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Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

economist.com

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Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#51

Post by tzpardi »

zzzcpan wrote: post #49
tzpardi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, but centralized network bootstrapping is a very well known issue and unsolved problem of decentralized networks. http://ryandoyle.net/assets/papers/Distributed_Bootstrapping... http://grothoff.org/christian/dasp2p.pdf http://www.net.in.tum.de/fileadmin/TUM/NET/NET-2014-08-1/NET... You say: "i.e. changing hardcoded bootstrapping data every N minutes, so new users could bootstrap from different nodes" The f…

> The fundamental issue is, changing the data where? The node who wants to connect to the peer network, obviously cannot obtain the information from the peer network itself (as node is not connected), so obtain the information from where? Ok, you are assuming that the node already has the binary somehow. But that's not the case. In the real world we have to ship binaries to users. And this is where you can put your d…

>>

Well, I am not assuming anything. I am talking about a fundamental problem of decentralized networks: the current bootstrapping of networks is centralized. Please refer to the quoted papers and there are many other research papers as well which describe this existing problem.

>>

You are misunderstanding the problem. The point is

a) we should never ever hard code the seed information into the application and consequently ship it with the binary. If we do rely on the current approach then you always connect to the seeds of ETH foundation, Bitcoin foundation and to my company's seeds in the case of Streembit which is the oxymoron of decentralization.

b) we should have a protocol level solution for entity discovery instead of application level solution such embedding the seed info in the source and then compile it into the app. When I say protocol level solution I refer to mDNS and UDP multicasting which works on local networks just fine and I am proposing IPv6 anycast for entity discovery on global networks.

The simple truth is that Bitcoin, Ethereum and all cryptocurrencies conveniently ignore this issue. The companies, lead developers, foundations or whoever run the show maintain the seed nodes, but such solution is surely not a decentralized solution.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#52

Post by tzpardi »

textmode wrote: post #50
tzpardi wrote: post #33

All these articles in the mainstream media about decentralized computing are very nice and the Ethereum and Bitcoin PR teams are doing a fine job to disseminate the idea of decentralized computing. At the same time, I think we need to be more honest about one of the fundamental issues of decentralized networking, which is that the bootstrapping of the network is not decentralized. The bootstrapping in fact centralize…

This is true and IMO does not get enough discussion. It's a relatively easy problem to solve, but I'm not sure that hardcoding IP addresses into programs is the best solution for users who do not compile from source. Out of curiosity I once reviewed the source code for a certain "onion router" program and found a handful of hardcoded IP addresses. Servers at MIT if I recall correctly. If these servers are inaccessibl…

I agree. It doesn't get enough discussion because it would disrupt the hype about blockchain. When in fact as you said, it is relatively easy to solve the problem.

>>

Precisely, that is the problem.

>>

Could be a solution. The issue is again, from where we download it? If we download it from a centralized source then the decentralization does not exists. There are suggestions to solve this with Bitmessage or Telehash, but those are both having this very issue with bootstrapping. Using Bitmessage or Telehash for bootstrapping an another network is just kicking the can down the road. I understand you didn't suggest this :-) I am just saying.

The problem with DNS is that an authority can ban a domain name and the idea of permissionless systems is that there is no central authority should control the access of users.

mDNS and UDP multicast work fine on local networks and we are working to solve this on global networks as well. IPv6 anycast looks promising but I haven't got yet the prototype.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#53

Post by zzzcpan »

tzpardi wrote: post #51
zzzcpan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fundamental issue is, changing the data where? The node who wants to connect to the peer network, obviously cannot obtain the information from the peer network itself (as node is not connected), so obtain the information from where? Ok, you are assuming that the node already has the binary somehow. But that's not the case. In the real world we have to ship binaries to users. And this is where you can put your d…

>> Well, I am not assuming anything. I am talking about a fundamental problem of decentralized networks: the current bootstrapping of networks is centralized. Please refer to the quoted papers and there are many other research papers as well which describe this existing problem. >> You are misunderstanding the problem. The point is a) we should never ever hard code the seed information into the application and conseq…

> we should have a protocol level solution

No! This is a problem that solves itself once you solve a binary distribution problem. But none of the papers you refer to address the problem of the centralized binary distribution and jump right to the protocol level for some reason. It doesn't work like that.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#54

Post by forgotpwtomain »

tzpardi wrote: post #33

All these articles in the mainstream media about decentralized computing are very nice and the Ethereum and Bitcoin PR teams are doing a fine job to disseminate the idea of decentralized computing. At the same time, I think we need to be more honest about one of the fundamental issues of decentralized networking, which is that the bootstrapping of the network is not decentralized. The bootstrapping in fact centralize…

Is there a Spec available for Streembit somewhere? I've looked at the documentation (http://streembit.github.io/documentation/) but there doesn't seem to be much detail.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#55

Post by doctorshady »

jbpetersen wrote: post #24
doctorshady wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd definitely like to think so - and in practice, I've done more of running my own infrastructure recently. But what about those who're stuck under capped internet plans? What about the people whose interest in computing begins and ends with owning a smartphone?

What's your setup like?

At the moment, just an old desktop running HTTP/SSH/IRC functionality, and a 1U server I have modified for fitting full size (as in like, the huge, foot-long) PCI cards; mostly for the goofy projects I do in my spare time. It is a hardened machine though, and should be capable of running a few daemons if it comes down to it.

EDIT: I should mention I'm on satellite internet (there's quite literally no options for broadband where I live. I will, however, use my phone line for SSH via dial-up occasionally), so it's probably not very practical to run SMTP. For that, I have a Fastmail account.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#56

Post by textmode »

tzpardi wrote: post #52
textmode wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and IMO does not get enough discussion. It's a relatively easy problem to solve, but I'm not sure that hardcoding IP addresses into programs is the best solution for users who do not compile from source. Out of curiosity I once reviewed the source code for a certain "onion router" program and found a handful of hardcoded IP addresses. Servers at MIT if I recall correctly. If these servers are inaccessibl…

I agree. It doesn't get enough discussion because it would disrupt the hype about blockchain. When in fact as you said, it is relatively easy to solve the problem. >> Precisely, that is the problem. >> Could be a solution. The issue is again, from where we download it? If we download it from a centralized source then the decentralization does not exists. There are suggestions to solve this with Bitmessage or Telehash…

Note I mentioned the web and DNS only as an example of the bootstrapping issue, not as a solution for how to overcome centralization. (And to illustrate how I work with the web's bootstrap requirements -- using root.zone file.)

The need to bootstrap is ubiquitous. Even a user's internet connection is "bootstrapped". She has to know at least an RFC1918 address to get started.

Disseminating a list of addresses of working supernodes so users can form networks and connect to each other should not be an insurmountable problem.

The list does not have to disseminated via the network. Remember the days of POP and dial-in numbers? If the user has no internet connection then how did she get the dial-in numbers?

This is not a difficult problem.

re: ability to "ban a domanin name"

When authorities "ban a domain name" via DNS, they only ban lookups using certain DNS servers. The server at the IP address associated with the domain name could still be accessible.

The reason banning DNS lookups in order to take sites "offline" is so effective is because usually these sites are doing something shady and need to keep changing IP addresses frequently. No one knows what IP address they will be using in the future. They are very reliant on DNS.

Otherwise, if we are dealing with a legitimate site that changes its IP only infrequently, it would be futile to try to "ban" it via DNS.

It would be like expecting every nerd worldwide to forget that ftp.internic.net is associated with 192.0.32.9 or that example.com is associated with 93.184.216.34.

Some will have saved this information. There are publicly available archives of historical DNS data.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#57

Post by tzpardi »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #54
tzpardi wrote: post #33

All these articles in the mainstream media about decentralized computing are very nice and the Ethereum and Bitcoin PR teams are doing a fine job to disseminate the idea of decentralized computing. At the same time, I think we need to be more honest about one of the fundamental issues of decentralized networking, which is that the bootstrapping of the network is not decentralized. The bootstrapping in fact centralize…

Is there a Spec available for Streembit somewhere? I've looked at the documentation ( http://streembit.github.io/documentation/ ) but there doesn't seem to be much detail.

Hi, I wrote a white paper which is available at http://streembit.github.io/ and link of the white paper is http://streembit.github.io/downloads/streembit_whitepaper_v1...

We use open standards such as JOSE, JWS, JWT, JWE and the audio & video is WebRTC that is open source as well. All crypto are FIPS compliant and the ECC and ECDH uses recommended curves. The IoT is directly mirrors our work in W3C WoT. I am working on W3C WoT security and move the code from there to Streembit. The objective is with Streembit to stay based on open standards.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#58

Post by pdimitar »

zzzcpan wrote: post #53
tzpardi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Well, I am not assuming anything. I am talking about a fundamental problem of decentralized networks: the current bootstrapping of networks is centralized. Please refer to the quoted papers and there are many other research papers as well which describe this existing problem. >> You are misunderstanding the problem. The point is a) we should never ever hard code the seed information into the application and conseq…

> we should have a protocol level solution No! This is a problem that solves itself once you solve a binary distribution problem. But none of the papers you refer to address the problem of the centralized binary distribution and jump right to the protocol level for some reason. It doesn't work like that.

Could you please explain why it doesn't work like that?

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#60

Post by pdimitar »

ralala wrote: post #26

For most of the P2P overlays there are multiple serious attack possibilities (Sybil attack, routing table poisoning). Some years ago in the university I wrote a paper about that in a seminar to summarize the possible counter meassures, but from what I remember, there were no really practical solutions. I think the most promising one is the use of a centralized certificate authority, which reintroduces some of the pro…

You should read about the implementation of IPFS and how it tackles this exact problem. Look it up, it's readily accessible from the first few results in Google.

I believe their system will work. Or require only minor tweaks.

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