
Project Maelstrom: The Internet We Build Next - xngzng
http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-internet-we-build-next/
======
philipashlock
I know this is an alpha release, but it's invitation only with the invitation
being "help us shape the future of our network"

All of which comes across as being much less open and decentralized than the
current web.

Even if the technology itself is more distributed than the common standards
we're all using now, this sounds more like a walled garden than a truly open
network.

AOL with Tor. Yay.

~~~
WayneS
Yes is it all closed. Look at bittorrent-sync. Totally cool, but closed and
controlled. I don't see that working here, other than being used for porn and
piracy.

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macns
_" Maybe there's a way to solve [net neutrality] with technology, he muses".
"Maybe we don't need to attack from a policy perspective."

"The internet has handled big problems in the past, and they always do it
through innovation, through technology," Klinker says._

Amen to that. So, what they're basically saying is, _seed_ your webcache.
Interesting idea, but what happens with dynamic content?

Note: this looks like a way to keep tpb online indepedent of servers or
domains

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brador
I'm calling it, this is gonna be huge.

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joeyspn
So, BitTorrent's vision is that "The Next Internet" (aka the Decentralised
Web) will be closed?

~~~
21echoes
i don't think being a private alpha is representative at all of the long-term
direction of the project.

~~~
slashnull
It think it most definitely _is_.

Nearly all open-source software projects either the source or at least a
specification/standard for the upcoming software very early.

OSS doesn't begin with closed alphas of closed software and a content-free
press release.

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neftaly
Ephemeral P2P site hosting has potential, though I disagree with the route
Project Maelstrom is taking. Another approach would be to try an in-browser
implementation, using:

* WebRTC for the P2P "glue" (i.e. webtorrent[0]/instant.io[1])

* Google Caja[2] for the sandbox

* Custom protocol handlers[3] for URLs/URIs
    
    
        - <a href='eph://[DHT hash]'>
    
        - Handler unavailable? https://eph.io#[DHT hash]
    

You basically just package everything (images, JS, HTML) into a single DHT
resource, and share the eph:// URI. For long-term hosting, setup a webtorrent-
compatible seedbox somewhere in Europe.

I've only gotten as far as static P2P site hosting, but if I were to
speculate:

With a distributed database and a rethink on isomorphic JS, you could build
fully-auditable "aether-hosted apps". Like cloud hosting, but more buzzwordy!
It'll become even more powerful (but less auditable) if homomorphic encryption
ever becomes a thing.

For such a DB, perhaps a P2P document store similar to CouchDB/PouchDB, with
aspects of context-aware networking. The user auth table could include public
keys for authorized users, and handle modifications through a signed
changelog. You could probably get pretty far through a signature chain (users
delegating users), though at some point it'd be so collision-prone that a
superuser would need to regenerate the database and re-sign the contents. I'm
not really a DB guy, though; there are obvious situations where such an
approach is unsuitable, plus there might be a simpler DHT-like way to do it.

Short URL's could be handled using a proof-of-work-based DDNS system (Web
Crypto API for PoW, WebRTC for P2P). A more simplistic approach to URI->URL is
simply to convert into human-readable strings[4].

\---

[0]:
[https://github.com/feross/webtorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent)

[1]:
[https://github.com/feross/instant.io](https://github.com/feross/instant.io)

[2]:
[https://developers.google.com/caja/](https://developers.google.com/caja/)

[3]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web-
based_protocol_han...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web-
based_protocol_handlers)

[4]:
[https://neftaly.github.io/radixWord/](https://neftaly.github.io/radixWord/)

~~~
thisisrobv
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. We've thought about a lot of this. This is
our first stab at trying to push a lot of these thoughts and ideas forward.

