Kunal Mehta2d ago

New blog post: Do-the-work instead of proof-of-work, for Git hosting

https://blog.legoktm.com/2026/06/14/do-the-work-instead-of-proof-of-work-for-git-hosting.html

On https://git.legoktm.com/ I am now running a fully client-side Git repository viewer; on the server-side it is entirely static hosting, which makes it super cheap.

I hope this is a useful proof-of-concept as an alternative to (IMO wasteful) solutions like Anubis and provides better user privacy in the process.

#Git #WebAssembly #Rust #SelfHosting

Do-the-work instead of proof-of-work, for Git hosting - The Lego Mirror

The insane rise in scrapers across the web has affected a number of websites, including Git repository hosters. The main response has been to set up software like Anubis, which uses a proof-of-work system to limit who can access the website. While I don't fault overburdened sysadmins for enabling Anubis…

Show threadCassandrich
@legoktm This is cool but I also hate it. Offloading work from serverside C where it has effectively zero cost except at slopbot DDoS scale to deeply virtualized js environment clientside where it takes 100x the resources, not even counting network traffic to do the deep inspection needed for some presentation ops.
Jun 15 at 12:40pmWeb
Show threadKunal Mehta2d ago
@dalias I don't think you're wrong, but keep in mind you're comparing something with 20 years of sophisticated performance optimization work behind it with a prototype I put together in 2 weeks :-)