Charlotte Aten

I was curious about ZeroNet again today. ZeroNet was a #P2P web project from the 2010s along similar lines to I2P (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P) and #Tor hidden services. The idea of hosting dynamic webpages in a completely P2P fashion, like torrents, remains super cool and appealing to me. In fact, at one point the #BitTorrent company had a similar proposal (https://www.bittorrent.com/blog/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-internet-we-build-next/).

The ZeroNet website (https://zeronet.io/) is still up, but the project hasn't been updated in five years as per the GitHub repo (https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet). Someone was maintaining a fork at some point, and at other times I heard that ZeroNet was (now?) insecure, although I know no details. Certainly anything P2P isn't anonymous by default.

I found this question (https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/2749) about the creator of ZeroNet. Disturbingly, this article (https://www.newsbtc.com/news/sam-maloney-creator-of-morphis-and-dpush-shot-dead-by-london-police/) about a different developer killed by the police under unusual circumstances was shared.

My impression was that ZeroNet actually worked (works?) to some extent. Why aren't projects like this being funded? We need censorship-resistant ways of communicating online, after all.

#ZeroNet #I2P #censorship #DistributedWeb

I2P - Wikipedia

Mar 27, 2025 at 5:15amWeb
Show threadhappyborgMar 27, 2025

@caten I'm working right now on a way to build dynamic web apps for the Autonomi #p2p network as part of my dweb project:

https://github.com/happybeing/dweb/blob/main/dweb-cli/README.md#contents

dweb/dweb-cli/README.md at main · happybeing/dweb

Publish and view websites on the decentralised web of the Autonomi peer-to-peer network - happybeing/dweb

GitHub
Show threadLightMay 2, 2025
@caten #Freenet is being funded by @futo and it's predecessor #Hyphanet (formally called @Freenet) has been around for a long time.
Show threadFreenet / HyphanetMay 2, 2025

@light The funding by FUTO sadly led to the forced renaming:
https://www.hyphanet.org/freenet-renamed-to-hyphanet.html

That new project does not have privacy as a goal.

We (Hyphanet) are fully volunteer-driven now. #Hyphanet has been working pretty well for the past two decades and is continuing to move forward. Features:

- websites
- Microblog (Sone)
- Chat (FLIP: IRC server)
- Forums (FMS)
- decentralized database

⇒ https://www.hyphanet.org/
@caten

Hyphanet

Hyphanet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication and publishing.

Show threadLightMay 2, 2025
@Freenet
>That new project does not have privacy as a goal.
I know. Apparently it will be possible to have anonymity layers on top.
But honestly I am kind of relieved. The old Freenet had a reputation for some shady stuff.
Also, both the old and new projects have inability to control what you are hosting as a goal, which I don't like one bit, given how shady and toxic the internet is in general, not just P2P and anonymity networks.
Show threadCharlotte AtenMay 6, 2025
@light @Freenet I never liked this feature where you would host something as soon as you looked at it, or host a whole site as soon as you look at one page. It should really be an opt-in situation where hosting a page is like subscribing to whoever controls it.
Show threadFreenet / HyphanetMay 6, 2025

@caten You don’t host it by looking at it. Data is spread to random (but roughly deterministic) nodes around the network. Requesting something does not change the function that decides the location of encrypted chunks.

You do increase availability, though, because forward error correction fixes data you could not retrieve and caches keep it in slashdot access temporarily.

Similar to how a proxy adds what you request to its cache or a CDN moves what you access into low-latency storage.
@light

Show threadFreenet / HyphanetMay 6, 2025

@caten If you want to explicitly opt-in to a specific file, you can add it to the keepalive plugin’s key list, and if you want to support a specific website, you can add it to the bookmarks of your node (the links shown on the welcome page).

In both cases your node regularly checks the data (with keepalive in a more optimized way) and restores chunks that fall out.
@light