4 ms·

Holochain: End-to-end open source P2P app framework

25 points by rapnie 4y ago

RL_Quine 4y ago
This seems to be a webpage entirely made of buzzwords. Store things cheaply, without blockchains or servers, so where is it stored? No infrastructure, so who is paying for it? Oh right if you click a little deeper, there's a cryptocurrency token issued on Ethereum you need to buy in order to buy credits to buy compute time in a marketplace of other people's machines. Absolutely nothing interesting going on.
- rapnie 4y ago
  When posting I was hoping more people would chime in that worked with Holochain, hear about their experiences and impression. I know about Holochain mostly from people name-dropping it. There's a developer section, and it also has documentation on its concepts: https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/ https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/
  - verdverm 4y ago
    I doubt there are many developers here who do anything with Blockchain development. Blockchain is pretty well shunned here, generally speaking, exceptions apply.
    - rapnie 4y ago
      Well, that's the thing. I agree with you. And for very long thought Holochain was in that category, until people told me it was not and has a different approach. That is explained here: https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/1_the_basics/#current-solutions https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/1_the_basics/#curre...
      - verdverm 4y ago
        Their speak around doesn't make them different, they are still crypto based, have a token, and spray buzzwords everywhere.
        rapnie 4y ago
        Yes. If you want to scam, then smart thing to do is avoid the term "blockchain" or explicitly mention you are not blockchain. OTOH, if a complex project is honest, non-blockchain and has a lot of high-level concepts to explain, then the only way to verify its honesty is to deep-dive into the complex codebase. Similar to people telling me "No, Holochain is different", other people say this of Safe Network [0]. Just like until now with Holochain I stay away from that, as I just can't tell without thorough investigation. [0] https://safenetwork.tech/ https://safenetwork.tech/
      - RL_Quine 4y ago
        > These simple building blocks create something surprisingly robust—a multicellular social organism with a memory and an immune system. It mimics the way that biological systems have managed to thrive in the face of novel threats for millions of years. Uh huh.
        rapnie 4y ago
        Ha ha. Yeah agreed, that is.. hilarious :D
      - bawolff 4y ago
        This is so batshit you'd think it was someone making fun of the blockchain people.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      There are dozens of us! I don't know much about holochain, but it's in the camp of crypto/blockchain projects that sound almost unreasonably ambitious (Multivac, ICP, Saito, and Mina are in this camp as well), but I'm staying away from because.. there's a significant chance they're scams, or that the people working on them are in over their heads. One of these might be the real deal (well.. not Multivac or ICP IMO), and actually deliver something amazing, but I'm staying far away from them until I have a strong reason to believe that's the case.. I don't have time to do a deep dive of every project that promises the moon.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      I've seen them, they've seen me. We've argued. We've brawled.
  - RL_Quine 4y ago
    I would bet very strongly that nobody has, or ever will use this for a serious project or service. You walk into a room with something like the diagram below and you're just going to have people laughing in your face. https://holo.host/wp-content/themes/holo/images/Diagram.png https://holo.host/wp-content/themes/holo/images/Diagram.png
    - bawolff 4y ago
      To be fair, high level architecture diagrams of even legitimate services are usually pretty BS too. But i agree in principle.
    - yaddaor 4y ago
      That diagram is perfectly aimed at managers and executives who are the ones throwing away the money. Buzzword galore.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    The blockchain ecosystem is famous for people namedropping BS to try and drive buzz (often but not always as part of a pump and dump scheme). I dont know why you think people namedropping something in this space is positive.
    - rapnie 4y ago
      Well, because these people weren't involved in Holochain itself in any way and just looking for decentralized enabling technologies of which HC is but one. They were also people that are just as negative in their view on the blockchain craze as I am myself.
      - padraic7a 4y ago
        Really, they were looking for "looking for decentralized enabling technologies"? Why? I'm suspicious. What problem were they trying to solve?
    - risyachka 4y ago
      So basically like any startup in non-blockchain ecosystem?
      - bawolff 4y ago
        Yes actually. if a start upbis being name dropped everywhere but has no product just buzz words, you should run away too. In a lot of ways, blockchain is taking everything wrong with startups, and magnifying it 100x
Nursie 4y ago
I had someone punt this at me some years ago now, at the time I read through their material and couldn't make much sense of what the actual offering might be - it seemed that there were going to be chains of everything, everywhere, constantly, all somehow interconnected and syncing up with each other, and for whatever reason that was a good idea. I see no reason to pay any more attention to this than any other cryptocurrency-related "Grand Vision", or even something like Urbit, until projects have been delivered using it which have useful capabilities that are just not possible without it. (edit - and given the ICO was 4 years ago now... eh)
- woojoo666 4y ago
  One actual use case I've seen is how IPFS is enabling websites like Tornado Cash to evade censorship (and yeah I know Tornado Cash is used by criminals but so is every privacy service in existence, and there are other ways to catch criminals besides tracing everybody's transactions)
  - Nursie 4y ago
    1. That's not a use-case for holochain. 2. I mean yeah, I don't really think that's a good thing. I think there's a whole world of middle ground between "tracing everybody's transactions in the open all the time" and "complete, mathematical privacy forever". Personally I think things should be discoverable with an appropriate warrant, for example. I also don't consider freedom of speech and financial privacy to be equivalent, "criminals" are only a small part of the problem there. Financial privacy in the way proponents seem to want allows everything from total tax evasion to the rich outright buying politicians. However much you think lobbying is bad, and political funding is bad, it could only make it far, far worse.
    - rapnie 4y ago
      I know about the hREA [0] project, that is itself based on Valueflows [1] specification. [0] https://hrea.io/ https://hrea.io/ [1] https://valueflo.ws https://valueflo.ws
factorialboy 4y ago
Mistakingly upvoted this after confusing it with keet.io and its base-layer holepunch. :facepalm:
- 5560675260 4y ago
  I see that Keet's website and social media keep mentioning holepunch, but is it something available separately from their chat client? Or at all?
  - factorialboy 4y ago
    https://holepunch.to/ https://holepunch.to/ says "coming q4 2022"
bawolff 4y ago
> 4. Invalid data triggers a network-wide security response. They make it sound like Agent smith shows up and destroys the bad data.
Cilvic 4y ago
I clicked because we are looking for a P2P data sync where we don't know which device will be online and some might never be. And ideas? The devices are Androids in remote areas without stable internet.
- chrismatheson 4y ago
  There was a CRDT based thing from the folks at ink and switch (if I remember correctly) some HN searching should bring it up I expect

25 points by rapnie 4y ago

This seems to be a webpage entirely made of buzzwords. Store things cheaply, without blockchains or servers, so where is it stored? No infrastructure, so who is paying for it? Oh right if you click a little deeper, there's a cryptocurrency token issued on Ethereum you need to buy in order to buy credits to buy compute time in a marketplace of other people's machines. Absolutely nothing interesting going on.

rapnie 4y ago
When posting I was hoping more people would chime in that worked with Holochain, hear about their experiences and impression. I know about Holochain mostly from people name-dropping it. There's a developer section, and it also has documentation on its concepts: https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/ https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/
- verdverm 4y ago
  I doubt there are many developers here who do anything with Blockchain development. Blockchain is pretty well shunned here, generally speaking, exceptions apply.
  - rapnie 4y ago
    Well, that's the thing. I agree with you. And for very long thought Holochain was in that category, until people told me it was not and has a different approach. That is explained here: https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/1_the_basics/#current-solutions https://developer.holochain.org/concepts/1_the_basics/#curre...
    - verdverm 4y ago
      Their speak around doesn't make them different, they are still crypto based, have a token, and spray buzzwords everywhere.
      - rapnie 4y ago
        Yes. If you want to scam, then smart thing to do is avoid the term "blockchain" or explicitly mention you are not blockchain. OTOH, if a complex project is honest, non-blockchain and has a lot of high-level concepts to explain, then the only way to verify its honesty is to deep-dive into the complex codebase. Similar to people telling me "No, Holochain is different", other people say this of Safe Network [0]. Just like until now with Holochain I stay away from that, as I just can't tell without thorough investigation. [0] https://safenetwork.tech/ https://safenetwork.tech/
    - RL_Quine 4y ago
      > These simple building blocks create something surprisingly robust—a multicellular social organism with a memory and an immune system. It mimics the way that biological systems have managed to thrive in the face of novel threats for millions of years. Uh huh.
      - rapnie 4y ago
        Ha ha. Yeah agreed, that is.. hilarious :D
    - bawolff 4y ago
      This is so batshit you'd think it was someone making fun of the blockchain people.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    There are dozens of us! I don't know much about holochain, but it's in the camp of crypto/blockchain projects that sound almost unreasonably ambitious (Multivac, ICP, Saito, and Mina are in this camp as well), but I'm staying away from because.. there's a significant chance they're scams, or that the people working on them are in over their heads. One of these might be the real deal (well.. not Multivac or ICP IMO), and actually deliver something amazing, but I'm staying far away from them until I have a strong reason to believe that's the case.. I don't have time to do a deep dive of every project that promises the moon.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    I've seen them, they've seen me. We've argued. We've brawled.
- RL_Quine 4y ago
  I would bet very strongly that nobody has, or ever will use this for a serious project or service. You walk into a room with something like the diagram below and you're just going to have people laughing in your face. https://holo.host/wp-content/themes/holo/images/Diagram.png https://holo.host/wp-content/themes/holo/images/Diagram.png
  - bawolff 4y ago
    To be fair, high level architecture diagrams of even legitimate services are usually pretty BS too. But i agree in principle.
  - yaddaor 4y ago
    That diagram is perfectly aimed at managers and executives who are the ones throwing away the money. Buzzword galore.
- bawolff 4y ago
  The blockchain ecosystem is famous for people namedropping BS to try and drive buzz (often but not always as part of a pump and dump scheme). I dont know why you think people namedropping something in this space is positive.
  - rapnie 4y ago
    Well, because these people weren't involved in Holochain itself in any way and just looking for decentralized enabling technologies of which HC is but one. They were also people that are just as negative in their view on the blockchain craze as I am myself.
    - padraic7a 4y ago
      Really, they were looking for "looking for decentralized enabling technologies"? Why? I'm suspicious. What problem were they trying to solve?
  - risyachka 4y ago
    So basically like any startup in non-blockchain ecosystem?
    - bawolff 4y ago
      Yes actually. if a start upbis being name dropped everywhere but has no product just buzz words, you should run away too. In a lot of ways, blockchain is taking everything wrong with startups, and magnifying it 100x

Nursie 4y ago

I had someone punt this at me some years ago now, at the time I read through their material and couldn't make much sense of what the actual offering might be - it seemed that there were going to be chains of everything, everywhere, constantly, all somehow interconnected and syncing up with each other, and for whatever reason that was a good idea. I see no reason to pay any more attention to this than any other cryptocurrency-related "Grand Vision", or even something like Urbit, until projects have been delivered using it which have useful capabilities that are just not possible without it. (edit - and given the ICO was 4 years ago now... eh)

woojoo666 4y ago
One actual use case I've seen is how IPFS is enabling websites like Tornado Cash to evade censorship (and yeah I know Tornado Cash is used by criminals but so is every privacy service in existence, and there are other ways to catch criminals besides tracing everybody's transactions)
- Nursie 4y ago
  1. That's not a use-case for holochain. 2. I mean yeah, I don't really think that's a good thing. I think there's a whole world of middle ground between "tracing everybody's transactions in the open all the time" and "complete, mathematical privacy forever". Personally I think things should be discoverable with an appropriate warrant, for example. I also don't consider freedom of speech and financial privacy to be equivalent, "criminals" are only a small part of the problem there. Financial privacy in the way proponents seem to want allows everything from total tax evasion to the rich outright buying politicians. However much you think lobbying is bad, and political funding is bad, it could only make it far, far worse.
  - rapnie 4y ago
    I know about the hREA [0] project, that is itself based on Valueflows [1] specification. [0] https://hrea.io/ https://hrea.io/ [1] https://valueflo.ws https://valueflo.ws

factorialboy 4y ago

Mistakingly upvoted this after confusing it with keet.io and its base-layer holepunch. :facepalm:

5560675260 4y ago
I see that Keet's website and social media keep mentioning holepunch, but is it something available separately from their chat client? Or at all?
- factorialboy 4y ago
  https://holepunch.to/ https://holepunch.to/ says "coming q4 2022"

bawolff 4y ago

> 4. Invalid data triggers a network-wide security response. They make it sound like Agent smith shows up and destroys the bad data.

Cilvic 4y ago

I clicked because we are looking for a P2P data sync where we don't know which device will be online and some might never be. And ideas? The devices are Androids in remote areas without stable internet.

chrismatheson 4y ago
There was a CRDT based thing from the folks at ink and switch (if I remember correctly) some HN searching should bring it up I expect