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I mean, sure, there are companies trying to build a decentralized web, but I think that's different that saying an individual hosting provider will keep you onl

I mean, sure, there are companies trying to build a decentralized web, but I think that's different that saying an individual hosting provider will keep you online. This feels like saying "The Tor network will keep you online". You still need someone providing hardware and electricity. Unless I'm missing something about these offerings.

vbezhenar 6y ago
> This feels like saying "The Tor network will keep you online". You still need someone providing hardware and electricity. Unless I'm missing something about these offerings. Nobody but you knows that you're hosting hidden tor service. One need to perform a sophisticated attack to discover its location. You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them.
- wmf 6y ago
  That's true but it's fairly specific to Tor and maybe Freenet. Most decentralized systems don't use onion routing so it's easy to trace any piece of public content back to where it's hosted.
  - techprivvy 6y ago
    On Safe Network (developed by Maidsafe) * data is self encrypted client side * IP is scrubbed and given a Kademlia or XOR address? I forget exactly * qp2p (QUIC implementation in rustlang w/extra features) encrypts traffic * nodes can’t choose their disjoint section (shard) and are randomly relocated (churn). Nodes are made up from a ‘Safe’ (previously called ‘Vault’) executable file and some spare space on disk of everyday computers. Nodes first go through a short PoW resource proof so the network knows the nodes capabilities and how to place them. Sybil attacks are prevented in many ways including random placement in sections and random relocation, and node ageing, which is a way of incremental responsibility when a node behaves all the way into the next relocation event and that is halved if misbehaving or offline. You would have to control a significant portion of the network to cause a problem and would be cost prohibitive in most cases. In a young network the highest risk comes from a ‘Google attack’ where they deliberately allocate their resources early on and either try to control the consensus or rug pull their resources which would cause massive data loss. Safe Network also has Safe Network Token (SN) as an digital payment/incentive layer for providing or purchasing network resources (bandwidth/cpu/storage). If you think CRDT’s or Asynchronous Trutworthy Transfers (AT2) are neat innovations you should definitely check it out as Maidsafe is really pushing the envelope there. safenetforum.org https://primer.safenetwork.org/ https://primer.safenetwork.org/
    - EGreg 6y ago
      Definitely love MaidSAFE. I asked them several times how they recover from corrupted section consensus and they say they don’t. Vitalik Buterin has a problem with that, as do I. But I guess churn eventually recovers it right? If you have a lot of sleeper nodes coordinate a google attack the network is unrecoverable though...
- rovr138 6y ago
  >You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them. Amazon can monitor what runs on their servers.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    Encrypt filesystem. While technically they could monitor RAM traffic or even CPU instructions, I would be extremely impressed if they have necessary tools to spy on tor nodes.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Tangent: where was Silk Road hosted?
      - techprivvy 6y ago
        TOR’s onion services. Someone should clone it and publish to the the Safe Network. Anyone can be the next DPR.
        colejohnson66 6y ago
        But isn’t an onion service just a server only accessible over TOR? What I’m asking is: where was the server? Who was physically hosting the website (either knowingly or unknowingly)?
        rovr138 6y ago
        Yes. It could have been hosted anywhere. TOR isn’t a hosting service but a means to access them.
    - rovr138 6y ago
      They can see the processes. It’s a server running on their hypervisor. Their hypervisor can see every single process.

vbezhenar 6y ago

> This feels like saying "The Tor network will keep you online". You still need someone providing hardware and electricity. Unless I'm missing something about these offerings. Nobody but you knows that you're hosting hidden tor service. One need to perform a sophisticated attack to discover its location. You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them.

wmf 6y ago
That's true but it's fairly specific to Tor and maybe Freenet. Most decentralized systems don't use onion routing so it's easy to trace any piece of public content back to where it's hosted.
- techprivvy 6y ago
  On Safe Network (developed by Maidsafe) * data is self encrypted client side * IP is scrubbed and given a Kademlia or XOR address? I forget exactly * qp2p (QUIC implementation in rustlang w/extra features) encrypts traffic * nodes can’t choose their disjoint section (shard) and are randomly relocated (churn). Nodes are made up from a ‘Safe’ (previously called ‘Vault’) executable file and some spare space on disk of everyday computers. Nodes first go through a short PoW resource proof so the network knows the nodes capabilities and how to place them. Sybil attacks are prevented in many ways including random placement in sections and random relocation, and node ageing, which is a way of incremental responsibility when a node behaves all the way into the next relocation event and that is halved if misbehaving or offline. You would have to control a significant portion of the network to cause a problem and would be cost prohibitive in most cases. In a young network the highest risk comes from a ‘Google attack’ where they deliberately allocate their resources early on and either try to control the consensus or rug pull their resources which would cause massive data loss. Safe Network also has Safe Network Token (SN) as an digital payment/incentive layer for providing or purchasing network resources (bandwidth/cpu/storage). If you think CRDT’s or Asynchronous Trutworthy Transfers (AT2) are neat innovations you should definitely check it out as Maidsafe is really pushing the envelope there. safenetforum.org https://primer.safenetwork.org/ https://primer.safenetwork.org/
  - EGreg 6y ago
    Definitely love MaidSAFE. I asked them several times how they recover from corrupted section consensus and they say they don’t. Vitalik Buterin has a problem with that, as do I. But I guess churn eventually recovers it right? If you have a lot of sleeper nodes coordinate a google attack the network is unrecoverable though...
rovr138 6y ago
>You can buy VPS from Amazon and host your hidden tor service there and Amazon guys won't have a clue until NSA guys will come to them. Amazon can monitor what runs on their servers.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Encrypt filesystem. While technically they could monitor RAM traffic or even CPU instructions, I would be extremely impressed if they have necessary tools to spy on tor nodes.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Tangent: where was Silk Road hosted?
    - techprivvy 6y ago
      TOR’s onion services. Someone should clone it and publish to the the Safe Network. Anyone can be the next DPR.
      - colejohnson66 6y ago
        But isn’t an onion service just a server only accessible over TOR? What I’m asking is: where was the server? Who was physically hosting the website (either knowingly or unknowingly)?
        rovr138 6y ago
        Yes. It could have been hosted anywhere. TOR isn’t a hosting service but a means to access them.
  - rovr138 6y ago
    They can see the processes. It’s a server running on their hypervisor. Their hypervisor can see every single process.