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by zmw 2843 days ago
That indeed is a fundamental difference. But on second thought I got confused. Source independence, content addressable are nice and all, but we don't build static websites that always have same hashes; "Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 ISO" could be ipfs://<static_hash>, but even "latest Ubuntu Server 18.04.x ISO" couldn't be that. You still need to query the origin server (or client, whatever you call it), the central authority, to get those addresses. So, frequently changing websites/webapps don't benefit from this; they may even be penalized by the overhead. Only aggressively cacheable objects could benefit, but the vast majority of those probably won't be popular enough to be cached/pinned by peers anyway, so you still end up getting whatever you need from the origin server (or paid CDNs).

Btw, I skimmed through Beaker docs, and it seems they resolve names through DNS (what else can they do) and even use HTTP for discovery.
2 comments
7373737373 2843 days ago
I'd say that most websites are static enough to be pinned. With the others, the main problem is content determinism. If the same website renders differently on different platforms, they will have different hashes. The only reliable way to store them is in "unrendered" form. Which prevents the inclusion of external resources, something that most single-page interactive websites rely on.

Naming is a consensus problem. The key here is having the freedom of choice between trusted providers. The central source could be provided by a single cryptographic key, by many keys, m-of-n schemes or other arbitrary contracts, even in P2P form.

I'm really interested in what kind of user interfaces the Beaker people come up with when it comes to their "editable cloned websites" (forks).

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zaarn 2843 days ago
Most websites; maybe.

Most popular websites; unlikely. Even HN isn't static enough to be pinned considering there is a new comment about once a minute or so.

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basilgohar 2843 days ago
What is pinned would be the content that doesn't change. It may mean the site architecture would need to be changed to accommodate one of these decentralized models.
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pfraze 2843 days ago
Just want to point out that Beaker uses dat, not ipfs, so its sites are pubkey-addressed and therefore mutable.
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