3 ms·
> or a link thereof, is stored on the blockchain so it can't be deleted. A blockchain is overkill for this: Its central goal of providing a clear ordering of
by eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
> or a link thereof, is stored on the blockchain so it can't be deleted.
A blockchain is overkill for this:
Its central goal of providing a clear ordering of events by the time at which they happened (t1 < t2 < t3) is not necessary to distribute software updates.
You merely want to be able to sort things by a number, the version of the software, which their author has provided on their own.
Remember, the blockchain was invented so Bitcoin could prevent double-spending of the same coins. I.e. if someone attempts to send the same money to multiple different addresses and thus fool multiple people into believing they were paid it can use the blockchain to determine which attempt was the first and ignore all others.
Such attacks would happen within milliseconds typically, hence the need for a strong mechanism against them.
This is not needed for merely distributing downloads:
You already trust the author enough that you would run their code, so you can as well trust them that the number which they say is the latest version in fact is the latest one. That's also because they have no incentive to fool you into using an older one, there's no money involved.
What you'd want instead is Freenet, the goal of which is preventing censorship and providing anonymity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet
It's "updatable subspace key" (USK) address type is suitable here.
- sideshowb 6y agoErm, you seem to be saying something sensible about blockchain. Don't you know that's just not the done thing these days ?
- dheera 6y ago> Its central goal of providing a clear ordering of events by the time at which they happened (t1 < t2 < t3) is not necessary to distribute software updates. I guess that's not strictly necessary just to provide a binary update, but this feature could also be used to make the blockchain itself host the repo and its commits. Branches, pull requests, reverts, and everything could be stored as events on the blockchain. Differential commits do need that clear ordering of time to work. Basically, imagine a decentralized version of Github.
- gizmo686 6y agoI think you are describing git.
- dheera 6y agogit itself doesn't support a decentralized push as far as I know, or rather that decentralized hosting infrastructure hasn't been built to seamlessly work with git.
- MetaDark 6y agoYes it does, you can either push to multiple remotes individually, or setup multiple pushurls for a single remote.
- anamexis 6y agoI'm a blockchain skeptic with the best of them, but this does not solve the problem GP is describing. Yes, git supports multiple remotes, but there is no durable, decentralized hosting infrastructure for arbitrary repos that I am familiar with.
- sofetch 6y agoUnless I misunderstand git-ssb does this.
- 6y ago