7 ms·

Introduction to Dwebsites (2020)

33 points by neiman 5y ago

juloo 5y ago
* on Ethereum There are probably much more content added to IPFS, zeronet and other projects I don't know about. (yes we can host websites on IPFS: https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink/ https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink/)
- neiman 5y ago
  Right, depends on definition. We define it as decentralized name system + decentralized storage, but other definitions are fine of course. Even then, we didn't cover Handshake based websites, so you're correct.
andyxor 5y ago
How difficult is to make sci-hub decentralized
- Tenoke 5y ago
  There's torrents of sci-hub so in a sense it already exists. However, making it as a decentralized site like those would be fairly expensive probably as it's likely close to 100TB in total by now.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    You can literally get over 100TB of data for under $15/mo, so no it wouldn't be the expensive.
    - traverseda 5y ago
      Where?
      - Y_Y 5y ago
        /dev/urandom
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        G Suite costs $12/mo and many users still get unlimited storage without needing 5 users . It can be mounted like a regular drive using rclone. Linus Tech Tips has an entire video about it and you'll find many people using it.
    - maxnoe 5y ago
      The entire scientific community would also be interested where to get this deal
    - gpm 5y ago
      Cheap reliable cloud storage seems to be roughly $5/(tb month), 100tb for 15 dollars sounds incredible, before counting bandwidth...
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        Unless you get unlimited storage with G Suite where there is no bandwidth costs. Also, FYI you can get 6TB storage with OneDrive for less than $5 per month through Costco. Both can be mounted and used like a regular drive with rclone.
        geoah 5y ago
        You’ve posted the same comment about gsuite at least 5 times in this thread which is no longer an option. https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-unlimited-storage-when-google-moves-you-to-workspace/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-u... https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-storage-limits/ https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-sto...
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        Because I was responding to multiple people. You are posting old articles. Why don't you try going to reddit or find new articles and you can see that it is still available.
    - innocenat 5y ago
      Interest in this too. Where?
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        G Suite
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Absolutely not. 100 TB of hard disks costs in the neighborhood of $1500 (using a low estimate of $240/16GB). Even if operating and maintaining the hardware cost nothing (which it doesn't) and redundancy was unnecessary (which most users would disagree with), paying that off at $15/mo would take over 8 years, which is beyond the expected lifespan of the hardware.
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        G Suite costs $12/mo and many users still get unlimited storage without needing 5 users . It can be mounted like a regular drive using rclone. So please don't tell me it is impossible when Linus Tech Tips has an entire video about it and you'll find many people using it.
        innocenat 5y ago
        So what do you do when Google enforce 1TB rule?
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        They have said they don't intend to. I have found an alternative if they get rid of it altogether though that I don't intend to disclose.
        geoah 5y ago
        This package is no longer available for new users and it’s expected that google will start killing old accounts at some point. https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-unlimited-storage-when-google-moves-you-to-workspace/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-u...
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        It is not expected Google will kill old accounts, in fact they have said they don't intend to. Regardless, you can still upgrade to an unlimited plan for pretty cheap. And alas I proved my point that yes it is possible.
    - tengbretson 5y ago
      Is this that non-redundant, cloud-connected tape drives as a service I'be been hearing so much about lately?
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        No, this is using G Suite with an rclone mount.
  - neiman 5y ago
    I'm not sure how Filecoin is connected to IPFS, but if it is, can it be done with it? Another option is with Skynet (based on Sia)
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Sia/Skynet has serious technical problems and does not appear to be viable for any use case: https://siasetup.info/concerns-about-sia-and-skynet https://siasetup.info/concerns-about-sia-and-skynet
Animats 5y ago
A traceroute to bitsofcode.eth.link shows it on Cloudflare. Why is this decentralized?
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  You are viewing it through a Cloudflare bridge, you can also reach it decentralized via the .eth without the .link if you are using an ENS+IPFS browser. Info here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-distributed-web-resolver/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-distributed-web-resol...
- neiman 5y ago
  The links are for the Cloudflare gateway because most people don't have tools to show them. If you're using brave, simply remove the ".link" ("bitsofcode.eth") and you'll see it directly. There are also browser extensions: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/esteroids/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/esteroids/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unstoppable-extension/beelkklmblgdljamcmoffgfbdddfpnnl?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unstoppable-extens...
  - Animats 5y ago
    Where's the actual hosting? This is the naming system. Can you host on, say, Ardrive and have it actually work? You can supposedly buy perpetual storage on Ardrive for $5/GB.
    - eightysixfour 5y ago
      Probably hosted on IPFS.
Offpics 5y ago
Can someone ELI5 how decentralized websites work and how much it costs or provide a link to some article?
- neiman 5y ago
  Regular websites: DNS + server Decentralized websites: decentralized name service + decentralized storage. How much it costs? Depends on how you "keep it alive" in the network. There always needs to be at least one person with a copy of the website. If it's you, it's for free - but you can pay a service. Here's an introduction article: https://almonit.club/blog/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html https://almonit.club/blog/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsit...
phantom_oracle 5y ago
I really dislike Twitter content being shared on HN. There is not much information to get from 300 chars or less. Instead, check out this link: http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dweb...
- neiman 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this link! I actually wrote both this Twitter thread and the blog post you linked. I shared the blog post in the past in Hackernews, but it didn't get much traction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259885
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, we've changed to that from https://twitter.com/e_steroids/status/1405914760017756164 https://twitter.com/e_steroids/status/1405914760017756164 above. Thanks! Twitter content on HN is a mixed bag. A lot is bad but some is excellent and/or not available elsewhere.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> You may think you own your website, but do you really? What if your host goes offline? Spin up another one? Plenty of service providers to choose from. > What if your domain name registrar suddenly gives your name away? Then I can sue them for breach of contract. There are very few and very specific circumstances where they are allowed to do that, pertaining to my own misuse of the domain. Furthermore, to transfer my domain requires a hard copy of a random code snail-mailed to my home address from the Ministry of Communications. My domain is secure. > You don’t own your website, I very much do. > you do own your Dwebsite. Citation needed. Where are they actually hosted? How are they accessed? What mechanisms facilitate the existence of these "dwebsites" in the first place? Who's paying for the storage, bandwidth, and uptime?
- bguebert 5y ago
  >Plenty of service providers to choose from. It's important to be very careful to avoid vendor lock in to keep the option to switch. Parler made that mistake and when Amazon dropped them they had a hard time moving. Providers are constantly trying to lock you in to their particular services.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    A consequence of reliance on "cloud" services, exacerbated by tutorial glut and minimal service interoperability without fairly significant training/experience.
rchaud 5y ago
I don't get the point of this. It's the exact same thing as a website, except it uses Ethereum Naming Service instead of DNS? And it uses IPFS storage instead of a regular web host or Digital Ocean droplet? What do I, an average person, gain from simply shifting from one DNS-type service to another? As for being censorship resistant, I'm not aware of Digital Ocean/Bluehost/GoDaddy deactivating a lot of sites for censortship reasons. Social networks sure, but web hosts?
- t0mbstone 5y ago
  One big problem with the current internet is that the DNS for the top level domains (like .com) is controlled by centralized entities, such as ICANN. This means that the entire internet can technically be taken offline very easily if ICANN was compromised. The thing about censorship is that by the time you realize you need it, it might already be too late to do anything about it. That's why it's so important to establish censorship-resistant methods of communication BEFORE it is an issue.
  - jangid 5y ago
    > One big problem with the current internet is that the DNS for the top level domains (like .com) is controlled by centralized entities, such as ICANN. The TLD here is .eth; who controls it. As far as I have understood, this service is selling kind of NFT. But the ultimate linkage with the real world is controlled by a single entity (company). I don't get what is the benefit.

33 points by neiman 5y ago

* on Ethereum There are probably much more content added to IPFS, zeronet and other projects I don't know about. (yes we can host websites on IPFS: https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink/ https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink/)

neiman 5y ago
Right, depends on definition. We define it as decentralized name system + decentralized storage, but other definitions are fine of course. Even then, we didn't cover Handshake based websites, so you're correct.

andyxor 5y ago

How difficult is to make sci-hub decentralized

Tenoke 5y ago
There's torrents of sci-hub so in a sense it already exists. However, making it as a decentralized site like those would be fairly expensive probably as it's likely close to 100TB in total by now.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  You can literally get over 100TB of data for under $15/mo, so no it wouldn't be the expensive.
  - traverseda 5y ago
    Where?
    - Y_Y 5y ago
      /dev/urandom
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      G Suite costs $12/mo and many users still get unlimited storage without needing 5 users . It can be mounted like a regular drive using rclone. Linus Tech Tips has an entire video about it and you'll find many people using it.
  - maxnoe 5y ago
    The entire scientific community would also be interested where to get this deal
  - gpm 5y ago
    Cheap reliable cloud storage seems to be roughly $5/(tb month), 100tb for 15 dollars sounds incredible, before counting bandwidth...
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      Unless you get unlimited storage with G Suite where there is no bandwidth costs. Also, FYI you can get 6TB storage with OneDrive for less than $5 per month through Costco. Both can be mounted and used like a regular drive with rclone.
      - geoah 5y ago
        You’ve posted the same comment about gsuite at least 5 times in this thread which is no longer an option. https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-unlimited-storage-when-google-moves-you-to-workspace/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-u... https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-storage-limits/ https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-sto...
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        Because I was responding to multiple people. You are posting old articles. Why don't you try going to reddit or find new articles and you can see that it is still available.
  - innocenat 5y ago
    Interest in this too. Where?
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      G Suite
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    Absolutely not. 100 TB of hard disks costs in the neighborhood of $1500 (using a low estimate of $240/16GB). Even if operating and maintaining the hardware cost nothing (which it doesn't) and redundancy was unnecessary (which most users would disagree with), paying that off at $15/mo would take over 8 years, which is beyond the expected lifespan of the hardware.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      G Suite costs $12/mo and many users still get unlimited storage without needing 5 users . It can be mounted like a regular drive using rclone. So please don't tell me it is impossible when Linus Tech Tips has an entire video about it and you'll find many people using it.
      - innocenat 5y ago
        So what do you do when Google enforce 1TB rule?
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        They have said they don't intend to. I have found an alternative if they get rid of it altogether though that I don't intend to disclose.
      - geoah 5y ago
        This package is no longer available for new users and it’s expected that google will start killing old accounts at some point. https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-unlimited-storage-when-google-moves-you-to-workspace/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-to-your-g-suite-u...
        encryptluks2 5y ago
        It is not expected Google will kill old accounts, in fact they have said they don't intend to. Regardless, you can still upgrade to an unlimited plan for pretty cheap. And alas I proved my point that yes it is possible.
  - tengbretson 5y ago
    Is this that non-redundant, cloud-connected tape drives as a service I'be been hearing so much about lately?
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      No, this is using G Suite with an rclone mount.
- neiman 5y ago
  I'm not sure how Filecoin is connected to IPFS, but if it is, can it be done with it? Another option is with Skynet (based on Sia)
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    Sia/Skynet has serious technical problems and does not appear to be viable for any use case: https://siasetup.info/concerns-about-sia-and-skynet https://siasetup.info/concerns-about-sia-and-skynet

Animats 5y ago

A traceroute to bitsofcode.eth.link shows it on Cloudflare. Why is this decentralized?

eightysixfour 5y ago
You are viewing it through a Cloudflare bridge, you can also reach it decentralized via the .eth without the .link if you are using an ENS+IPFS browser. Info here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-distributed-web-resolver/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-distributed-web-resol...
neiman 5y ago
The links are for the Cloudflare gateway because most people don't have tools to show them. If you're using brave, simply remove the ".link" ("bitsofcode.eth") and you'll see it directly. There are also browser extensions: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/esteroids/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/esteroids/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unstoppable-extension/beelkklmblgdljamcmoffgfbdddfpnnl?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unstoppable-extens...
- Animats 5y ago
  Where's the actual hosting? This is the naming system. Can you host on, say, Ardrive and have it actually work? You can supposedly buy perpetual storage on Ardrive for $5/GB.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Probably hosted on IPFS.

Offpics 5y ago

Can someone ELI5 how decentralized websites work and how much it costs or provide a link to some article?

neiman 5y ago
Regular websites: DNS + server Decentralized websites: decentralized name service + decentralized storage. How much it costs? Depends on how you "keep it alive" in the network. There always needs to be at least one person with a copy of the website. If it's you, it's for free - but you can pay a service. Here's an introduction article: https://almonit.club/blog/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html https://almonit.club/blog/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsit...

phantom_oracle 5y ago

I really dislike Twitter content being shared on HN. There is not much information to get from 300 chars or less. Instead, check out this link: http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dwebsitse.html http://blog.almonit.eth.link/2020-05-21/Introduction_to_Dweb...

neiman 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this link! I actually wrote both this Twitter thread and the blog post you linked. I shared the blog post in the past in Hackernews, but it didn't get much traction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259885
dang 5y ago
Ok, we've changed to that from https://twitter.com/e_steroids/status/1405914760017756164 https://twitter.com/e_steroids/status/1405914760017756164 above. Thanks! Twitter content on HN is a mixed bag. A lot is bad but some is excellent and/or not available elsewhere.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

> You may think you own your website, but do you really? What if your host goes offline? Spin up another one? Plenty of service providers to choose from. > What if your domain name registrar suddenly gives your name away? Then I can sue them for breach of contract. There are very few and very specific circumstances where they are allowed to do that, pertaining to my own misuse of the domain. Furthermore, to transfer my domain requires a hard copy of a random code snail-mailed to my home address from the Ministry of Communications. My domain is secure. > You don’t own your website, I very much do. > you do own your Dwebsite. Citation needed. Where are they actually hosted? How are they accessed? What mechanisms facilitate the existence of these "dwebsites" in the first place? Who's paying for the storage, bandwidth, and uptime?

bguebert 5y ago
>Plenty of service providers to choose from. It's important to be very careful to avoid vendor lock in to keep the option to switch. Parler made that mistake and when Amazon dropped them they had a hard time moving. Providers are constantly trying to lock you in to their particular services.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  A consequence of reliance on "cloud" services, exacerbated by tutorial glut and minimal service interoperability without fairly significant training/experience.

rchaud 5y ago

I don't get the point of this. It's the exact same thing as a website, except it uses Ethereum Naming Service instead of DNS? And it uses IPFS storage instead of a regular web host or Digital Ocean droplet? What do I, an average person, gain from simply shifting from one DNS-type service to another? As for being censorship resistant, I'm not aware of Digital Ocean/Bluehost/GoDaddy deactivating a lot of sites for censortship reasons. Social networks sure, but web hosts?

t0mbstone 5y ago
One big problem with the current internet is that the DNS for the top level domains (like .com) is controlled by centralized entities, such as ICANN. This means that the entire internet can technically be taken offline very easily if ICANN was compromised. The thing about censorship is that by the time you realize you need it, it might already be too late to do anything about it. That's why it's so important to establish censorship-resistant methods of communication BEFORE it is an issue.
- jangid 5y ago
  > One big problem with the current internet is that the DNS for the top level domains (like .com) is controlled by centralized entities, such as ICANN. The TLD here is .eth; who controls it. As far as I have understood, this service is selling kind of NFT. But the ultimate linkage with the real world is controlled by a single entity (company). I don't get what is the benefit.