not crypto.

this literally uses a cryptocurrency (handshake) for domains

There's a dilemma as the magnet links/hashes aren't easily shareable. One option is to create a DMT directory, but this would be centralized. Handshake is the most mature decentralized domain name project, and I opted for it. It uses coins to limit abuse, since anyone can flood a decentralized system. You don't need coins to browse and use federalist. That said, if there are any other immutable DNS systems that aren't centrally controlled that I could review, I'll definitely take a look!

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

#26
post #21

These sorts of things are still blockable through DNS and IP filters cutting off access to the root nodes and such I would guess. As such, what is the use case?

Wow that's a big huge dollop of nihilism, of why even bother. It's very unclear what your slam even means, what you are trying, technically, to express as the problem. Which makes your rejection even harder to handle with faith & respect. I also don't think it's accurate. Handshake is a cryptographically certified way of establishing identity . Since torrents are now mutable via handshake, it seems like webtorrents c…

You are assuming bad faith here.

The project is marketed as unblockable, etc and yet we both conclude it is blockable from the start with existing network management tools that are deployed in places like Iran and China.

I was asking a genuine question of use case.

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

#28
post #24

How would you compare this in a use-case sense to something like Beaker browser? Also -- and I'm unfamiliar with handshake -- but is the sort of thing that could work over ad hoc networks?

The Beaker browser looks interesting -- it looks a lot like DHT/DMT (https://hypercore-protocol.org/), but I speculate it's likely more specialized for the use case.

Handshake names are decentralized and on chain, so as long as you have access to read the chain, it would work over ad hoc networks as well (and offline/local).

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

#30

Isn't this just trusting whoever runs https://query.hdns.io ? https://github.com/publiusfederalist/federalist/blob/3670867...

Good catch!

It's temporarily using hdns.io as many people still do not have an hsd node installed. A later version will be shipped with a light weight SPV resolver, at which point, the last piece of the puzzle will be complete.

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