
Show HN: Privacy-Focused Alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Word - Walterion
https://docs.arcaneoffice.com
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asynchrony
Can you provide any details as to how it will be free, scalable, and
decentralized? The word blockchain doesn’t inspire my confidence.

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env123
It's just a marketing ploy to entice the tech-challenged - you use fancy or
obscure words to sweeten the icing on a cheap cake

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benjaminbrodie
If you are going to have icing why not make it sweet lol

~~~
Walterion
Sure :D

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Walterion
As we keep hearing about data breach news of big companies like Dropbox or
WhatsApp, it is harder for us to keep trusting them with our file and personal
data, and it made us think about finding a better way. We believe the best way
to keep data secure is not having them in the first place. That's why we
choose the server-less solution, in another word, blockchain. Here is a link
to our launch on Product Hunt that was #1 of the day! You can find more info,
images, and gifs there: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/arcane-
docs](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/arcane-docs) Please hit me up with any
question and I will be happy to answer.

~~~
jammygit
How does blockchain promote privacy? Doesn’t it just store the data in a
decentralized, permanent way?

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Walterion
We use Blockstack for authentication. It is made on Bitcoin blockchain to
store your private key that will be used to encrypt all of your stuff. Making
the master key will be done just the first time, and after that, every file
gets a new password from the master one. No matter what, all the files will be
encrypted, so you always have control over your data — something like
ProtonMail but for Office.

~~~
vorpalhex
Why are you storing a private key on a blockchain, where the primary purpose
of a blockchain is universal visibility?

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Walterion
Surly they are encrypted. But I invite you to check Blockstack authentication
and how it works.

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vorpalhex
With what key are you encrypting someone else's private key? And who holds
this master key?

I would love it if you could link a technical deep dive into how Blockstack
fundamentally works because I've gotten very few answers from both
implementors and founders, and their existing documentation isn't at all
helpful.

~~~
jude-
You (the user) hold the master key. It's generated for you when you sign up
for a Blockstack ID. From there, the authenticator generates a per-ID, per-
application key-pair via BIP32 -- each app key is a hardened child whose path
is generated from the key that owns the ID on-chain and the hash of the
application's DNS origin.

Authentication happens completely client-side. The Blockstack authenticator
registers itself as a protocol handler for the "blockstack:" protocol, such
that when you click a sign-in button, you will be redirected to your locally-
running authenticator (or to a hosted version of the same, if you don't have
the authenticator installed). The authenticator stores your master key, and
will derive the ID- and application-specific key-pair for you when you select
the ID to sign in as.

Once you sign in, the authenticator redirects you back to the application. The
authenticator passes the app the Blockstack ID and application-specific
private key via the URL string (encrypted with an ephemeral ECDSA key
generated by the app on sign-in), and the blockstack.js library fetches and
downloads the user's profile to learn the storage endpoint(s) as part of
completing the sign-in. In so doing, the application learns the storage
endpoint to which to GET and POST user data, and learns the key to use to
sign/encrypt it and to authenticate to the user's preferred storage (access to
which is mediated by a Gaia hub that the user selects when onboarding).

Agreed that a deep dive with protocol diagrams would be handy. We're working
on it! :)

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rememberlenny
I would like to see a preview before signing up. Is that possible based on the
current app structure?

Being someone who is working on building a text editor myself, I know how many
small details make or break the user experience. While the privacy focus is
nice, I won't sacrifice the user experience.

Proving that the app state is up to par would be an instant factor to make me
switch.

~~~
Walterion
The signing up process is simple and free and will not get any unnecessary
info, give it a try ;)

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omarhaneef
App idea: iOS/Android/PC/MacOs/ipad/linux clients to encrypt/decrypt documents
on Google Docs.

Just encryption -- you don't need the whole blockchain.

Not sure there is a way to do that with Google Docs, though. You need a layer
between them. You can use Google Drive of course, but then the client has to
come up with all the clever features Docs provides.

~~~
SkyMarshal
That would be interesting, especially if generalized to support lots of
different storage options - Google Docs/Drive, Dropbox, Github gists,
pastebin, etc.

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slater
"Sign in with Blockstack" \- never heard of that, so won't be signing up.

No way to provide sign-in with e-mail & pw? :(

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I am really confused how it's supposed to be "decentralized" if you have to
have a sign-in with a specific provider to use it.

Can you log in if Blockstack-the-company goes down or has a technical issue?

~~~
Walterion
Your identity is on the blockchain and that is decentralized so even in that
case you or anyone can run a separate node to handle them. Also all the auth
library is open source so anyone can work on that.

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russdpale
I click the login with blockstack button and nothing happens.

<pre> TypeError: "e is undefined" a base64url.js:17 o base64url.js:14 mounted
Redirect.vue:69 VueJS 11 cd49 main.ts:9 Webpack 6 </pre>

~~~
Walterion
Can I ask what is your browser and its version?

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russdpale
The latest firefox on Windows 10 LTSC

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Walterion
I can not reproduce the problem, but we will investigate it more. Please check
it out later again.

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artfulhippo
Just a suggestion:

Give users the option to hide the controls. You already let people hide the
formatting, but in order for me to want to use this to write, I would need the
ability to hide the top bar ie

BACK TO LIST | HOME | ... | EXPORT & SHARE

~~~
Walterion
Thanks for your interest, I noted this, and I will talk with the designers ;)
We will contact you when we update it.

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craze3
I'm surprised of the amount of blockchain hate in the comments from people who
haven't even checked out the product...

~~~
vorpalhex
There are some reasons to be skeptical of Blockstack in particular. They make
a lot of claims, pump cash into apps without disclosing it's actual source
(they claim it's from sales of a subtoken, but aside from a blog post, I can't
actually find any evidence of that) and in general have built a JS heavy
library that is setup for easy code injection.

None of these apps need a blockchain. None of these apps gain any benefit from
a blockchain. Just, I dunno, don't use a giant universally observable
blockchain that suffers from the majority issue in order to store private
data? Seems easy enough.

~~~
jude-
Blockstack engineer here.

Regarding financials, I invite you to read our SEC offering circular for
details on the source of the money:
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1719379/000110465919...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1719379/000110465919020748/a18-15736_1partiiandiii.htm)

> None of these apps need a blockchain. None of these apps gain any benefit
> from a blockchain.

The blockchain serves as a "shared source of truth" for everyone's
name/public-key/storage-URL bindings. So as long as you trust that the
blockchain doesn't get re-orged, you may assume that your Blockstack node will
independently calculate the same such bindings as everyone else's node. All
other application activity (rightfully) happens off-chain, via commodity Web
infrastructure.

EDIT: typo

~~~
Walterion
Thanks Jude for helping out ;)

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jmramos
Interesting! how are you planning to monetise it?

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Walterion
It comes with 10GB free storage, but for more storage, the PLUS plan is
needed. Also, we will provide specialized care and hosting for Enterprises.

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writepub
Which office suite are the tools based on?

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phonon
[https://demos.devexpress.com/ASPNetCore/Demo/RichEdit/Overvi...](https://demos.devexpress.com/ASPNetCore/Demo/RichEdit/Overview/)

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writepub
Is this the component in use here?

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phonon
Yes.

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progval
Title text says "Blockchain-based alternative for Google Docs".

GDPR mandates "right to be forgotten", which afaik isn't very compatible with
how blockchains work.

How do you deal with it?

~~~
Walterion
The encryption key is on the blockchain, but not your files, and you can
choose whatever storage provider you want when you sign up. So you are free to
remove all your fills, and they will be erased entirely, although they are
heavily encrypted and you are the only person that have the keys.

~~~
concert-gilled
> you can choose whatever storage provider you want when you sign up

How do you do this? I just went through the sign up and I did not see any such
option.

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sys_64738
I'll stick with iCloud.

