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Show HN: DPAGE – build and publish webpages on the decentralized internet
- vrepsys 8y agoHi, one of the DPAGE creators here. We’re a team of two guys who used to work at Wix (website builder). We felt that there are not many good options if you want to quickly set up a minimalistic webpage or publish some content online. So we built dpage. With dpage you can edit your pages in a dropbox paper-inspired editor and give them human readable urls. We want it to be good for personal homepages, keeping and sharing your notes, snippets and embedded content (e.g. youtube videos, twitter posts, or github gists). In terms of tech, it’s built on top of Blockstack’s decentralized infrastructure. You log into DPAGE using a decentralized id, and your data is stored on Blockstack's decentralized storage hub (Gaia). At any point you can run your own storage hub and store your data on your own server. DPAGE doesn’t store user data, it connects to user’s storage hub from the browser when user logs into the app. Gaia storage hubs are usually publicly accessible, but all private information is end-to-end encrypted with the private keys associated with the user’s Blockstack id. As a result, there’s no vendor lock-in with DPAGE, users can bring their data with them to other apps, they have complete control over their data. For example, if Facebook was built this way, a user who doesn’t like FB could seamlessly start using another app and keep all their contacts and messages. We realize that it might be harder to monetize a product, when you can’t lock-in users into your app. You basically voluntarily open yourself up to the competition. On the other hand, the total value that the product can create for the world is much greater if the data is controlled by the users and they can permission other apps to use it. Imagine all the innovation that could happen if all the data on Facebook was open to developers (with the permission of users who own the data). We’d love to hear your thoughts or feedback about the idea or the app.
- dmslt 8y agoThis sounds really interesting! Will be following you guys. Is there a twitter account I could follow?
- vrepsys 8y agoThanks! Twitter: @dpageio
- goldfeld 8y agoNice, I think this is what the web needs, a Unix approach so tools can be built on top and hosts are interchangeable. Coming from wix I assume you know Carrd.co? It would be nice to start checking your editor without login as well (they do that) saving later to an id, a draft mode.
- bduerst 8y agoHow is this different than using containers across different cloud providers? Is it just a WYSWYG webpage editor that you can run from your own machine? Also, what's your plan to handle illegal content? You're on major cloud providers now, but they've shown that they will reject some customers who have harmful/illegal user-generated content. Anything marketed as decentralized tends to attract flies like honey.
- vrepsys 8y agoDPAGE is not able to remove user data (even if it's illegal), because we don't store it. However, storage hub providers will have the ability remove it. What dpage can do is deny the access to illegal content by blocking illegal dpage.io urls. But then, a user can pick to use another app that serves the pages created on dpage.
- Mindo1 8y agoInteresting project! Well done!
- thepra 8y agoI can't add pictures on the mobile version, is that supposed to be like that?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vrepsys 8y agoYou should be able to just copy-paste a link to a picture and it should appear below the link. Just like in the desktop version. Send us an email if you still can't get it working.
- theamk 8y agoMy usual question for decentralized storage system is "who is paying". The DPAGE page says: "your data are by default stored on a free Blockstack’s Gaia storage hub". When I looked at the Blockstack, their page says "Personal data lockers built on Google, AWS, and Azure." Does this mean that my data is stored (encrypted) on Google/AWS/Azure, and that Blockstack is currently paying for this? So if Blockstack runs out of money, all the pages are gone?
- _eht 8y agoIn short, yes. That's exactly what that means. This is a [Block]tech company trying to make a run up.
- vrepsys 8y agoCorrect. However, the idea is that you can run your own storage hub on a server of your choice, or, in the future, choose one or more storage providers that you trust and keep your data there (storage providers can't read your encrypted data) This way you'll be able to pick both: 1) your storage provider 2) the app that works on top of your data
- jude- 8y agoBlockstack engineer here. The user pays for their storage -- you would supply your own space on a storage provider of your choice (be it a cloud storage provider, your server, a BitTorrent swarm, etc.), and use it as a back-end to your Gaia hub. The Gaia hub can be run anywhere you want -- on a server, in a service worker in your browser, etc. It's only on the write path, so availability isn't too big of a concern as long as your storage provider handles the read path (which cloud storage does).
- nemo1618 8y agoI wish people would ask this question of IPFS more often. Storage, especially long-term storage, requires incentives! Just look at BitTorrent -- at best, you continue seeding a file after downloading it out of the goodness of your heart, or (more commonly) because you can't be bothered to remove each torrent file after it finishes. In practice, the only way to keep torrent files alive for a long time is out-of-band incentives, primarily in the form of "points" on a private tracker. Even then, seeders have little incentive to seed content that isn't personally valuable to them, since they can get just as many "points" for seeding an equal amount of valuable content. In other words, good luck finding high-quality seeders for your personal photos. Ultimately, if you want someone to store your data, you need to pay them (in traditional currency or otherwise)!
- JamesHageman 8y agoThere's probably some really cool tech here, but it's unclear how a new user would start using it. The landing page shows an FAQ and a button saying "Login with Blockstack" that doesn't work when you click it in a normal web browser. Should I have some other browser installed? Some extension?
- atomicUpdate 8y agoChrome on iOS seems to get far enough to try and create an ID. I didn’t go any farther than that though.
- JamesHageman 8y agoI tried in Safari on MacOS and it fails, because Safari doesn't recognize blockstack:eyJ0eXA... urls. Chrome seems to redirect the user to download their browser here: https://browser.blockstack.org/sign-up https://browser.blockstack.org/sign-up.
- stdcli 8y agoHello, Blockstack engineer here. Thank you for the feedback. We are working on this.
- stdcli 8y agoHi, Blockstack engineer here. Thank you for the feedback. Can you tell me what browser you are using?
- JamesHageman 8y agoHey! Sorry for the late reply. I was using Safari on MacOS Mojave.
- mirimir 8y agoFirefox on Debian gets nowhere. Just the landing page.
- fiatjaf 8y ago"Your Blockstack ID that you use to log in is stored on blockchain" What is this "blockchain" they're talking about? I've read the Blockstack pages and I can only find references to "blockchain", no specification of what or where.
- jude- 8y agoBlockstack engineer here. Your Blockstack ID is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain, so everyone else can find (1) your public key and (2) the location(s) where your profile and application data are stored. The naming system is described here: https://docs.blockstack.org/core/naming/introduction.html https://docs.blockstack.org/core/naming/introduction.html It warms my heart to hear that people can use Blockstack and not have to think about blockchains :')
- wesleytodd 8y agoIf people are interested in this they may also be interested in Beaker Browser https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/
- terrycody 8y agoThis indeed a serious cool product, hope more people realize it.
- anc84 8y agoWhy does this need blockchain for?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]