This is an important effort, and I hope it goes well!
We spent a long-time crafting a standard for file chunking by evolving Merkle DAGs, which are modified Merkle Trees used for file storage.
These Scionic Merkle DAGs are a significant improvement over IPFS Merkle DAGs. https://github.com/HORNET-Storage/scionic-merkletree
IPFS is arguably one of the most popular P2P file sharing platforms in the world, as you know. Their entire system is cryptographically secure due to their Merkle DAGs.
Our merkle branches contain fewer useless hashes. As the folder grows, the branch size decreases logarithmically compared to Merkle DAGs. Stats can be seen on the GitHub page.
These new Scionic Merkle DAGs can be used for a user-sever model where relays store files beyond notes, or a P2P model as you described here. We’re setting up a #Nostr relay that supports them now.
I don’t mind pursuing both futures, but I lean toward the paid user-server model. I’d be curious to see where you and JB take the P2P model, as Robin Linus and I are working on a way to paid relays over Lightning in an atomic way, with preimages as file chunks. nostr:note12fxpjxw6w6l78dye7w073t8paakrc6demp4emlze3zcdw00n029q7xtrg9
Discussion
Thank you! We hope you’ll consider adopting it into Iris for photos/videos etc. Our first client with it will either be a fork of Iris or Snort, so you can experience how it works first.
We’ll be coding a JS version of the Scionic Merkle DAGs soon for all webapps.