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I feel like the next frontier for decentralisation is the need for decentralised websites. If a website just contains read-only static text then it can perhaps

I feel like the next frontier for decentralisation is the need for decentralised websites. If a website just contains read-only static text then it can perhaps be replaced by a PDF shared over bittorrent, but I don't think there's yet a very good technology that can be built into mainstream web browsers and that allows complex web apps to run (including functionality like searching and posting comments) in a domain-agnostic way. Hosting the website as a Tor hidden service probably achieves something similar to decentralisation, but support for the Tor network is unlikely to be included as standard on most operating systems. One set of technologies that might get us closer, though, is allowing offline signing of websites. This would mean you could trust the public key for a webapp once, and then run that webapp from any domain that serves it correctly. Any data sent or received by users of the webapp (like comments or likes or bids, etc.) would have to be signed by the keys of individual users, meaning a malicious server could only filter messages you send and receive, but not spoof them. For persistence of data across sessions, and synchronisation between the mirrors, the back-end data store could be a web-API database accessed over Tor by the servers hosting these mirrors of the web app.

qaute 8y ago
The IPFS [1] is close to this. Websites (and all other resources) are P2P hosted with a distributed hash table. For example, there's an reasonably uncensorable Wikipedia mirror [2]. I don't know what the state of web apps on IPFS is, but believe some people are working toward a pubsub-based system. [1] https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ [2] https://ipfs.io/blog/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/ https://ipfs.io/blog/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/
- marknadal 8y ago
  Decentralized web apps already exist, built with our tool ( https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun ). For instance: - Decentralized Reddit ( https://notabug.io/ https://notabug.io/ ) can push terabytes of daily P2P traffic. - Decentralized YouTube ( https://d.tube/ https://d.tube/ ) gets millions of uniques every month, built with IPFS/Steem/GUN (upcoming release will have end-to-end encrypted private messaging). There are plenty of other dApps being built. This isn't an Ethereum pipedream, you can build them today! We'll even be releasing an IPFS storage adapter for GUN coming up soon, too!
  - icebraining 8y ago
    How is GUN related to dApps? The server seems like a regular daemon running on a regular machine.
    - marknadal 8y ago
      The apps built with GUN are decentralized (thus "dApp", the browser can even store/serve data), however browsers still suck with WebRTC, so there are fallbacks to WebSocket and stuff, but the dApps do not require/depend upon a daemon/central host. Hey, your Odoo apps look pretty neat. I'd love to learn more about how you've managed to make a business on top of OSS, wanna chat? Check my profile for my email. :)
  - rhn_mk1 8y ago
    Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but aren't these only partially decentralized? While GUN seems to be a p2p system, both those applications are single points of failure due to each being hosted on a single domain. Are there additional ways to access the same content?
    - marknadal 8y ago
      Both those apps have multiple other peers running it, they're also open source so you can run one, AND the browsers also contribute storing/serving data! What we'd like to see next: Browsers natively supporting more P2P tooling. WebRTC still kinda sucks. :/
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    What I'm keen for is a decentralized google docs clone, supporting collaboration and syncing. Of course, I'd like the ability to have my notes be private as well. Is there anything like that on the horizon?
    - marknadal 8y ago
      Yes, we did a whole interactive explainer article on this: http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html (cartoon version) Although, from a algorithm side, you may enjoy a talk by Martin (a CRDT researcher) for a more thorough technical overview: https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=29m36s https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=29m36s Our team has a model for applying end-to-end encryption to this as well. It isn't a high priority for us to do it ourselves though, so if you are interested in getting involved, we can help explain all the algorithms for implementation!
jondashkyle 8y ago
Sounds a lot like you’re describing the work being done with Dat and Beaker Browser. Here’s a recent talk by Tara of the Beaker team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_WvfF3FN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_WvfF3FN8
rapnie 8y ago
You might want to check out https://beakerbrowser.com https://beakerbrowser.com It is p2p and built on top of the Dat protocol (datproject.org)

qaute 8y ago

The IPFS [1] is close to this. Websites (and all other resources) are P2P hosted with a distributed hash table. For example, there's an reasonably uncensorable Wikipedia mirror [2]. I don't know what the state of web apps on IPFS is, but believe some people are working toward a pubsub-based system. [1] https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ [2] https://ipfs.io/blog/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/ https://ipfs.io/blog/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/

marknadal 8y ago
Decentralized web apps already exist, built with our tool ( https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun ). For instance: - Decentralized Reddit ( https://notabug.io/ https://notabug.io/ ) can push terabytes of daily P2P traffic. - Decentralized YouTube ( https://d.tube/ https://d.tube/ ) gets millions of uniques every month, built with IPFS/Steem/GUN (upcoming release will have end-to-end encrypted private messaging). There are plenty of other dApps being built. This isn't an Ethereum pipedream, you can build them today! We'll even be releasing an IPFS storage adapter for GUN coming up soon, too!
- icebraining 8y ago
  How is GUN related to dApps? The server seems like a regular daemon running on a regular machine.
  - marknadal 8y ago
    The apps built with GUN are decentralized (thus "dApp", the browser can even store/serve data), however browsers still suck with WebRTC, so there are fallbacks to WebSocket and stuff, but the dApps do not require/depend upon a daemon/central host. Hey, your Odoo apps look pretty neat. I'd love to learn more about how you've managed to make a business on top of OSS, wanna chat? Check my profile for my email. :)
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but aren't these only partially decentralized? While GUN seems to be a p2p system, both those applications are single points of failure due to each being hosted on a single domain. Are there additional ways to access the same content?
  - marknadal 8y ago
    Both those apps have multiple other peers running it, they're also open source so you can run one, AND the browsers also contribute storing/serving data! What we'd like to see next: Browsers natively supporting more P2P tooling. WebRTC still kinda sucks. :/
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  What I'm keen for is a decentralized google docs clone, supporting collaboration and syncing. Of course, I'd like the ability to have my notes be private as well. Is there anything like that on the horizon?
  - marknadal 8y ago
    Yes, we did a whole interactive explainer article on this: http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html http://gun.js.org/explainers/school/class.html (cartoon version) Although, from a algorithm side, you may enjoy a talk by Martin (a CRDT researcher) for a more thorough technical overview: https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=29m36s https://youtu.be/yCcWpzY8dIA?t=29m36s Our team has a model for applying end-to-end encryption to this as well. It isn't a high priority for us to do it ourselves though, so if you are interested in getting involved, we can help explain all the algorithms for implementation!

jondashkyle 8y ago

Sounds a lot like you’re describing the work being done with Dat and Beaker Browser. Here’s a recent talk by Tara of the Beaker team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_WvfF3FN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_WvfF3FN8

rapnie 8y ago

You might want to check out https://beakerbrowser.com https://beakerbrowser.com It is p2p and built on top of the Dat protocol (datproject.org)