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Today's Topics:
1. Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development? (Brendan Miller)
2. Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development? (t3sserakt)
3. Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development? (Marcos Marado)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 18:28:12 -0800
From: Brendan Miller <address@hidden>
To: "Schanzenbach, Martin" <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development?
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Thanks for the great summaries and links, Martin. Looking forward to
future developments with TNG, etc. And based on your comments on uPort,
which make a lot of sense to me, I am going to take a closer look at
Reclaim:ID.
Best,
Brendan
On 2/11/20 1:46 AM, Schanzenbach, Martin wrote:
Hi,
On 11. Feb 2020, at 05:59, Brendan Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
Thank you for your answers and encouragement, Martin.
As a follow up, could you summarize your key thoughts on the shortcomings of
IPFS relative to gnu:net?
The most obvious shortcoming is that IPFS only does file-sharing via DHT.
But I guess comparing IPFS to gnunet is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. IPFS
essentially does file-sharing. This is what the "file-sharing"
application/service is for in gnunet.
Unfortunately, I am not an expert on this part of gnunet so maybe grothoff can
shed some light on how they compare or what the delta actually is.
My point is: It is probably more accurate to compare GNUnet to libp2p, which is
the stack IPFS is using.
libp2p otoh is quite monolithic and struggles with the same low-level issues as we do,
namely transport management for connectivity (especially NAT!). We are currently trying
to address this with our transport redesign (Project "TNG").
The other point is that libp2p/IPFS heavily rely on DNS. And the issues with
DNS are, in our opinion, a showstopper:
https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet-videos-2019.git/plain/ICANN66/GNU_Name_System_-_2019_ICANN66__Martin_Schanzenbach.webm
https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet-videos-2019.git/plain/IETF104/GNU_Name_System_-_2019_Edition_IETF104__Christian_Grothoff.webm
And what are your concerns/reservations about uPort? How would you contrast
their approach with that of Reclaim:ID?
Often blockchain-based self-sovereign identity systems start off with a
blockchain and then realize that is is really bad for actually storing personal
information as it does not scale. Then, usually, they turn to IPFS and just
link to the data. That is until they realize that this means the data is just
out there in the open at which point they give up on persisting the data in the
network.
That would be my summarization on the evolution of uPort. I have read the
whitepapers in the past when they were still planning do add some cryptographic
access control layer. To my knowledge, this has been scrapped and now PI is
exchanged with relying parties ad-hoc (via the app).
This means that the relying party must store the data if any future processes
require the data. That is not good since because of GDPR et al this data is a
liability. That is why Identity Provider services such as Google/Facebook are
so attractive in this regard.
re:claimID stores PI of users in the GNU Name System in a way that protects the
information from unauthorized access. It provides cryptographic access control and an
OpenID Connect interface. We initially used something called "Attribute-based
Encryption" to achieve this. Currently, we only use GNS's built in encryption and
privacy features to securely store and share identity information.
In summary: What we achieved (as opposed to uPort) is that we decentralized the
Identity Provider service (think Google/Facebook) which allows relying parties
(websites) to retrieve fresh user data on demand *without* having to request it
again from the user or store it locally. (as long as they are authorized)
BR
Martin
Much appreciated!
And do I look forward to staying in touch.
Best,
Brendan
On 2/10/20 12:04 AM, Schanzenbach, Martin wrote:
Hi Brendan!
thank you for your interest in GNUnet.
In general I think you have the right ideas :)
One thing to node in general is that most of the technologies you are
significantly more
mature from a users perspective _because_ they do not address the whole stack.
IPFS otoh does a lot of things right, some not so well (naming) and other
things not at all ;)
I could rant about uPort et al all day but let me focus on your questions for
now :D
On 10. Feb 2020, at 03:03, Brendan Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi, all. I am a web/web3 developer interested in helping to build open source,
private, decentralized alternatives to social platforms like Facebook, WeChat,
etc. I am coming from a technical starting point of IPFS, Ethereum blockchain
and secret contract platforms like Enigma and Oasis, but I am not yet committed
to a certain tech stack, and I certainly don't want to reinvent any wheels.
I am starting to recognize that some of the privacy protecting architecture I
was envisioning layering on top of IPFS, for example, was not really at the
right networking layer - it should be handled at a lower layer. As a part of
that realization, I have recently found gnu:net, reclaim:id and related
projects and am excited about the attention you give these layers.
I was imagining that the apps I would like to build would be mobile apps so
that they could be accessible to the majority of users, be able to protect the
user's private keys, and also be able to run in a fully decentralized/mesh
situation when needed/desired.
Textile (https://textile.io/) on top of IPFS interests me because they are open
source, and provide useful functionalities that I would need. And they are set
up for mobile apps. As an example of whatH can be done with Textile, you can
take a look at this functional photo sharing/messaging React Native mobile app:
https://github.com/textileio/photos
I have also been looking at open source decentralized identity systems like
https://github.com/uport-project/uport-connect, https://github.com/iden3 and
https://github.com/jonnycrunch/ipid.
Fundamentally, I am an app developer, but one who cares about ensuring
decentralization and privacy by default, with the ability to safely share
identity claims, user groups and content/media/files when desired. My goal is
to build on top of as much existing, reliable, maintained open source code as
possible so we can show users the full functionality they expect from existing
social networking apps to make it attractive to switch over.
My questions are these:
• Does anything similar to Textile exist in the gnu:net ecosystem?
No. But I guess it could be built on top of the "fs" (file sharing) service. I
cannot say I am an expert on this tool.
• Can gnu:net practically operate in a battery-sane manner on Android
and iOS devices? Is there a guide for how to do this? What tradeoffs are
necessary to operate on mobile?
Currently, it is not advised to do that. More than battery, we currently worry
about data usage. We are currently rewriting
our transport service to address this (so that a mobile node can indicate that
it will not provide as much to the network).
The bigger problem is probably that GNUnet currently does not run on iOS or
Android. We currently do not have developers familiar
enough with porting/App development to try.
• IPFS uses a modular infrastructure. Would it be possible to swap out
some lower-level networking layers of IPFS with gnu:net modules for greater
privacy? (Reference: https://github.com/ipfs/specs/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md)
I think the only part in IPFS that may be swapped out easily is the name
system. It could use GNS.
They also seem to oppose the use of our DHT:
https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/consider-r5n-dht-rathar-than-kadmelia/6691
• Would it be possible to somehow make the gnu:net and IPFS ecosystems
operationally compatible, perhaps using gateways/bridges, so that their
content/data can be shared? If so, how hard would that be?
I guess you would reimplement the "merkledag" (Section 3.4) and "Application Data
Structure" (Section 4.) in GNUnet. Then those use
the "file sharing" service instead of the IPFS stack.
At this point you have an IPFS on top of GNUnet, but it is not yet connected to the
"other" IPFS.
So now you need to have some peers that function as a bridge and translate
between the IPFS and GNUnet network.
You would probably bridge at the application layer.
There _may_ be problems such as duplicate data. So maybe you have to do some
namespacing when referring to data (in the other network).
Thanks for any insights into these questions, and for your work on gnu:net.
I hope I have answered your questions, feel free to ask more and stay in
contact.
TY
Martin
Best,
Brendan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmiller/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 10:42:20 +0100
From: t3sserakt <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development?
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hi Brendan,
do you already know secushare.org?
We are working on a distributed private social network. Right now we
have a prototype implemented in nim-lang.org.
For trying it out have look here: https://gnunet.org/en/use.html#groupchat
We could start to expose a REST API that can be used by a web interface.
If you are interested in helping with such a web interface or in
learning nim let me know!
Happy hacking!
t3sserakt
On 10.02.20 03:03, Brendan Miller wrote:
Hi, all. I am a web/web3 developer interested in helping to build open
source, private, decentralized alternatives to social platforms like
Facebook, WeChat, etc. I am coming from a technical starting point of
IPFS, Ethereum blockchain and secret contract platforms like Enigma
and Oasis, but I am not yet committed to a certain tech stack, and I
certainly don't want to reinvent any wheels.
I am starting to recognize that some of the privacy protecting
architecture I was envisioning layering on top of IPFS, for example,
was not really at the right networking layer - it should be handled at
a lower layer. As a part of that realization, I have recently found
gnu:net, reclaim:id and related projects and am excited about the
attention you give these layers.
I was imagining that the apps I would like to build would be mobile
apps so that they could be accessible to the majority of users, be
able to protect the user's private keys, and also be able to run in a
fully decentralized/mesh situation when needed/desired.
Textile (https://textile.io/) on top of IPFS interests me because they
are open source, and provide useful functionalities that I would need.
And they are set up for mobile apps. As an example of what can be done
with Textile, you can take a look at this functional photo
sharing/messaging React Native mobile app:
https://github.com/textileio/photos
I have also been looking at open source decentralized identity systems
like https://github.com/uport-project/uport-connect,
https://github.com/iden3 and https://github.com/jonnycrunch/ipid.
Fundamentally, I am an app developer, but one who cares about ensuring
decentralization and privacy by default, with the ability to safely
share identity claims, user groups and content/media/files when
desired. My goal is to build on top of as much existing, reliable,
maintained open source code as possible so we can show users the full
functionality they expect from existing social networking apps to make
it attractive to switch over.
My questions are these:
* Does anything similar to Textile exist in the gnu:net ecosystem?
* Can gnu:net practically operate in a battery-sane manner on
Android and iOS devices? Is there a guide for how to do this? What
tradeoffs are necessary to operate on mobile?
* IPFS uses a modular infrastructure. Would it be possible to swap
out some lower-level networking layers of IPFS with gnu:net
modules for greater privacy? (Reference:
https://github.com/ipfs/specs/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md)
* Would it be possible to somehow make the gnu:net and IPFS
ecosystems operationally compatible, perhaps using
gateways/bridges, so that their content/data can be shared? If so,
how hard would that be?
Thanks for any insights into these questions, and for your work on
gnu:net.
Best,
Brendan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmiller/
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 10:06:06 +0000
From: Marcos Marado <address@hidden>
To: t3sserakt <address@hidden>
Cc: gnunet-developers <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: gnu:net and IPFS: integration possible or desirable for
social networking app development?
Message-ID:
<CAD9L4rdDVp9FHNMo6O8LPBuisWFQqLZ+pf9kT+eV9dFOWy=address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hi t3sserakt,
The documentation you linked at says that we groupchat needs nim >= 0.19,
but the project's README says >= 0.18...
I guess one of them should be fixed :-)
Best regards,
On Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 09:42 t3sserakt <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi Brendan,
do you already know secushare.org?
We are working on a distributed private social network. Right now we have
a prototype implemented in nim-lang.org.
For trying it out have look here: https://gnunet.org/en/use.html#groupchat
We could start to expose a REST API that can be used by a web interface.
If you are interested in helping with such a web interface or in learning
nim let me know!
Happy hacking!
t3sserakt
On 10.02.20 03:03, Brendan Miller wrote:
Hi, all. I am a web/web3 developer interested in helping to build open
source, private, decentralized alternatives to social platforms like
Facebook, WeChat, etc. I am coming from a technical starting point of IPFS,
Ethereum blockchain and secret contract platforms like Enigma and Oasis,
but I am not yet committed to a certain tech stack, and I certainly don't
want to reinvent any wheels.
I am starting to recognize that some of the privacy protecting
architecture I was envisioning layering on top of IPFS, for example, was
not really at the right networking layer - it should be handled at a lower
layer. As a part of that realization, I have recently found gnu:net,
reclaim:id and related projects and am excited about the attention you give
these layers.
I was imagining that the apps I would like to build would be mobile apps
so that they could be accessible to the majority of users, be able to
protect the user's private keys, and also be able to run in a fully
decentralized/mesh situation when needed/desired.
Textile (https://textile.io/) on top of IPFS interests me because they
are open source, and provide useful functionalities that I would need. And
they are set up for mobile apps. As an example of what can be done with
Textile, you can take a look at this functional photo sharing/messaging
React Native mobile app: https://github.com/textileio/photos
I have also been looking at open source decentralized identity systems
like https://github.com/uport-project/uport-connect,
https://github.com/iden3 and https://github.com/jonnycrunch/ipid.
Fundamentally, I am an app developer, but one who cares about ensuring
decentralization and privacy by default, with the ability to safely share
identity claims, user groups and content/media/files when desired. My goal
is to build on top of as much existing, reliable, maintained open source
code as possible so we can show users the full functionality they expect
from existing social networking apps to make it attractive to switch over.
My questions are these:
- Does anything similar to Textile exist in the gnu:net ecosystem?
- Can gnu:net practically operate in a battery-sane manner on Android
and iOS devices? Is there a guide for how to do this? What tradeoffs are
necessary to operate on mobile?
- IPFS uses a modular infrastructure. Would it be possible to swap out
some lower-level networking layers of IPFS with gnu:net modules for greater
privacy? (Reference:
https://github.com/ipfs/specs/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md)
- Would it be possible to somehow make the gnu:net and IPFS ecosystems
operationally compatible, perhaps using gateways/bridges, so that their
content/data can be shared? If so, how hard would that be?
Thanks for any insights into these questions, and for your work on gnu:net.
Best,
Brendan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmiller/
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