Lots of exciting #decentralization protocols and technology out there. Some are not ready for usage, others are not following the paradigm I prefer, I love that we're spoiled for choice.
IMO I still love #SecureScuttlebutt, for me it is still the best offline-first local-first gossip protocol out there. Yes, it has dangerous corners and design issues, but it works and I can build apps with it for my friends.
what is you preferred paradigm and what is your take on dat? ๐
@soapdog
hm, dat works without relay nodes and without "pubs".
if you run it on your device it connects directly to others leveraging state of the art distributed/assisted holepunching through random nods in the p2p network.
there is only one place where relays are required, but they can run on localhost, and thats when you want to use dat in a mainstream web browser ๐
yeah all crap imho.
i mean - its a bit harsh, but... maybe its just my standards and having experienced ssb in the past.
now nostr is just build around a very particular community and technically more of a toy... in some way thats what also caused problems for ssb, even though it was much less a toy than nostr.
...but what i do like about nostr is that its the only ecosystem woth a plethora of clients and tools where your account is a keypair.
...makes it easy to explore good UX
but imho ssb's cousin is dat and it is still going - unlile ssb (sadly) .. and maybe it can finally hit prime time ๐ ...its about time and it took long enough, just because everyone was always obsessing about optimizing every part of dat before moving to the next layer, so it took for f*** ever to get it to a battle tested mature stack whoch can buils stuff like ssb ๐
@serapath isn't dat and hyper the same thing?
Also, SSB is doing fine, not sure if you've seen what I been doing:
https://andregarzia.com/2026/01/three-months-of-poncho-wonky.html
@serapath
> wished though dat would be embraced by more instead
DAT/ HyperCore has been around much longer than SSB and AFAICT has had even less uptake. A friend who was doing paid dev on a HoloChain app sang the praises of Keet at one point. But I tend to find that every time I try to kick the tyres on bleeding edge apps like this the install process burns me off.
That was the case with SSB too before ManyVerse, and with ManyVerse unmaintained, is again the case.
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Hi @serapath @soapdog, thanks for the robust discussion about P2P architectures last week. I'm aware that sometimes my need to be terse (our Masto instance has the default 500 char limit) results in my posts seeming more dismissive or even aggressive than intended. Thanks for your patience if I came across that way : )
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Reflecting on our chat, one problem with trawling through the P2P space is the tangled spaghetti of project/protocol naming I described in 2017 in the federation space;
I just started a blog post about the history of the quest for pure P2P. Even given what I already know, and considerable free time to go spelunking in web search, I'm only starting to get a sense of which projects share common foundations. This makes discovery and adoption much harder.
In late 2016, the fediverse was reeling under the onslaught of the first two major waves of people leaving Titter for our shores. So in April 2017, in an attempt to put the fediverse into a bit of a historical context for these newbies, I published a blog piece. Aiming for a breezy, vaguely shitposty tone, that would make it entertaining to read, as well as somewhat informative. I donโt know whether to be pleased or embarrassed that this blog piece continues to get linked on the fediverse ever...
imho thr only mature battle tested p2p stack out there is `dat`, because it is still improved full steam ahead and has been since 2013.
SSB started in parallel and communities overlapped big time and as already said, dominic tarr is a good friend of the ppl who started dat, they are both implemented in JS and both follow extreme modularity as a cultural value.
dominic tarr retired and until soapdog started picking up ssb, my impression was ppl moved on into web3 & startups doing p2p
100% agree.
official statement from mathias is keet will be open sourced eventually.
reasons why it is not:
1. prevent crypto fraudsters from copying and offering cheap knock offs easily and then marketing it to their victims
2. to stabelize p2p primitives before they get open sourced, with thebpurpose to prevent ppl building on top of experimental still quickly changing primitives that will later be deprecated and abandoned, which might cause unpleasant experience to users
regarding datweb - nope its not yet ready for "prime time" sadly.
main bottleneck is its all based on volunteers, so progress is slow, because ppl also have lives and bills to pay thus need to earn money somewhere.
...i think this is the main blocker ๐
...if ppl where working on it full time it wpuld have been released ten times over, but yeah.
i would say its 10-20 regular workdays away from being released, which could be a month, but there are weeks without work so ๐คทโโ๏ธ
that said, its currently around 8 ppl working on it and thats 8x10-20 workdays.
but yeah. some of the ppl working on it live in war zones or have hard times in other ways. Everyone keeps their lifes together using ducktape and shoestrings and moving forward.
...good thing is, regarding conways law, that shpuld result in something really awesome, bad things - its quite adversarial conditions, thus ...the slow speed ๐
sadly dat-ecosystem doesnt have "holepunchto" luxury
fair enough.
i am just sharing the official narrative.
i do trust mathias aka mafintoshbto some degree that this might be true, but i agree that i only truly believe it when i see it.
luckily the p2p stack as such is open source and the runtimes too - only the keet app isnt.
a few students i'm working with managed to build a basic p2p chat app with video conferencing in a matter of weeks with part time effort.
...but generally thats why i personaly focus on datweb
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@serapath
> to stabilize p2p primitives before they get open sourced
This one would be more convincing ... If it wasn't for the fact that Keet is based on Pear, which is already published;
https://github.com/holepunchto/pear
Pear is in turn based on HyperCore/ DAT, which is too;
https://github.com/holepunchto/hypercore
Hypercore is part of DAT which is a documented open protocol;
https://dat.foundation/about/foundation/
So the "primitives" are already out there.
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Plus Holepunch are funded by Tether (USDT) and Bitfine. The whole thing screams crypto scam. I don't trust Holepunch as far as I could throw them, and I see no reason to even consider it until they publish full source code.
To be clear, I'm *not* saying DAT/ Hypercore themselves are a scam. They can't help who reuses the Free Code and open protocols they publish, because that's the whole point.
Yes, thats correct, maybe a minor correction:
`dat.foundation` is now https://dat-ecosystem.org as the evolution of the foundation (it's still a 501c3 non profit public good company, that didnt change), but it grew large and nobody wanted a "centralized foundation" in the center, also because "Conways law" ๐
Also - you can build "dat apps" without pear and "pear apps" which dont use dat.
Anyway, those are just the core building blocks, like ActivityPub, Keet needs more standards
@soapdog oh yes, i think i saw you said not long ago to revive patchwork?
...will have to check.
and regardimg `dat`:
"hyper-*" are some of the most important modules of the dat stack, but there is an entire ecosystem of projets all making contributions and there is a 501c3 non profit public good company around dat too and there is a visi9n/mission to work towards a sustainable decentralized ecosystem with certain values all documented in a manifesto.
@soapdog
> technically you donโt need them
... unless you want to do something weird and unexpected like ... find someone to talk to ; )
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@soapdog
> lots of strong opinions there which I'll beg to disagree in a polite way
I'm open to changing my mind. Here's my reasoning.
SSB is not quite extinct;
Most of the devs championing SSB have moved on. The Patchwork author moved on to ATProto. Andrรฉ abandoned SSB even before he abandoned ManyVerse. @rabble pivoted to Nostr. Other devs have also pivoted to replacements (Earthstar, Willow, P2Panda). I can't find any signs that even Dominic Tarr is still involved.
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SSB is not quite extinct (cont'd);
Until I learned about your Poncho Wonky Patchwork fork in this thread, the only SSB app I knew that was still being actively developed was Tilde Friends. Which I've installed, but can't make head nor tail of how to use it. I've been teaching myself to use GUI software with no manual since I was a child, so if I can't figure out how to use it, I'd be surprised if anyone can without knowing the dev in person.
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SSB is not quite extinct (cont'd);
Since there's no way to transfer my identity to a new app (one of the many reasons devs abandon SSB), I still open my unmaintained copy of ManyVerse every now and then. There's still a few people chatting there, but when I post, even to ask for help, I get ignored.
In summary, it would be unfair to say SSB is extinct. There are still 2 apps being developed, and some people using the network. But it is fair to say it's obsolete and mostly abandoned.
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SSB apps needs pubs or roomservers;
In practice, an SSB app needs pubs or roomservers to maintain sufficient connections to get new posts and syndicate your own. Let alone to find anyone to talk to. *Unless* people you have in-person relationships with use SSB, and you see them frequently enough to exchange data sneakernet style. Which is the use case the protocol was designed for.
Without pubs or roomservers, or regular in-person data sync, you have a social app with no network ; )
@strypey you're using the wrong words there, you're mixing "needs" with "benefits from". SSB does not need rooms or pubs, but it is easier if you have access to them. It can work fine without it and like you said, it was meant to follow your IRL connections.
Also rooms are running fine and so are pubs.
Poncho Wonky can also do direct connections between peers without rooms or pubs if you have an accessible IP such as the ones from Yggdrasil.
NOSTR needs relays.
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@reaversion
> It's interesting that some of the SSB devs moved onto Bluesky and Nostr
Indeed. Maybe they offer features SSB can't?
> afaik those are more centralized (even if federated) than SSB
That's not really fair comment. Nostr has a very similar network structure, when you account for the fact that it's not really practical to use SSB without pubs/ roomservers as relays. Same with ATProto, as a protocol, although the current network structure is highly centralised around BS.
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@reaversion
> I wonder if there any successor projects to SSB that have a similar distributed P2P design
I mention some above; Earthstar, Willow, P2Panda. Andrรฉ was developing another one before he abandoned ManyVerse but I'm not aware or any active use since 2024;
https://www.manyver.se/blog/2024-07-03/
But AFAICT this is all bleeding edge experimentation that could end at any time, with no warning. There's no obvious sign of adoption outside a tight dev community dogfooding their own apps.
younknow whats not experimental?
dat. dat works. its the oldest and most advanced and mature p2p system out there since bittorrent ๐คทโโ๏ธ
@serapath
> There's no obvious sign of adoption outside a tight dev community dogfooding their own apps
> dat works. its the oldest and most advanced and mature p2p system out there since bittorrent
*Taps previous post*
i mean, all of p2panda, willow & iroh grew out of ethereum/ipfs venture backed developer ecosystem and fhey are all new and not as battle tested and not at all production ready.
imho the core building blocks alao dont make them suitable for generalnpurpose high performance p2p application, especially not an Open Data or Open Web infrastructure
@soapdog
> strypey opinions might not be representative of what other SSB users experience
Indeed. Don't take my word for it. Ask Dominic, or Andrรฉ, or pfraze, or Rabble, or any of the other app developers who were totally onboard with SSB, and have moved on to other protocols. SSB is never going to be a practical comms tool, it's useful only to bleeding edge tinkerers.
That said, I'm glad Soapdog and the Tilde Friends devs are enjoying their hobby projects. All power to them : )
@strypey due to the nature of SSB itself, you can't know how many people are using it. If they're more than 2 hops away from you, you won't see them at all. ManyVerse runs with hops 1 iirc so that is even more tunnel vision of the network (to save disk ofc).
There are users out there and you're conflating apps being complete for their use with them being dead.
Patchwork for example has been considered complete. It has run as good as it always has.
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@soapdog
> It can work fine without it
... but only if you have in person contact with other people who use SSB. Since the total pool of people using SSB is in the margin or error, that's unlikely. Otherwise, it needs pubs/ roomservers to be useful, just as much as Nostr needs relays.
You can argue that a screwdriver can be used to drill a hole, and you're technically correct (and no, that's *not* the best kind of correct). That doesn't mean it's practical to do it that way.
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@soapdog
> you're conflating apps being complete for their use with them being dead
I'm conflating apps not being *maintained* with them being dead. There's also the fact that many of them rely heavily on equally unmaintained modules from npm. A BorgSoft owned repo subject to almost constant, large-scale supply chain attacks;
Using npm modules is a very good argument not to install an app, "complete" as it may be.
@soapdog
> you can have your opinion
Wow. Calling the well-documented supply chain attacks on npm, which have been going on for years, an "opinion" is a whole new level of denial.
> I hope you find protocols and ecosystems you like
The problem here is not the protocol or the ecosystem. It's the dodgy technical foundations most SSB software is built on. Maybe another reason why most devs have moved on, to avoid deep refactoring on a protocol they didn't find practical.
@strypey you keep repeating yourself and yet, SSB does not REQUIRE pubs or room servers. It was meant to connect people who already know each other or who are friends with people who have people in the ecosystem. You seem to be forgetting what it is all about.
Nostr must use relays. That is ok but that is a different set of constraints.
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@soapdog
> you keep repeating yourself
Perhaps because you keep repeating yourself, and ignoring this point I'm clearly trying to make. Which is that there's a big difference between what's theoretically possible and what's actually practical in the world as it is.
IF != in-person contacts already using SSB
THEN need pubs/roomservers
You can deny this until you're blue in the face, but it's a practical fact for anyone trying to get started using SSB.
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@soapdog
> Nostr must use relays
In theory someone could probably design NIPs allowing it to be used over Meshtastic or BlueTooth or SneakerNet or whatever. Just like in theory you can use SSB without supernodes.
Again, my point is that what's theoretically possible is one thing, what's actually practical in real world use is another.
I think we do actually understand each other, so I'm not going to repeat myself on this again, even if you do.
@strypey be careful to extrapolate personal subjective experience as truth. Tilde Friends is quite unique, you could for example have reached to the developer asking for guidance.
We write manuals for a reason and if you're facing challenges using something, you defo should reach out to the reference materials or people involved in it.
SoapDog
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Strypey
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reaversion
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