Nostr Web Client

While relays and file upload services are a simple and effective way to get started, I think p2p is the future.

Running a relay or file uploader is expensive, and you need content moderation. On the other hand, p2p is "free" because people are already paying for their own internet access and on-device storage, or even cloud storage. P2p is also much more censorship resistant.

Video hosting is so expensive that I imagine it will be the first thing to be moved onto bittorrent. If you don't like torrenting with random people, you could connect to people in your Nostr social network.

When Nostr becomes popular and free relays dwindle, maybe p2p becomes more common for event sync as well. Direct connections are also better for DM privacy.

If bittorrent is too clunky for general-purpose file sharing, we can devise our own file sharing on Nostr. Nostr is already based on content-addressed events. Just need a binary format and some standard for file chunking.

Colby Serpa 2y ago

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

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Discussion

Colby Serpa 2y ago

Robin Linus and I are working on a way to pay* relays over Lightning in an atomic way

Colby Serpa 2y ago

The P2P network IPFS achieves it syncing between peers one merkle branch/leaf at a time… with the syncing protocol BitSwap, or their evolution of it called GraphSync.

The Scionic Merkle DAGs have smaller branches than Merkle DAGs and is equipped to interact with a syncing protocol capable of ranged requests like GraphSync. It’s ultimately the evolution of IPFS.

Colby Serpa 2y ago

The P2P network IPFS achieves it’s* syncing between peers

Sirius 2y ago

This is an important effort, and I hope it goes well!

Colby Serpa 2y ago

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.