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The Blockstack Browser: A Gateway to a New, Decentralized Internet

378 points by adunk 9y ago

tudorconstantin 9y ago
This works using the bitcoin blockchain and is a great example regarding the usefulness of blockchains. I mention this because in the previous threads regarding crypto currencies, people were asking for some value-creation technologies based on blockchains (other than speculation and money laundering)
- throwanem 9y ago
  > This works using the bitcoin blockchain and is a great example regarding the usefulness of blockchains. Is it? I thought you didn't do anything on the bitcoin chain without value changing hands. Is there some kind of high-level overview available for those of us who are totally unfamiliar with the inner workings of blockchains, and would nonetheless like to gain a firm enough grasp to understand what Blockstack actually offers? I'd love to read such a thing, but haven't yet found it on the Blockstack site.
  - tudorconstantin 9y ago
    Indeed, in order to have something stored in the blockchain, you have to make a transaction, which incurs costs. However, reading the blockchain is free (once you exclude network traffic costs and electricity). This is an overview of how blockstack works: https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works This is a description regarding the transaction fees on the bitcoin blockchain: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees Here are some real time stats regarding the costs/byte of info to be stored in the blockchain (in satoshis - 1 USD is approx 45k satoshis at today's BTC price)
sharemywin 9y ago
What's getting stored in a blockchain?
- xcyu 9y ago
  See https://blockstack.org/blog/blockstack-whitepaper-part-1 https://blockstack.org/blog/blockstack-whitepaper-part-1: "Blockstack binds (human-readable) domains to public keys to establish ownership of domains. These domains have associated data records as well. These small bindings are stored on the blockchain and are tamper resistant. The actual payload from the data records is stored outside of the blockchain because blockchains have limited storage space and are not meant to be used as general-purpose databases."
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    How is this different than: https://namecoin.org/ https://namecoin.org/
    - odinho 9y ago
      Blockstack project originally ran on namecoin. But it is not a secure blockchain. Also, it stores much data in the blockchain, so it has scaling problems. Blockstack stores the zone file data in its own Atlas (DHT-inspired) network, and the zone files point to where the actual application-level data is stored. Blockstack can work on top of any blockchain, so if Bitcoin is not the most secure anymore, it could be moved. Separating into different layers allows scaling and resiliency. And you don't have to run a blockchain, which is good, because that already exists.
shmerl 9y ago
> Developers can build apps on this new internet by downloading the Blockstack Mac or Linux app (Windows coming soon) and by using nothing more than your existing Chrome or Safari browsers. Why Chrome and not Firefox? In their context, the later makes way more sense.
- 659087 9y ago
  Support the decentralized internet by using the products of a company currently trying to centralize the internet!
  - shmerl 9y ago
    And being open source friendly, proposing using closed browsers...
- wcummings 9y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me if they never test in non-WebKit browsers, seems common these days.
- mhkool 9y ago
  I welcome the ideas of Blockstack but the implementation with Chrome and Safari is obviously a big mistake. I will not even try it since the ideas of Blockstack on one hand and Google and Apple on the other hand are not compatible.
- unknown2374 9y ago
  Looks like it now says "Chrome or Safari or Firefox"
- larrysalibra 9y ago
  Larry from Blockstack here. It works on whichever browser is your default browser and soon all of your browsers. Nothing is Chrome (or Safari!) specific! If you have a problem using Blockstack with your favorite browser, we'd love to know about it so that we can fix it! Sorry about the confusion!
andrewstuart2 9y ago
Unless I can unplug the WAN connection on my router and connect to your product instead, keep in mind that you haven't invented the next internet. You might be able to decentralize the worldwide web of HTML pages and hyperlinks, or invent another protocol that can be encapsulated in TCP/IP packets and ethernet frames, but the internet (the graph of inter-connected networks that speak common protocols) is still a fundamental requirement for your product, and the metadata associated with those stacks is still very real and trackable. To that point as well, the internet already "works how real life works." Sick of Company X and the way their business treats employees? Shop elsewhere, remembering that it won't be as convenient with fewer choices. Sick of Google tracking the websites you visit? Use a search engine that doesn't track you, remembering that they probably can't pay as much for great engineers. It's Conway's Law. We are largely constrained to create systems (including the internet) that mirror the organizational structure we're a part of. Yes, we can evolve and revolutionize occasionally, but it will always mirror "real life" because they will always influence each other.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lappa 9y ago
  I don't follow your argument. You are saying that because we have nearly a tree structure within the workplace, the Internet will approximately have nearly tree structure? Seems that it's just a matter if the most efficient structure being this way for both cases rather than us mimicking the workplace in the structuring of the Internet.
- owens99 9y ago
  > Sick of Company X and the way their business treats employees? Shop elsewhere, remembering that it won't be as convenient with fewer choices. Sick of Google tracking the websites you visit? Use a search engine that doesn't track you, remembering that they probably can't pay as much for great engineers. Hard sell. There's a reason why the government has laws against monopolies. Especially when it comes to the internet, consumers tend to choose the best/fastest product over the most ethical one.
datatan 9y ago
Can't even get people to migrate to ipv6 and they expect anyone at all to switch to a blockchain browser based internet thats 100 times more complex? DOA.
pplonski86 9y ago
I like the idea of storing data and apps locally!
- kefka 9y ago
  So do I... Lets take a fun game. How about all of Atari 2600? https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCU... Ok.. This is remote, across all the machines that have that IPFS hash. In other words, its not local. (in console) ipfs pin add QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb Now its local! Or lets do something more than a game... How about Node-Red in browser(PageNodes)? http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDhBtSQ6T/ http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDh... EDIT: I had the point in my head, but didn't put it down here. In other words, we already have this technology, and not using buzzword-bingo like "Its the interwebz but with blockchains!". These links are direct proof that it not only exists, but is working right now. And in reality, making a type of blockchain in IPFS would not be hard. It's an immutable data structure, with append-only characteristics. And, I also am partial to IPFS, primarily because it feels like a proper IETF-internet scale project. ZeroNET looks prettier, but.. throw away. Again, some subjective feel there, but IPFS feels elegant.
  - supergreg 9y ago
    I've been partial to IPFS since I first learn of it but I know there's a few competitors in this space. Is there anywhere with some comparisons of the technology and maybe popularity (since the more people, the more robust the network) of these projects?.
    - kefka 9y ago
      Well.. I know of a few. ZeroNET, Maidsafe (kind of), this project. There's also some DRM encrusted version kind of like this. I forget their name. But they wanted a pay-gateway. EDIT: found it. Called "LBRY" (I'm absolutely not impressed.. https://lbry.io/ https://lbry.io/ ) Primarily, I see ZeroNET as its competitor. And ZeroNET has the bling and the wow factor, but much of the underlying system is.. unfinished. It also requires some heafty frontend with backing DB as well. It seems cobbled on and over-engineered. IPFS, on the other hand, is clean and clear of its focus. It's simple enough to do as it purports. It works now. It seamlessly works with gateways to allow non-IPFS users to access the network. It's network agnostic: ip4, 6, and whatever else is a protocol addon. And it seems to be on its way to an IETF standard.
alando46 9y ago
This is awesome and definitely the future. Anyone know the differences between this and IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)? Anything else out there similar to either of these?
tuna 9y ago
Is it from Silicon Valley (tv show) ?
- programbreeding 9y ago
  While that one is mostly fictional, it is creating an actual completely decentralized version of the internet by creating an ad-hoc network using people's phones. This still requires you to have your normal internet to connect to it and use it.
desireco42 9y ago
This is really good proof of concept project. Blockchain is super exciting and I share your enthusiasm. Problems it solves are real. I kind of feel it will not take off, no windows support etc, but you never know, if anything is hot these days, it is blockchain solutions.
owens99 9y ago
> Imagine a world where people don't have property rights. In this world, you cannot own a house, and all your belongings are kept in a storage facility owned by a few corporations. And in this world, walking into any store or theater implies that you disclose all your personal information, places you've been, other things you've bought to the business owners. You are tracked 24/7, your belongings are stolen from storage facilities, and you can't do anything about it. Most of us would not stand for this in our real, everyday lives. But on the internet, we tolerate and even expect it. We become dependent on nameless, faceless, remote parties just by connecting. On the internet, we are powerless. Our existence on the internet is defined by others, whether that other be a mega-corporation or a government. Now, we can change that. Beautiful mission statement.
- orblivion 9y ago
  I like that it's an anti-corporate sentiment, but with an appeal to property rights. I almost suspect it's a deliberate clever way to appeal across the spectrum.
  - aelena 9y ago
    Well, you can still support individual/grassroots property rights while rejecting corporativism
    - datatan 9y ago
      I think it can be argued that supporting individual property rights is the definition of rejecting corprativism.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Indeed it is! I'd love to know more about the technology backing it, but right now my options appear to be either the app developer tutorials, which reveal nothing, or deep-diving the core code, which I lack anything remotely resembling time enough to do. What am I missing?
  - 9y ago
komali2 9y ago
Oh, bummer, I thought this was some sort of like, "turn your wifi router into a mesh network connector" thing. I don't really know much about blockchain, but I know to access whatever this is, I still have to pay Comcast 50 bucks a month for the right to use their "tubes."
- kilroy123 9y ago
  My hope is for low orbit satelite internet to really become a thing. Putting pressure on monopolies to lower prices to compete and giving you at least another option for an ISP.
betoharres 9y ago
Is this like ZeroNet? Does anyone knows the difference?
- quaz3l 9y ago
  This is what I was going to ask. It looks very similar and operates (to user at least) the same way. I wonder if they could support each other by making the sites accessible from either service.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  ZeroNet executes arbitrary javascript from anonymous/unknown sources. I hope this one does not.
  - brokenmachine 9y ago
    Isn't it your browser that executes the javascript? Just like the normal web? From what I remember, ZeroNet ran in whatever browser you used to access it.
    - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
      In the normal web if you browse a well known site there's a degree of trust that the site is not serving malware to you. That's why is good to use a dedicated device/OS user or at least browser profile to access your bank and doing random browsing.
jagermo 9y ago
Ok, can I just run the server to support the project? I have some Azure credits and would like to put them to good use.
jandrese 9y ago
Wait, so does this mean anybody who wants to run this project needs a copy of the whole internet on their machine? Or connect to someone who has a whole copy of the internet? Regular bitcoin only deals with tiny transactions and already it takes days to download its blockchain on an older DSL link. Also, how is this better than just, you know, running your own website? Is that too Web 1.0 for today's hip youth? How much aggregate computer power is necessary to deliver one page in this system? How about 10 years from now when it has petabytes of data to deliver?
- yhu 9y ago
  Google Aubrie Herbalot How small is the internet really?
  - bonoetmalo 9y ago
    I'm not getting any relevant results for that
    - tcmb 9y ago
      See? That's how small it is.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  But you see, this is better because it has... blockchain.
- icc97 9y ago
  Don't worry, the internet comes in a small box, just make sure you don't drop the box [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
- odinho 9y ago
  No, you don't need the whole internet. You can't run application code with just pure HTML. The processing code has to run somewhere. Blockstack runs it using Javascript in your browser, and with bring your own storage. Only naming (identity) is pegged to Bitcoin, blockstack has a virtual blockchain on top of this which has functionality akin to DNS (and CA). That DNS can point to your storage, so you can have things on Dropbox or Amazon S3 or wherever. So it scales pretty well, you don't download what you're not interested it. It will work with a lot of infrastructre/services that exist, but you can cut out a lot of middle men. You could host your application code on your Amazon S3. But when a user runs it, the app can store private data in THEIR chosen storage. And if you have public data, that could be either stored with their chosen storage without encryption (only signature) so it is public, or indeed you could store it in your application storage.
627467 9y ago
There are great many explorations on a decentralized protocols (this, Zeronet, IPFS, urbit) but I don't see many infrastructure related projects that we can play with today. Anyone can knows of hardware stack that enables fault-tolerant meshnets?
- noajshu 9y ago
  I know about this project in my neighborhood: https://oaklandnorth.net/2013/11/27/mesh-network-offers-potential-for-free-wireless-internet-in-oakland/ https://oaklandnorth.net/2013/11/27/mesh-network-offers-pote...
  - chabes 9y ago
    That's really cool! I wonder if there are other projects like that elsewhere in the Bay Area
- tyingq 9y ago
  I'd love to see an implementation that uses "parasitic storage". There seem to be enough free places to post content now that it would be workable, especially if you thought broader than just things like Google drive. Throw in free blogging platforms, pastebins, free email + attachments, etc, and a bit of PKI (obfuscate) + redundant copies. That would allow for real world use without having to rely on things like "pinning".
  - shakna 9y ago
    Couple years ago, a couple friends and I threw together something like that. GPG encrypted messages with a huge list of fallbacks where messages got stored. (Pastes, private subreddit, Facebook via RSS). The code was truly awful, but the premise was we just needed each others public keys, and all was good. (Killed the project when one of us lost their private key, and we realized hardcoding the public keys had been a terrible idea). I don't think I have the code anymore, but shouldn't be much more than a weekend project if you stick with text only.
  - odinho 9y ago
kayoone 9y ago
I don't know too much about Blockchains, but wouldn't Ethereum be a better choice for something like this?
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  No. Better to have a dumb network. Keep things as simple as possible. Transactions on the bitcoin network suffice.
aaroninsf 9y ago
Once again, a manifesto on the landing page that explains nothing about what is actually being proposed. Please link to summaries of what has been done, why, and where it's going. (On the face of it, a "blockchain" seems like a god-awful fundament for a distributed net, compared to e.g. IPFS.)
anfedorov 9y ago
Bob Kahn, not TBL, is the other "father of the internet". > Today we are proud to announce the Blockstack browser, which allows developers everywhere to access a whole new internet. reminded me of then-Senator Ted Stevens' take on net neutrality > Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. In other words, what a load of hot air! Looking forward to their $50M seed round.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  I remembered the "series of tubes" comment but never heard this part: I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday I had to go back to listen to the original. Man what a trip. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE
  - Whitestrake 9y ago
    Reminds me of an old classic, the then-Minister for Communications in Australia back in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ionised 9y ago
  (misinformed)People tend to conflate the Internet and the World Wide Web
- muneeb 9y ago
  Muneeb from Blockstack here. Yep, many people like Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf, David Clark, Tim Berners-Lee and others helped build the various components of what we today know as the internet. I'd highly recommend looking at our peer-reviewed research papers at http://blockstack.org/papers http://blockstack.org/papers. We've been obsessed with performance and scalability and 3-4 years of research, engineering, and hard work went into this. We already have enough money and are grateful for having investors like Union Square Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Lux Capital, and others who share our vision. Building a truly decentralized internet will take years/decades and we're looking forward to growing our open-source community that can take on this grand challenge.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Still struggling to wrap my head around this, mostly trying to make sense of: https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works This is DNS on top of the blockchain right? Though where it deviates some is: "Even though only data record hashes are stored in blockchain transactions, we can use them to verify the authenticity and integrity of the data itself once we get it. For example, you can host your data in S3, and other peers can verify your data by first obtaining the hash from Blockstack DNS and then checking it against your data's hash." So functionally what this is solving is (I'm asking here): - Nobody can take your domain away b/c they don't have the keys, so stuff like domain sniping, ISP interference, Government seizure, etc. are less likely (notwithstanding https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) - Every piece of data is checksummed so you can (and maybe this is what the Blockstack browsers are doing) verify that it hasn't been tampered with ala MITM. But even with that, I'm still unclear on just what's the right way to think about this. Like if I setup a new web site on a domain, would I also enter in every file on the page as a separate 'data record hash'?
- isubkhankulov 9y ago
  in my view, this is where all the blockchain ideas break down. once you require a central party holding the data for the service, its no longer decentralized. theres a reason the bitcoin blockchain is slow, expensive and hard to use. All of its weaknesses are sacrifices the users make in order to obtain decentralized uncensored internet money.
- muneeb 9y ago
  We have a decentralized storage system, called Gaia, and you publish the files there. This gives you performance and reliability comparable to cloud computing. Only the domain registrations hit the blockchain and it's a one-time operation (just like buying a domain name for your website or app).
- odinho 9y ago
  No. The data record hash is only about your zone file. The zone file is just like DNS. It can point to different things. So say you point 'profile' to 'mywebsite.com/myprofile.json', and then in your profile you can update things about yourself independently. Just make sure to always attach a signature to it, so people can verify that you actually did that. Here's a profile: https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id Here's how a simple zone file looks (from https://onename.com/muneeb.json https://onename.com/muneeb.json): $ORIGIN muneeb.id $TTL 3600 _http._tcp IN URI 10 1 "https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id"
golergka 9y ago
Is it another Silicon Valley promo just like that machine learning compression a couple of days ago?
10165 9y ago
"Javascript Required." "Oh snap! Your browser doesn't support Javascript." I have seen so many of these Javascript-only "websites" posted on HN I am wondering is this coming from some web development template? How difficult is it to have a page with text for those not using Javascript? Something like <html class=nojs> <p>This website was designed for browsers that run Javascript. Are you using one? Here are some examples of browsers that work well with our website: browser1, browser2, etc. Alternatively, a no-JS version of the website is available <a href=https://blockstack-site-api.herokuapp.com/v1/blog-rss>here</a>.</p> </html> There are of course other ways to do this. The point is that it can be done and is not difficult. For those not using or with Javascript disabled: https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-core https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-core And a blog curl -o 1.htm https://blockstack-site-api.herokuapp.com/v1/blog-rss tr -cd '\12\40-\176' < 1.htm > 2.htm xyz 2.htm where xyz is some program that displays html or rss.
- cavanasm 9y ago
  There are a bunch of very popular web development frameworks where pretty much all the functionality comes from the javascript. Angular and React are some of the better known ones.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    I can sorta kinda understand that you would use something like that for a rich web application, but this is literally a blog post. It doesn't get any more static than that.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    one of react's differentiating qualities is that it can render the entire page on the back-end, so there's no reason for the page to fail if the user does not run javascript.
    - giobox 9y ago
      Whilst this is often true, not all React code will render server side. You need to take care to make sure your React code stays isomorphic, which usually lasts right up to the point you discover some third party React component you reused would require significant rewriting to support server side rendering. That's how my personal projects usually end up anyway!
ReedJessen 9y ago
Any ideas about whether this is ready for someone to start a company on?
SrslyJosh 9y ago
....and then $NATION_STATE puts enough nodes on the network to execute a 51% attack, and we're back where we started. Basing anything on proof-of-work puts you in a perpetual race to control more compute than your adversaries.
thebigkahunaza 9y ago
has anybody here actually tried to get it to work by following the installation instructions? I've been unsuccessful so far. I tried to install it using the given shell script but it fails. I tried to install it using the manual installation steps but this also fails. It cant find the necessary installation files.
woodandsteel 9y ago
I am wondering how this compares with TBL's Solid. Also IPFS, like is this a rival, or something that could run on IPFS, or what. Also, could you access this with tor?
- odinho 9y ago
  I do not know of Solid. But IPFS is a storage layer, so you can use IPFS as part of Blockstack. It is even normally mentioned in the architecture diagrams. Have a look at the picture down on the page here: https://blockstack.org/intro https://blockstack.org/intro Where it says "storage layer" it has things like Dropbox and S3, in some versions of the picture it also has IPFS. This is up to the user. As long as you can fetch it, it can be used. Usually that would mean you'd have to use HTTP, but it depends on the browser you're running. You can also read about 'Gaia' (where it uses storage as Dropbox/S3 as 'dumb harddrives' where it can dump encrypted blobs on) in the whitepaper: https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf
daxfohl 9y ago
Can you provide some more precise examples of the things this tech would prevent, and how it would prevent them? From an outsider's perspective, it seems like google or whomever could always add an extra layer of junk to any underlying technology to bring it back exactly to where we are now, but just less efficiently.
mayreck 9y ago
Ethereum is going to dominate this.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  All of these blockchain-based protocols are impractical. Blockchain is wasteful and slow. It may work adequately for a transaction ledger, but it doesn't work for the web's primary purpose of distributing arbitrary information ad-hoc and on-demand.
  - ko3us 9y ago
    Totally agree. A lot of hype without real understanding of the limitations. https://blog.tokenize.io/the-case-against-blockchain-identity-d3e0aa3faa3 https://blog.tokenize.io/the-case-against-blockchain-identit...
ReligiousFlames 9y ago
I hope this dies in its current form because: 0. It's self-promoting a panacea "fix" as a product at the wrong level of abstraction. 1. Protocols and standards exist for interoperability. 2. Tries to rebuild everything (supply- and demand-sides) while fixing very little. Fix what's here and now for the benefit of everyone with a migration path, not for the benefit of a few in a temporary, constrained, arbitrary way divides people similarly to the way Facebook tried to foist another internet onto the third-world.
- muneeb 9y ago
  It's an open-source project with 4 years of research and development behind it. The architecture implemented here is actually inspired by David Clark (Chief Protocol Architect of the internet) and his new design principle, called trust-to-trust design, that aims to fix critical security issues with the current design of the internet. I agree that rebuilding everything is hard and that's why we reuse not only TCP/IP and everything below TCP/IP in the stack, but we also reuse existing infrastructure in a decentralized way. We've already built this stack and have been running it in production for 3+ years. Please see our peer-reviewed research papers and our whitepaper at http://blockstack.org/papers http://blockstack.org/papers for more details. Happy to answer any questions!
brenfrow 9y ago
How is this different than using Mist? (https://github.com/ethereum/mist https://github.com/ethereum/mist)
dustingetz 9y ago
I am an app developer. Why do I choose to do my app on BlockStack? I get that as a user i want to control my data, but who are these people who want to make apps on it?
- ionised 9y ago
  If I knew how, I would, because as a developer I want my users to control their data.
  - larrysalibra 9y ago
    Larry from Blockstack here. Yes! Users should be in control of their data and Blockstack enables this. There are also practical advantages for developers. User control of data means you don't have to have the responsibility and cost that comes along with storing other people's information. With lots of user data, you're a valuable target for hackers and governments. It also frees you from maintaining expensive backend infrastructure and devops. This lets your app scale without a huge bill from your favorite cloud infrastructure provider.
    - dustingetz 9y ago
      How about Walmart's automated supply chain. Who are the users, why do they benefit from controlling their data? Why does Walmart want to build on some future incarnation of this?
theprop 9y ago
I stopped skimming this at "If you are not an engineer at Google or Facebook, it's hard for you to innovate."
duckqlz 9y ago
it costs an average of 0.025 btc (~$60 US) to register a name which seems suspiciously expensive for something this new. Has anyone gone through the process of registering an Id and building an app yet? I would love to hear some unbiased feed back
- transitorykris 9y ago
  It's taken hours so far to complete the registration. Transferring BTC to the Blockstack wallet first. Now waiting on the name registration to complete. Edit: transitorykris.id is now registered.. but doesn't appear linked to my keys.
- odinho 9y ago
  You're burning that money. Noone gets it. If it costs 0.025 btc you're trying to register a very short name. Try a longer one, it's a lot cheaper. I've registered an ID. I did it through onename.com which pays the registration fee for you (as a way to get more people into it, it won't stay that way). Read the blockstack papers, they're the best info around and makes everything clearer. It is a bit hard to wrap heads around. I've been trying to unsuccessfully explain it many times, there's so many good ideas and so much potential there! (I'm unaffiliated btw, but have been following the project for a long time)
tutufan 9y ago
Skimmed that whole page, and now feel that I understand even less what it is than when I started. So, it's like a Smoodie?
Svekax 9y ago
I believe the current internet is a living creature and the sarcasm and snark it produces are natural defenses against any new internet someone tries to create.
aqsheehy 9y ago
Perpetual motion is finally here!
mrkgnao 9y ago
It's not a particularly good sign that the gateway to this "gateway", as it were, doesn't like you not having JS enabled.
Asooka 9y ago
> Imagine a world where people don't have property rights. In this world, you cannot own a house, and all your belongings are kept in a storage facility owned by a few corporations. And in this world, walking into any store or theater implies that you disclose all your personal information, places you've been, other things you've bought to the business owners. You are tracked 24/7, your belongings are stolen from storage facilities, and you can't do anything about it. Since it's done to curb terrorism and protect children from predators, isn't this what most people want? I mean, I personally would rather shoot myself than live like that, but I'm not most people. I seem to recall that the UK's internet censorship bill (or whatever exactly it was, someone correct me please) has majority voter support.
deleted 9y ago
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WhiteOwlLion 9y ago
I don't get it. I browsed the web site and didn't find an About Us page. Is this a browser? Is this a platform to build applications on top of? I initially thought IPFS and BitCoin but not sure what to make of the product. What is being presented is not summarized in a clear manner to me.

378 points by adunk 9y ago

This works using the bitcoin blockchain and is a great example regarding the usefulness of blockchains. I mention this because in the previous threads regarding crypto currencies, people were asking for some value-creation technologies based on blockchains (other than speculation and money laundering)

throwanem 9y ago
> This works using the bitcoin blockchain and is a great example regarding the usefulness of blockchains. Is it? I thought you didn't do anything on the bitcoin chain without value changing hands. Is there some kind of high-level overview available for those of us who are totally unfamiliar with the inner workings of blockchains, and would nonetheless like to gain a firm enough grasp to understand what Blockstack actually offers? I'd love to read such a thing, but haven't yet found it on the Blockstack site.
- tudorconstantin 9y ago
  Indeed, in order to have something stored in the blockchain, you have to make a transaction, which incurs costs. However, reading the blockchain is free (once you exclude network traffic costs and electricity). This is an overview of how blockstack works: https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works This is a description regarding the transaction fees on the bitcoin blockchain: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees Here are some real time stats regarding the costs/byte of info to be stored in the blockchain (in satoshis - 1 USD is approx 45k satoshis at today's BTC price)

sharemywin 9y ago

What's getting stored in a blockchain?

xcyu 9y ago
See https://blockstack.org/blog/blockstack-whitepaper-part-1 https://blockstack.org/blog/blockstack-whitepaper-part-1: "Blockstack binds (human-readable) domains to public keys to establish ownership of domains. These domains have associated data records as well. These small bindings are stored on the blockchain and are tamper resistant. The actual payload from the data records is stored outside of the blockchain because blockchains have limited storage space and are not meant to be used as general-purpose databases."
- sharemywin 9y ago
  How is this different than: https://namecoin.org/ https://namecoin.org/
  - odinho 9y ago
    Blockstack project originally ran on namecoin. But it is not a secure blockchain. Also, it stores much data in the blockchain, so it has scaling problems. Blockstack stores the zone file data in its own Atlas (DHT-inspired) network, and the zone files point to where the actual application-level data is stored. Blockstack can work on top of any blockchain, so if Bitcoin is not the most secure anymore, it could be moved. Separating into different layers allows scaling and resiliency. And you don't have to run a blockchain, which is good, because that already exists.

shmerl 9y ago

> Developers can build apps on this new internet by downloading the Blockstack Mac or Linux app (Windows coming soon) and by using nothing more than your existing Chrome or Safari browsers. Why Chrome and not Firefox? In their context, the later makes way more sense.

659087 9y ago
Support the decentralized internet by using the products of a company currently trying to centralize the internet!
- shmerl 9y ago
  And being open source friendly, proposing using closed browsers...
wcummings 9y ago
Wouldn't surprise me if they never test in non-WebKit browsers, seems common these days.
mhkool 9y ago
I welcome the ideas of Blockstack but the implementation with Chrome and Safari is obviously a big mistake. I will not even try it since the ideas of Blockstack on one hand and Google and Apple on the other hand are not compatible.
unknown2374 9y ago
Looks like it now says "Chrome or Safari or Firefox"
larrysalibra 9y ago
Larry from Blockstack here. It works on whichever browser is your default browser and soon all of your browsers. Nothing is Chrome (or Safari!) specific! If you have a problem using Blockstack with your favorite browser, we'd love to know about it so that we can fix it! Sorry about the confusion!

andrewstuart2 9y ago

Unless I can unplug the WAN connection on my router and connect to your product instead, keep in mind that you haven't invented the next internet. You might be able to decentralize the worldwide web of HTML pages and hyperlinks, or invent another protocol that can be encapsulated in TCP/IP packets and ethernet frames, but the internet (the graph of inter-connected networks that speak common protocols) is still a fundamental requirement for your product, and the metadata associated with those stacks is still very real and trackable. To that point as well, the internet already "works how real life works." Sick of Company X and the way their business treats employees? Shop elsewhere, remembering that it won't be as convenient with fewer choices. Sick of Google tracking the websites you visit? Use a search engine that doesn't track you, remembering that they probably can't pay as much for great engineers. It's Conway's Law. We are largely constrained to create systems (including the internet) that mirror the organizational structure we're a part of. Yes, we can evolve and revolutionize occasionally, but it will always mirror "real life" because they will always influence each other.

deleted 9y ago
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lappa 9y ago
I don't follow your argument. You are saying that because we have nearly a tree structure within the workplace, the Internet will approximately have nearly tree structure? Seems that it's just a matter if the most efficient structure being this way for both cases rather than us mimicking the workplace in the structuring of the Internet.
owens99 9y ago
> Sick of Company X and the way their business treats employees? Shop elsewhere, remembering that it won't be as convenient with fewer choices. Sick of Google tracking the websites you visit? Use a search engine that doesn't track you, remembering that they probably can't pay as much for great engineers. Hard sell. There's a reason why the government has laws against monopolies. Especially when it comes to the internet, consumers tend to choose the best/fastest product over the most ethical one.

datatan 9y ago

Can't even get people to migrate to ipv6 and they expect anyone at all to switch to a blockchain browser based internet thats 100 times more complex? DOA.

pplonski86 9y ago

I like the idea of storing data and apps locally!

kefka 9y ago
So do I... Lets take a fun game. How about all of Atari 2600? https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCU... Ok.. This is remote, across all the machines that have that IPFS hash. In other words, its not local. (in console) ipfs pin add QmacAqRVhJX9eS7YJX1vY3ifFKF9CduDqPEgaCUSa4x5xb Now its local! Or lets do something more than a game... How about Node-Red in browser(PageNodes)? http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDhBtSQ6T/ http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDh... EDIT: I had the point in my head, but didn't put it down here. In other words, we already have this technology, and not using buzzword-bingo like "Its the interwebz but with blockchains!". These links are direct proof that it not only exists, but is working right now. And in reality, making a type of blockchain in IPFS would not be hard. It's an immutable data structure, with append-only characteristics. And, I also am partial to IPFS, primarily because it feels like a proper IETF-internet scale project. ZeroNET looks prettier, but.. throw away. Again, some subjective feel there, but IPFS feels elegant.
- supergreg 9y ago
  I've been partial to IPFS since I first learn of it but I know there's a few competitors in this space. Is there anywhere with some comparisons of the technology and maybe popularity (since the more people, the more robust the network) of these projects?.
  - kefka 9y ago
    Well.. I know of a few. ZeroNET, Maidsafe (kind of), this project. There's also some DRM encrusted version kind of like this. I forget their name. But they wanted a pay-gateway. EDIT: found it. Called "LBRY" (I'm absolutely not impressed.. https://lbry.io/ https://lbry.io/ ) Primarily, I see ZeroNET as its competitor. And ZeroNET has the bling and the wow factor, but much of the underlying system is.. unfinished. It also requires some heafty frontend with backing DB as well. It seems cobbled on and over-engineered. IPFS, on the other hand, is clean and clear of its focus. It's simple enough to do as it purports. It works now. It seamlessly works with gateways to allow non-IPFS users to access the network. It's network agnostic: ip4, 6, and whatever else is a protocol addon. And it seems to be on its way to an IETF standard.

alando46 9y ago

This is awesome and definitely the future. Anyone know the differences between this and IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)? Anything else out there similar to either of these?

tuna 9y ago

Is it from Silicon Valley (tv show) ?

programbreeding 9y ago
While that one is mostly fictional, it is creating an actual completely decentralized version of the internet by creating an ad-hoc network using people's phones. This still requires you to have your normal internet to connect to it and use it.

desireco42 9y ago

This is really good proof of concept project. Blockchain is super exciting and I share your enthusiasm. Problems it solves are real. I kind of feel it will not take off, no windows support etc, but you never know, if anything is hot these days, it is blockchain solutions.

owens99 9y ago

> Imagine a world where people don't have property rights. In this world, you cannot own a house, and all your belongings are kept in a storage facility owned by a few corporations. And in this world, walking into any store or theater implies that you disclose all your personal information, places you've been, other things you've bought to the business owners. You are tracked 24/7, your belongings are stolen from storage facilities, and you can't do anything about it. Most of us would not stand for this in our real, everyday lives. But on the internet, we tolerate and even expect it. We become dependent on nameless, faceless, remote parties just by connecting. On the internet, we are powerless. Our existence on the internet is defined by others, whether that other be a mega-corporation or a government. Now, we can change that. Beautiful mission statement.

orblivion 9y ago
I like that it's an anti-corporate sentiment, but with an appeal to property rights. I almost suspect it's a deliberate clever way to appeal across the spectrum.
- aelena 9y ago
  Well, you can still support individual/grassroots property rights while rejecting corporativism
  - datatan 9y ago
    I think it can be argued that supporting individual property rights is the definition of rejecting corprativism.
throwanem 9y ago
Indeed it is! I'd love to know more about the technology backing it, but right now my options appear to be either the app developer tutorials, which reveal nothing, or deep-diving the core code, which I lack anything remotely resembling time enough to do. What am I missing?
- 9y ago

komali2 9y ago

Oh, bummer, I thought this was some sort of like, "turn your wifi router into a mesh network connector" thing. I don't really know much about blockchain, but I know to access whatever this is, I still have to pay Comcast 50 bucks a month for the right to use their "tubes."

kilroy123 9y ago
My hope is for low orbit satelite internet to really become a thing. Putting pressure on monopolies to lower prices to compete and giving you at least another option for an ISP.

betoharres 9y ago

Is this like ZeroNet? Does anyone knows the difference?

quaz3l 9y ago
This is what I was going to ask. It looks very similar and operates (to user at least) the same way. I wonder if they could support each other by making the sites accessible from either service.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
ZeroNet executes arbitrary javascript from anonymous/unknown sources. I hope this one does not.
- brokenmachine 9y ago
  Isn't it your browser that executes the javascript? Just like the normal web? From what I remember, ZeroNet ran in whatever browser you used to access it.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    In the normal web if you browse a well known site there's a degree of trust that the site is not serving malware to you. That's why is good to use a dedicated device/OS user or at least browser profile to access your bank and doing random browsing.

jagermo 9y ago

Ok, can I just run the server to support the project? I have some Azure credits and would like to put them to good use.

jandrese 9y ago

Wait, so does this mean anybody who wants to run this project needs a copy of the whole internet on their machine? Or connect to someone who has a whole copy of the internet? Regular bitcoin only deals with tiny transactions and already it takes days to download its blockchain on an older DSL link. Also, how is this better than just, you know, running your own website? Is that too Web 1.0 for today's hip youth? How much aggregate computer power is necessary to deliver one page in this system? How about 10 years from now when it has petabytes of data to deliver?

yhu 9y ago
Google Aubrie Herbalot How small is the internet really?
- bonoetmalo 9y ago
  I'm not getting any relevant results for that
  - tcmb 9y ago
    See? That's how small it is.
smacktoward 9y ago
But you see, this is better because it has... blockchain.
icc97 9y ago
Don't worry, the internet comes in a small box, just make sure you don't drop the box [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
odinho 9y ago
No, you don't need the whole internet. You can't run application code with just pure HTML. The processing code has to run somewhere. Blockstack runs it using Javascript in your browser, and with bring your own storage. Only naming (identity) is pegged to Bitcoin, blockstack has a virtual blockchain on top of this which has functionality akin to DNS (and CA). That DNS can point to your storage, so you can have things on Dropbox or Amazon S3 or wherever. So it scales pretty well, you don't download what you're not interested it. It will work with a lot of infrastructre/services that exist, but you can cut out a lot of middle men. You could host your application code on your Amazon S3. But when a user runs it, the app can store private data in THEIR chosen storage. And if you have public data, that could be either stored with their chosen storage without encryption (only signature) so it is public, or indeed you could store it in your application storage.

627467 9y ago

There are great many explorations on a decentralized protocols (this, Zeronet, IPFS, urbit) but I don't see many infrastructure related projects that we can play with today. Anyone can knows of hardware stack that enables fault-tolerant meshnets?

noajshu 9y ago
I know about this project in my neighborhood: https://oaklandnorth.net/2013/11/27/mesh-network-offers-potential-for-free-wireless-internet-in-oakland/ https://oaklandnorth.net/2013/11/27/mesh-network-offers-pote...
- chabes 9y ago
  That's really cool! I wonder if there are other projects like that elsewhere in the Bay Area
tyingq 9y ago
I'd love to see an implementation that uses "parasitic storage". There seem to be enough free places to post content now that it would be workable, especially if you thought broader than just things like Google drive. Throw in free blogging platforms, pastebins, free email + attachments, etc, and a bit of PKI (obfuscate) + redundant copies. That would allow for real world use without having to rely on things like "pinning".
- shakna 9y ago
  Couple years ago, a couple friends and I threw together something like that. GPG encrypted messages with a huge list of fallbacks where messages got stored. (Pastes, private subreddit, Facebook via RSS). The code was truly awful, but the premise was we just needed each others public keys, and all was good. (Killed the project when one of us lost their private key, and we realized hardcoding the public keys had been a terrible idea). I don't think I have the code anymore, but shouldn't be much more than a weekend project if you stick with text only.
- odinho 9y ago

kayoone 9y ago

I don't know too much about Blockchains, but wouldn't Ethereum be a better choice for something like this?

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
No. Better to have a dumb network. Keep things as simple as possible. Transactions on the bitcoin network suffice.

aaroninsf 9y ago

Once again, a manifesto on the landing page that explains nothing about what is actually being proposed. Please link to summaries of what has been done, why, and where it's going. (On the face of it, a "blockchain" seems like a god-awful fundament for a distributed net, compared to e.g. IPFS.)

anfedorov 9y ago

Bob Kahn, not TBL, is the other "father of the internet". > Today we are proud to announce the Blockstack browser, which allows developers everywhere to access a whole new internet. reminded me of then-Senator Ted Stevens' take on net neutrality > Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. In other words, what a load of hot air! Looking forward to their $50M seed round.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
I remembered the "series of tubes" comment but never heard this part: I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday I had to go back to listen to the original. Man what a trip. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE
- Whitestrake 9y ago
  Reminds me of an old classic, the then-Minister for Communications in Australia back in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ionised 9y ago
(misinformed)People tend to conflate the Internet and the World Wide Web
muneeb 9y ago
Muneeb from Blockstack here. Yep, many people like Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf, David Clark, Tim Berners-Lee and others helped build the various components of what we today know as the internet. I'd highly recommend looking at our peer-reviewed research papers at http://blockstack.org/papers http://blockstack.org/papers. We've been obsessed with performance and scalability and 3-4 years of research, engineering, and hard work went into this. We already have enough money and are grateful for having investors like Union Square Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Lux Capital, and others who share our vision. Building a truly decentralized internet will take years/decades and we're looking forward to growing our open-source community that can take on this grand challenge.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

Still struggling to wrap my head around this, mostly trying to make sense of: https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works https://blockstack.org/docs/how-blockstack-works This is DNS on top of the blockchain right? Though where it deviates some is: "Even though only data record hashes are stored in blockchain transactions, we can use them to verify the authenticity and integrity of the data itself once we get it. For example, you can host your data in S3, and other peers can verify your data by first obtaining the hash from Blockstack DNS and then checking it against your data's hash." So functionally what this is solving is (I'm asking here): - Nobody can take your domain away b/c they don't have the keys, so stuff like domain sniping, ISP interference, Government seizure, etc. are less likely (notwithstanding https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) - Every piece of data is checksummed so you can (and maybe this is what the Blockstack browsers are doing) verify that it hasn't been tampered with ala MITM. But even with that, I'm still unclear on just what's the right way to think about this. Like if I setup a new web site on a domain, would I also enter in every file on the page as a separate 'data record hash'?

isubkhankulov 9y ago
in my view, this is where all the blockchain ideas break down. once you require a central party holding the data for the service, its no longer decentralized. theres a reason the bitcoin blockchain is slow, expensive and hard to use. All of its weaknesses are sacrifices the users make in order to obtain decentralized uncensored internet money.
muneeb 9y ago
We have a decentralized storage system, called Gaia, and you publish the files there. This gives you performance and reliability comparable to cloud computing. Only the domain registrations hit the blockchain and it's a one-time operation (just like buying a domain name for your website or app).
odinho 9y ago
No. The data record hash is only about your zone file. The zone file is just like DNS. It can point to different things. So say you point 'profile' to 'mywebsite.com/myprofile.json', and then in your profile you can update things about yourself independently. Just make sure to always attach a signature to it, so people can verify that you actually did that. Here's a profile: https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id Here's how a simple zone file looks (from https://onename.com/muneeb.json https://onename.com/muneeb.json): $ORIGIN muneeb.id $TTL 3600 _http._tcp IN URI 10 1 "https://blockstack.s3.amazonaws.com/muneeb.id"

golergka 9y ago

Is it another Silicon Valley promo just like that machine learning compression a couple of days ago?

10165 9y ago

"Javascript Required." "Oh snap! Your browser doesn't support Javascript." I have seen so many of these Javascript-only "websites" posted on HN I am wondering is this coming from some web development template? How difficult is it to have a page with text for those not using Javascript? Something like <html class=nojs> <p>This website was designed for browsers that run Javascript. Are you using one? Here are some examples of browsers that work well with our website: browser1, browser2, etc. Alternatively, a no-JS version of the website is available <a href=https://blockstack-site-api.herokuapp.com/v1/blog-rss>here</a>.</p> </html> There are of course other ways to do this. The point is that it can be done and is not difficult. For those not using or with Javascript disabled: https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-core https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-core And a blog curl -o 1.htm https://blockstack-site-api.herokuapp.com/v1/blog-rss tr -cd '\12\40-\176' < 1.htm > 2.htm xyz 2.htm where xyz is some program that displays html or rss.

cavanasm 9y ago
There are a bunch of very popular web development frameworks where pretty much all the functionality comes from the javascript. Angular and React are some of the better known ones.
- majewsky 9y ago
  I can sorta kinda understand that you would use something like that for a rich web application, but this is literally a blog post. It doesn't get any more static than that.
- root_axis 9y ago
  one of react's differentiating qualities is that it can render the entire page on the back-end, so there's no reason for the page to fail if the user does not run javascript.
  - giobox 9y ago
    Whilst this is often true, not all React code will render server side. You need to take care to make sure your React code stays isomorphic, which usually lasts right up to the point you discover some third party React component you reused would require significant rewriting to support server side rendering. That's how my personal projects usually end up anyway!

ReedJessen 9y ago

Any ideas about whether this is ready for someone to start a company on?

SrslyJosh 9y ago

....and then $NATION_STATE puts enough nodes on the network to execute a 51% attack, and we're back where we started. Basing anything on proof-of-work puts you in a perpetual race to control more compute than your adversaries.

thebigkahunaza 9y ago

has anybody here actually tried to get it to work by following the installation instructions? I've been unsuccessful so far. I tried to install it using the given shell script but it fails. I tried to install it using the manual installation steps but this also fails. It cant find the necessary installation files.

woodandsteel 9y ago

I am wondering how this compares with TBL's Solid. Also IPFS, like is this a rival, or something that could run on IPFS, or what. Also, could you access this with tor?

odinho 9y ago
I do not know of Solid. But IPFS is a storage layer, so you can use IPFS as part of Blockstack. It is even normally mentioned in the architecture diagrams. Have a look at the picture down on the page here: https://blockstack.org/intro https://blockstack.org/intro Where it says "storage layer" it has things like Dropbox and S3, in some versions of the picture it also has IPFS. This is up to the user. As long as you can fetch it, it can be used. Usually that would mean you'd have to use HTTP, but it depends on the browser you're running. You can also read about 'Gaia' (where it uses storage as Dropbox/S3 as 'dumb harddrives' where it can dump encrypted blobs on) in the whitepaper: https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf

daxfohl 9y ago

Can you provide some more precise examples of the things this tech would prevent, and how it would prevent them? From an outsider's perspective, it seems like google or whomever could always add an extra layer of junk to any underlying technology to bring it back exactly to where we are now, but just less efficiently.

mayreck 9y ago

Ethereum is going to dominate this.

cookiecaper 9y ago
All of these blockchain-based protocols are impractical. Blockchain is wasteful and slow. It may work adequately for a transaction ledger, but it doesn't work for the web's primary purpose of distributing arbitrary information ad-hoc and on-demand.
- ko3us 9y ago
  Totally agree. A lot of hype without real understanding of the limitations. https://blog.tokenize.io/the-case-against-blockchain-identity-d3e0aa3faa3 https://blog.tokenize.io/the-case-against-blockchain-identit...

ReligiousFlames 9y ago

I hope this dies in its current form because: 0. It's self-promoting a panacea "fix" as a product at the wrong level of abstraction. 1. Protocols and standards exist for interoperability. 2. Tries to rebuild everything (supply- and demand-sides) while fixing very little. Fix what's here and now for the benefit of everyone with a migration path, not for the benefit of a few in a temporary, constrained, arbitrary way divides people similarly to the way Facebook tried to foist another internet onto the third-world.

muneeb 9y ago
It's an open-source project with 4 years of research and development behind it. The architecture implemented here is actually inspired by David Clark (Chief Protocol Architect of the internet) and his new design principle, called trust-to-trust design, that aims to fix critical security issues with the current design of the internet. I agree that rebuilding everything is hard and that's why we reuse not only TCP/IP and everything below TCP/IP in the stack, but we also reuse existing infrastructure in a decentralized way. We've already built this stack and have been running it in production for 3+ years. Please see our peer-reviewed research papers and our whitepaper at http://blockstack.org/papers http://blockstack.org/papers for more details. Happy to answer any questions!

brenfrow 9y ago

How is this different than using Mist? (https://github.com/ethereum/mist https://github.com/ethereum/mist)

dustingetz 9y ago

I am an app developer. Why do I choose to do my app on BlockStack? I get that as a user i want to control my data, but who are these people who want to make apps on it?

ionised 9y ago
If I knew how, I would, because as a developer I want my users to control their data.
- larrysalibra 9y ago
  Larry from Blockstack here. Yes! Users should be in control of their data and Blockstack enables this. There are also practical advantages for developers. User control of data means you don't have to have the responsibility and cost that comes along with storing other people's information. With lots of user data, you're a valuable target for hackers and governments. It also frees you from maintaining expensive backend infrastructure and devops. This lets your app scale without a huge bill from your favorite cloud infrastructure provider.
  - dustingetz 9y ago
    How about Walmart's automated supply chain. Who are the users, why do they benefit from controlling their data? Why does Walmart want to build on some future incarnation of this?

theprop 9y ago

I stopped skimming this at "If you are not an engineer at Google or Facebook, it's hard for you to innovate."

duckqlz 9y ago

it costs an average of 0.025 btc (~$60 US) to register a name which seems suspiciously expensive for something this new. Has anyone gone through the process of registering an Id and building an app yet? I would love to hear some unbiased feed back

transitorykris 9y ago
It's taken hours so far to complete the registration. Transferring BTC to the Blockstack wallet first. Now waiting on the name registration to complete. Edit: transitorykris.id is now registered.. but doesn't appear linked to my keys.
odinho 9y ago
You're burning that money. Noone gets it. If it costs 0.025 btc you're trying to register a very short name. Try a longer one, it's a lot cheaper. I've registered an ID. I did it through onename.com which pays the registration fee for you (as a way to get more people into it, it won't stay that way). Read the blockstack papers, they're the best info around and makes everything clearer. It is a bit hard to wrap heads around. I've been trying to unsuccessfully explain it many times, there's so many good ideas and so much potential there! (I'm unaffiliated btw, but have been following the project for a long time)

tutufan 9y ago

Skimmed that whole page, and now feel that I understand even less what it is than when I started. So, it's like a Smoodie?

Svekax 9y ago

I believe the current internet is a living creature and the sarcasm and snark it produces are natural defenses against any new internet someone tries to create.

aqsheehy 9y ago

Perpetual motion is finally here!

mrkgnao 9y ago

It's not a particularly good sign that the gateway to this "gateway", as it were, doesn't like you not having JS enabled.

Asooka 9y ago

> Imagine a world where people don't have property rights. In this world, you cannot own a house, and all your belongings are kept in a storage facility owned by a few corporations. And in this world, walking into any store or theater implies that you disclose all your personal information, places you've been, other things you've bought to the business owners. You are tracked 24/7, your belongings are stolen from storage facilities, and you can't do anything about it. Since it's done to curb terrorism and protect children from predators, isn't this what most people want? I mean, I personally would rather shoot myself than live like that, but I'm not most people. I seem to recall that the UK's internet censorship bill (or whatever exactly it was, someone correct me please) has majority voter support.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

WhiteOwlLion 9y ago

I don't get it. I browsed the web site and didn't find an About Us page. Is this a browser? Is this a platform to build applications on top of? I initially thought IPFS and BitCoin but not sure what to make of the product. What is being presented is not summarized in a clear manner to me.