7 ms·

Interesting, why there is still no chat-on-blockchain thing. Sounds like an obvious idea for an ICO.

by viach 8y ago

dmihal 8y ago
> Sounds like an obvious idea for an ICO I hate this mindset
- viach 8y ago
  /sarcasm
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Poe’s law caused you to be downvoted on HN, sir
    - viach 8y ago
      Yup, but I think it's a good deal - to lose some points but have an interesting discussion.
detaro 8y ago
There's a bunch of these things, regrettably.
- viach 8y ago
  For example, could you please provide at least 3 (a bunch) examples which are in production?
  - send_computers 8y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=blockchain+based+messaging http://lmgtfy.com/?q=blockchain+based+messaging
  - detaro 8y ago
    I don't really keep track of those things, but I can give you two attempts without much searching: just this week I saw https://adamant.im https://adamant.im There was a thing called "my echo" (which appears to have failed/been cancelled).
    - viach 8y ago
      Thank you for providing an example. It's not a "bunch" but still. Could you explain why did you use word "regrettably", is it a bad thing these projects exists?
      - ac4tw 8y ago
        I think @detaro says 'regrettably' because of the distaste many have about ICOs and the hype related to them. However, I too would like to hear from @detaro on this.
        detaro 8y ago
        Pretty much, yeah: pushing actual messaging over a blockchain is just horribly inefficient and I don't see it being a workable idea, so it seems dishonest to me to widely promote it and collect money for it. Other related things are fine: e.g. mapping public keys to human-readable identifiers like a nickname is a good match to what a blockchain is good at, I get why people like the idea of cryptocoin-payments in a messenger platform, ... Still leaves the general concern of "does this really need it's own coin with an ICO and hype", but at least the ideas make some sense there.
  - ac4tw 8y ago
    I don't think there are any 3 that are exactly what you ask about ("chat-on-blockchain thing"). However, from my understanding of Telegram's ICO and "leaked" roadmap, they appear to be doing a decentralized chat the may leverage their own blockchain for some features (identity, tokens etc.). I think Status.im is another example, but it's currently early access I believe. My own product, stealthy.im could be another example. The web product is in production. It builds upon blockstack, storing identity and storage pointers in the blockchain. So that's 3. I could probably list a few more, but again they wouldn't strictly satisfy your precise criteria in one or major ways. I think @jerf's response is really good--for us the "why" of blockchain is in identity and providing a verifiable decentralized storage network through blockstack. The underlying bitcoin blockchain wouldn't be suitable for message storage or sdp handshaking due to latency as another person pointed out.
sametmax 8y ago
There are several projects for that of course. ZenCash is one of them. I run 5 ZenCash masternodes, so it works, but it's a resource hog and it's really not fast.
simias 8y ago
If you actually put the content of the messages on the blockchain itself it'll become ridiculously expensive really fast. Furthermore if you actually wait until a message gets mined to be accepted it's not going to be exactly "instant" messaging. What would be the point anyway? A dedicated peer-to-peer messaging network that doesn't need to keep track of the entire history of everything seems much more appropriate. IRC comes close to that with its federated architecture, although I suppose a completely seemless bittorent-like peer-to-peer chat using public key cryptography for message authentication could be pretty great.
- ealhad 8y ago
  I think that was sarcasm, given that “serverless” is a pretty trendy term, just like “blockchain”. Chat on IPFS is a good idea, though.
- viach 8y ago
  My original comment was a little bit sarcastic, but seriously - why not? I understand that a single blockchain will not handle global scale messaging. But a set of federated installations, could that work?
  - jerf 8y ago
    "My original comment was a little bit sarcastic, but seriously - why not?" Because in engineering, the question is not "why not", but "why". Blockchains are not the default answer. What positive virtue is blockchain going to bring to your IM system that is not better attained by a non-blockchain-based solution? If you can answer that, great. I'm not saying this has no answer. I'm just saying it's the real question. If you are going to say the word "federated", then from what I can see, trying to do "blockchain" at that point isn't all that helpful and likely to be worse and harder than just trying to develop a federated system, a sufficient challenge on its own that doesn't strike me as greatly helped by "blockchains". XMPP already does federated IM, since long before the current fad. I match any vague handwaves about identity or security with vague handwaves at existing SSL certificate authorities, and an observation that if you're going to complain about the security of such things I get to apply an equal amount of effort towards breaking your blockchain solution, e.g., if you're going to complain about nationstates getting root certificates they shouldn't, I get to point out your tiny little blockchain for IMs is equally vulnerable, if not more so.
prabhaav 8y ago
We have built a chat application with blockchain for auth that uses decentralized storage to enable WebRTC: https://www.stealthy.im https://www.stealthy.im.

Interesting, why there is still no chat-on-blockchain thing. Sounds like an obvious idea for an ICO.

by viach 8y ago

Interesting, why there is still no chat-on-blockchain thing. Sounds like an obvious idea for an ICO.

dmihal 8y ago

> Sounds like an obvious idea for an ICO I hate this mindset

viach 8y ago
/sarcasm
- EGreg 8y ago
  Poe’s law caused you to be downvoted on HN, sir
  - viach 8y ago
    Yup, but I think it's a good deal - to lose some points but have an interesting discussion.

detaro 8y ago

There's a bunch of these things, regrettably.

viach 8y ago
For example, could you please provide at least 3 (a bunch) examples which are in production?
- send_computers 8y ago
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=blockchain+based+messaging http://lmgtfy.com/?q=blockchain+based+messaging
- detaro 8y ago
  I don't really keep track of those things, but I can give you two attempts without much searching: just this week I saw https://adamant.im https://adamant.im There was a thing called "my echo" (which appears to have failed/been cancelled).
  - viach 8y ago
    Thank you for providing an example. It's not a "bunch" but still. Could you explain why did you use word "regrettably", is it a bad thing these projects exists?
    - ac4tw 8y ago
      I think @detaro says 'regrettably' because of the distaste many have about ICOs and the hype related to them. However, I too would like to hear from @detaro on this.
      - detaro 8y ago
        Pretty much, yeah: pushing actual messaging over a blockchain is just horribly inefficient and I don't see it being a workable idea, so it seems dishonest to me to widely promote it and collect money for it. Other related things are fine: e.g. mapping public keys to human-readable identifiers like a nickname is a good match to what a blockchain is good at, I get why people like the idea of cryptocoin-payments in a messenger platform, ... Still leaves the general concern of "does this really need it's own coin with an ICO and hype", but at least the ideas make some sense there.
- ac4tw 8y ago
  I don't think there are any 3 that are exactly what you ask about ("chat-on-blockchain thing"). However, from my understanding of Telegram's ICO and "leaked" roadmap, they appear to be doing a decentralized chat the may leverage their own blockchain for some features (identity, tokens etc.). I think Status.im is another example, but it's currently early access I believe. My own product, stealthy.im could be another example. The web product is in production. It builds upon blockstack, storing identity and storage pointers in the blockchain. So that's 3. I could probably list a few more, but again they wouldn't strictly satisfy your precise criteria in one or major ways. I think @jerf's response is really good--for us the "why" of blockchain is in identity and providing a verifiable decentralized storage network through blockstack. The underlying bitcoin blockchain wouldn't be suitable for message storage or sdp handshaking due to latency as another person pointed out.

sametmax 8y ago

There are several projects for that of course. ZenCash is one of them. I run 5 ZenCash masternodes, so it works, but it's a resource hog and it's really not fast.

simias 8y ago

If you actually put the content of the messages on the blockchain itself it'll become ridiculously expensive really fast. Furthermore if you actually wait until a message gets mined to be accepted it's not going to be exactly "instant" messaging. What would be the point anyway? A dedicated peer-to-peer messaging network that doesn't need to keep track of the entire history of everything seems much more appropriate. IRC comes close to that with its federated architecture, although I suppose a completely seemless bittorent-like peer-to-peer chat using public key cryptography for message authentication could be pretty great.

ealhad 8y ago
I think that was sarcasm, given that “serverless” is a pretty trendy term, just like “blockchain”. Chat on IPFS is a good idea, though.
viach 8y ago
My original comment was a little bit sarcastic, but seriously - why not? I understand that a single blockchain will not handle global scale messaging. But a set of federated installations, could that work?
- jerf 8y ago
  "My original comment was a little bit sarcastic, but seriously - why not?" Because in engineering, the question is not "why not", but "why". Blockchains are not the default answer. What positive virtue is blockchain going to bring to your IM system that is not better attained by a non-blockchain-based solution? If you can answer that, great. I'm not saying this has no answer. I'm just saying it's the real question. If you are going to say the word "federated", then from what I can see, trying to do "blockchain" at that point isn't all that helpful and likely to be worse and harder than just trying to develop a federated system, a sufficient challenge on its own that doesn't strike me as greatly helped by "blockchains". XMPP already does federated IM, since long before the current fad. I match any vague handwaves about identity or security with vague handwaves at existing SSL certificate authorities, and an observation that if you're going to complain about the security of such things I get to apply an equal amount of effort towards breaking your blockchain solution, e.g., if you're going to complain about nationstates getting root certificates they shouldn't, I get to point out your tiny little blockchain for IMs is equally vulnerable, if not more so.

prabhaav 8y ago

We have built a chat application with blockchain for auth that uses decentralized storage to enable WebRTC: https://www.stealthy.im https://www.stealthy.im.