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Totally biased founder here, but I work on https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh, a thing that started off as an IPFS implemen

Totally biased founder here, but I work on https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh, a thing that started off as an IPFS implementation in rust, but we broke out & ended up doing our own thing. We're not at the point where the iroh implements "the full IPFS experience" (some parts border on impossible to do while keeping a decentralized promise), but we're getting closer to the "p2p website hosting" use case each week.

hot_gril 3y ago
Is it named after the Avatar character?
- joshspankit 3y ago
  Yes, and that makes me happy every time I see it.
- b_fiive 3y ago
  I can neither confirm nor deny, but oh boy does uncle iroh seem cool
gabesullice 3y ago
Super intriguing. Thanks for sharing! It reminds me a bit of an early Go project called Upspin [1]. And also a bit of Solid [2]. Did you take any inspiration from them? What excites me about your project is that you're addressing the elephant in the room when it comes to data sovereignty (~nobody wants to self-host a personal database but their personal devices aren't publicly accessible) in an elegant way. By storing the data on my personal device and (presumably?) paying for a managed relay (and maybe an encrypted backup), I can keep my data in my physical possession, but I won't have to host anything on my own. Is that the idea? [1] https://upspin.io/ https://upspin.io/ [2] https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/
- b_fiive 3y ago
  Ah <3 Upspin! It's been a minute. I've personally read through & love Upspin. I always found solid a little too tied to RDF & the semantic web push. The solid project is/was super valiant effort, but these days I feel like the semantic web push peaked with HTML & schema.org. > By storing the data on my personal device and (presumably?) paying for a managed relay (and maybe an encrypted backup), I can keep my data in my physical possession, but I won't have to host anything on my own. Is that the idea? We're hoping to give that exact setup to app developers (maybe that's you :). We still have work to do on encryption at rest to keep the hosted server "dumb", and more plumbing into existing app development ecosystems like flutter, expo, tauri, etc. but yes, that's the hope. Give developers tools to ship apps that renegotiate the "user social contract".
ChadNauseam 3y ago
I feel like this type of project is a natural fit as the transport layer for CRDT-based applications. Something like: each user/device has an append-only log of CRDT events, then applications merge events from multiple logs to create a collaborative experience. (I have no idea if iroh supports append-only logs, but it seems like a common thing for projects in this space to support.) What do you think?
- b_fiive 3y ago
  yep! Iroh documents [1] give you a very nice primitive that is technically a CRDT, but in practice most people use it as a key-value store. We really wanted a mutable solution that would support real deletions (instead of tombstones), and starting with append-only logs locks you out of that choice. With Iroh + CRDTs you have three choices: 1. Use iroh's connection & gossip layers in conjunction with a mature CRDT library like Automerge or Y.js. 2. Build a more sophisticated CRDT on top of iroh documents. 3. Worry a little less about weather your data structures form a semilattice & build on a last-writer wins key-value store (basically: just use documents) We've seen uses for all three. Hope that helps! [1] https://iroh.computer/docs/layers/documents https://iroh.computer/docs/layers/documents

hot_gril 3y ago

Is it named after the Avatar character?

joshspankit 3y ago
Yes, and that makes me happy every time I see it.
b_fiive 3y ago
I can neither confirm nor deny, but oh boy does uncle iroh seem cool

gabesullice 3y ago

Super intriguing. Thanks for sharing! It reminds me a bit of an early Go project called Upspin [1]. And also a bit of Solid [2]. Did you take any inspiration from them? What excites me about your project is that you're addressing the elephant in the room when it comes to data sovereignty (~nobody wants to self-host a personal database but their personal devices aren't publicly accessible) in an elegant way. By storing the data on my personal device and (presumably?) paying for a managed relay (and maybe an encrypted backup), I can keep my data in my physical possession, but I won't have to host anything on my own. Is that the idea? [1] https://upspin.io/ https://upspin.io/ [2] https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/

b_fiive 3y ago
Ah <3 Upspin! It's been a minute. I've personally read through & love Upspin. I always found solid a little too tied to RDF & the semantic web push. The solid project is/was super valiant effort, but these days I feel like the semantic web push peaked with HTML & schema.org. > By storing the data on my personal device and (presumably?) paying for a managed relay (and maybe an encrypted backup), I can keep my data in my physical possession, but I won't have to host anything on my own. Is that the idea? We're hoping to give that exact setup to app developers (maybe that's you :). We still have work to do on encryption at rest to keep the hosted server "dumb", and more plumbing into existing app development ecosystems like flutter, expo, tauri, etc. but yes, that's the hope. Give developers tools to ship apps that renegotiate the "user social contract".

ChadNauseam 3y ago

I feel like this type of project is a natural fit as the transport layer for CRDT-based applications. Something like: each user/device has an append-only log of CRDT events, then applications merge events from multiple logs to create a collaborative experience. (I have no idea if iroh supports append-only logs, but it seems like a common thing for projects in this space to support.) What do you think?

b_fiive 3y ago
yep! Iroh documents [1] give you a very nice primitive that is technically a CRDT, but in practice most people use it as a key-value store. We really wanted a mutable solution that would support real deletions (instead of tombstones), and starting with append-only logs locks you out of that choice. With Iroh + CRDTs you have three choices: 1. Use iroh's connection & gossip layers in conjunction with a mature CRDT library like Automerge or Y.js. 2. Build a more sophisticated CRDT on top of iroh documents. 3. Worry a little less about weather your data structures form a semilattice & build on a last-writer wins key-value store (basically: just use documents) We've seen uses for all three. Hope that helps! [1] https://iroh.computer/docs/layers/documents https://iroh.computer/docs/layers/documents