

Bit451 – Decentralized, distributed anonymous P2P media network - danboarder
http://bit451.org

======
chuckup
I would love to see something simpler, think Kad DHT meets Bitcoin. I could
share a hash with you, and from the command line you could simply type "fetch
L9ThxnotKPzthJ7hu3bnORuT6xI" just as you'd use wget.

This would be a hash of an index file that describes the data, broken into
small chunks. Now your client goes back onto the network and finds the
cheapest way to retrieve all these chunks. You could set a default, "5 cents
per GB" that you're willing to pay.

Servers could monitor the network and see what's being requested often, and
pay to download (and re-serve) these chunks themselves in the hopes of
profiting. When files become rare, servers could charge a premium.

Bitcoin is not a micropayment system, so paying per chunk would be expensive.
You could pre-pay, say 1GB at a time at first, and slowly build up a trusted
reputation where you only pay afterwards (by reusing a bitcoin address as your
"identity" that you always send from). You'd work out a "contract" (signed
with your sending address), give it to the server, and if you skip out on
paying they could use it as proof of nonpayment which they would share with
other servers. (Maybe all servers have a blacklist file they share for free).
They could try to send you bogus data, but since you can verify by-the-chunk
you wouldn't request more chunks from them once you've received a piece that
fails a hash.

Once you've got this network in place, you could build any of the things the
author in this link is describing. My hope, a Usenet 2.0 style protocol. The
whole thing is very exciting. But first you need a simple, generic, data-for-
bitcoin network.

Everything I've seen so far in the bitcoin/storage area (maidsafe, storj)
sounds overly complicated and downright scammy. I don't want to back up my
data to a p2p network. I don't want to have to purchase a new altcoin to use
your network. I just want to, for starters, type "serve [file]" or "fetch
[hash]" on the CLI and have it all magically work behind the scenes. First
place I'd see this taking off is sharing porn - yay! From there, after time,
it could become the backbone of "web 3.0".

~~~
jsprogrammer
Why not just build an automated post pay system instead of relying on the
other person to remember?

At that point, why not setup escrow processes where the sender has to provide
proof to release the payment?

This could probably go on and on, as I'm not sure there is a complete answer
to centralized vs. decentralized. You likely just have to pick based on what
attributes are most important at the time.

~~~
chuckup
I could imagine the payment protocol being very flexible. Some servers may
want their money up front, some may be willing to trust you to pay afterwards,
etc.

> At that point, why not setup escrow processes where the sender has to
> provide proof to release the payment?

There is no way to prove you've sent a file to someone. In the BBS days, there
was a program called Leech Zmodem that lied about getting the last chunk of
data, so that you didn't have to pay file points for your download.

I can think of a way around this, sort of: you could break the transfer up and
require the receiver to sign a message for each piece they've received, before
you send the next piece. But, they can lie and say they never got the last
piece, and that's tricky because some data is worthless without the entire
thing. Maybe they're not lying, and you've disconnected - should they have to
pay for 90% of a file? There's lots of little edge cases I can think of.

If this whole idea ever happened, I think large data warehouses would form
(using cheap amazon/google storage) and the whole thing might become
centralized anyway.

~~~
moe
_they can lie and say they never got the last piece_

This can be solved with encryption. Just send them an encrypted version of the
file. By requesting the key the receiver confirms possession of all chunks.

~~~
chuckup
And what if the sender does not send the key? Or, when you use the key, you
find out it is just a blob of zeros? (Or, the other way around: receiver lies
and says that the sender did not send the key, or that the decrypted data did
not match the hash)

~~~
moe
All your concerns are valid but addressable via "reputation".

Consider this: Each completed transaction is rated by each participating
party.

How much your rating affects your opponents reputation in determined by your
own reputation. A higher reputation enables privileges such as more peers
willing to trade with you, faster downloads, etc.

These reputation systems don't work in common P2P networks because everyone
can just generate fake identities and boost their own reputation at will.

However, if you tie the reputation system to bitcoin so that the creation of
an identity puts actual money on the line then this kind of cheating doesn't
work anymore.

------
rb2k_
The fact that they designed the whole system "up front" without a working
prototype but decided to include UML diagrams makes me cringe a bit.

I have yet to see a system where up-front UML design really works.

Then again, when I was at university, I've seen a few professors teach that as
a way of doing "quality software development".

On a side note: Interesting to see OrientDB. I've always had a place in my
heart for that project.

~~~
sz4kerto
Whether or not UML works depends mostly on the people who use it. Not on
whether they are smart or not -- it fits with some mindsets and clashes with
some others. I have seen very-very good C++ programmers who worked with
roundtrip engineering tools (Together) and diagram was always the first. (And
the project went well.)

------
undefined0
I too dream of such a thing. Personally, I want the idea where you pay
bitcoins to the entire network, the payment gets split by the percentage of
storage.

Webmasters would pay the network (and have an API to generate download links,
upload authorization for users to upload directly to the network), giving
users the ability to use it for free or can pay directly to the network too,
or even get a premium account on the website for convinence.

I don't care about the other ideas bit451 has suggested (playlists, hashtags,
etc), I think the network should be for resilient file storage and for videos
people can build an application on top of that network.

I'd love to switch to a network rather than rely on a single datacenter which
can be raided over night. A 'Usenet for HTTP'.

~~~
sanxiyn
Please help [https://tahoe-lafs.org/](https://tahoe-lafs.org/) then.

~~~
undefined0
I've heard of Tahoe-LAFS before, I am under the impression it's for when I own
the storage server rather than using a network of other peoples server? My
dream is of a network of other people operating the servers for both liability
reasons and it would be cheaper because given a network of people paying with
bitcoin, it would be oversold, reducing the price more than getting a
dedicated server (assuming there is competition).

If I'm wrong, and other people provide storage with Tahoe-LAFS, how are you
recieving money for it? Storage is expensive when done on enterprise scale, we
can't rely on peoples open internet idiology for something as expensive as
that.

~~~
evgen
The original technology Tahoe-LAFS is based upon (MojoNation) also spawned
BitTorrent. For BT Bram removed the secure tunnels (a la Tor) and the
distributed payment system. Over the past decade we have just slowly added it
all back and at each step proclaimed ourselves to be rather clever...

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cjg
"It should be completed by the end of the year" seems unlikely.

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caractacus
Seems to be dead already. No code commits since early August, /r/bit451 has
tumbleweeds...

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hendzen
Another ambitious p2p project with no code written. Yawn.

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sp4ke
Oh dear I wish this project becomes a reality

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zkhalique
Interesting. How does it work?

~~~
Confiks
It doesn't. This is just someone's dream.

The writeup that is linked to is only a summary of which technologies should
be tied together, without any proper explanation on how that should be done.
The GitHub repository is from July, contains only a few weird UML diagrams,
and doesn't have updates thereafter.

If you like the genre of fantasy, it's a fun writeup though. Especially the
'contribute' part.

~~~
duggan
> _Now let us go and ignite a firestorm, planting the technological seedlings
> of the future over a trail of obsolete overgrowth!_

<Insert megalomaniacal moustache twirling here>

