| This is one of those things you really have to watch the video or understand the concept to have it spark your brain (or not). Here's a timestamped link to the part of the video I think is interesting[0]. What interests me is how simple, general, and composable it is though there are also some privacy gains (there's no need to know where a packet came from[1]). Let's say I write some application and today I want it to speak TCP, but tomorrow I want it to listen from a kafka queue, and the day after I want it to actually listen on UDP -- the benefit of using something like ouroboros is the layer under the communication could be anything. Take this one step further and you could switch out the configurations from underneath applications as well. In an orchestrated context like kubernetes, IP networks introduce a lot of complexity -- the CNI (Container Network Interface) and setting up your networks, subnets, VPNs, etc requires that you bone up on what is basically "essential complexity" in the network space[2]. I've paid the cost somewhat (I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool sysadmin) so I can find my way around but every once in a while I lament how complex it all is when you put it together. With ouroboros, and applications that were coded to use ouroboros (or were coded to connect to a resource that is actually ouroboros underneath), I could actually skip setting up the entire network and maybe have all my messages go over something like a kafka queue. Whether this is a good idea or not aside, ouroboros is introducing an abstraction layer at the network layer -- but not just at one level... it's the entire stack. For 90% of the usecases (especially this early), most of the networks made with ouroboros will be IP underneath, but I am really interested in the world where they won't be, and I think Ouroboros is a pretty elegant abstraction to take us there. [0]: https://youtu.be/6fH23l45984?t=1333 [1]: https://youtu.be/6fH23l45984?t=1735 [2]: https://youtu.be/6fH23l45984?t=1400 |