Decentralizing Distribution
f-droid.org
f-droid.org
That would be fantastic!
The Linux distro model is awesome. It would be more awesome with reproducible builds but it's still awesome as-is. Not only can Linux distros easily distribute their software but even mix and match packages between different mediums and have completely consistent systems with the same level of security. Even better is anyone can freely set up a distro mirror and anyone using it can trust it the same as they trust an "official" mirror.
It's not permissionless though, or put differently, discoverability is the problem. You can set up your own mirror, and through cryptographic protocols the authenticity of the data you are distributing can be verified all well, but you need the distro maintainers to manually add you to their list of announced mirrors before any traffic hits your servers.
The point of BitTorrent, IPFS, Dat, etc is that they create a network of participants that does not need anyone to add them (nor, consequently, their permission) to start contributing. This also reduces the administrative burden of course, and provides load-balancing as well since the content is now distributed not in file-units but block-units (~ 16 KiB).
First, BitTorret is unreliable and slow, whereas a single transport server is very fast and reliable, and mirroring makes it both globally redundant and verifiable.
Second, protocols that build in all features (discovery, transport, verification) are less flexible and more centralized than decoupling into different protocols.
Third, when random participants can contribute anything, you get a bunch of malware (look at every app store). Linux distributions' app repositories don't have any malware.
Fourth, you don't need a distro maintainer to do anything at all if you want someone to download your app from your own repo. You just serve your public key and put your files online somewhere. Anyone can download the key, add the repo, and install the packages. You can even put them on GitHub, GitLab, etc.
BitTorrent has higher latencies indeed but also much higher bandwidth. I am not sure what you mean by "reliable".
> Second, protocols that build in all features (discovery, transport, verification) are less flexible and more centralized than decoupling into different protocols.
I agree in theory, but I haven't seen any alternatives in practise that works here and now---I am happy to be proven wrong.
> Third, when random participants can contribute anything, you get a bunch of malware (look at every app store).
Random people being able to share content is one thing (which is not to different from saying "random people can open TCP sockets!"), random people being able to participate in helping spread your content (which you protect with your cryptographic primitives) is whole another.
> Fourth, you don't need a distro maintainer to do anything at all if you want someone to download your app from your own repo. You just serve your public key and put your files online somewhere. Anyone can download the key, add the repo, and install the packages. You can even put them on GitHub, GitLab, etc.
Again, you are missing the point: discoverability of mirrors in a permissionless system where participants can join and leave any time. I am not saying BitTorrent nailed it on its first try either (they simply spun up trackers), but DHT is more or less a solved problem that works reasonably well today.
> Since the “decentralized web” includes all sorts of things, it is important to also mention things that we will not be doing with this grant. We are not looking at NFTs, blockchain, DAOs, smart contracts or related aspects of “Web3”.
This absolutely is Web3, and Filecoin is on a blockchain. This is a great use, though I understand why they wish to distance themselves (Web3 is popular amongst political opponents of the chattering class).
Well isn't the whole idea of F-Droid is that the app can be build from the source that is available and the build checksum will match the source from anyone? Sure there can be malicious code, but code for that malicious code will also be available publicly.
Great to see!
> We are not looking at NFTs, blockchain, DAOs, smart contracts or related aspects of “Web3”.
Wow, blockchain is so nearly synonymous with "complicated digital pump and dump scam" that the author has to disavow the very technology they started with in their description. So Filecoin is blockchain, but not, you know, blockchain.
Your comment reminds me of Letterman ridiculing Bill Gates' description of (very) early internet potential by saying "have you ever heard of the radio?".
Edit:
(the following was added after a couple of upvotes were received, so the following isn't necessarily "agreed with" by anyone)
Uneducated opinion: The financial instrumentalisation of some of these web3 things is required for these two sides of the same coin (pun unintended):
1. A barrier to entry against those who would seek to sabotage the system / network / <thing>
2. Incentive to participate and donate resources to the system / network / <thing>
The speculation side of this financial instrumentalisation is, to a greater or lesser degree, unintended consequences (potentially inflammatory example: Bitcoin was intended as an uncensorable way to exchange value, ie. a currency, and has now turned into a store of value to 'hodl' long-term rather than regularly exchange for goods and services). I put this down to human nature rather than design.
Letterman came across as fine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk
The radio quote is taken out of context.
Letterman doesn't come across as well as Bowie though: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8tCC9yxUIdw
The design of Bitcoin plays a larger part in "hodl" than human nature. The cost of mining growth with growth of the network pretty quickly eliminated Bitcoin's utility as a value exchange.
It didn't take long for Bitcoin transactions to get more expensive than traditional payment methods. There's no sense in paying fees to transact in Bitcoin if they're higher than traditional payment. Bitcoin's "value" has also always been highly variable thanks in part to the fees so there's no good way to post prices in Bitcoin for vendors either. Shit the value can fluctuate wildly while your transaction is processing! Your agreed upon "price" is meaningless.
> Since the “decentralized web” includes all sorts of things, it is important to also mention things that we will not be doing with this grant. We are not looking at NFTs, blockchain, DAOs, smart contracts or related aspects of “Web3”.
Filecoin is acceptable to me because it seems to be a currency tied to a real asset that folks need: drive space. I'm not an expert on this, but Wikipedia's entry mentions this aspect:
> It is made by Protocol Labs and builds on top of InterPlanetary File System, allowing users to rent unused hard drive space.
I don't think it's an arms race for energy usage and e-waste the way e.g. Bitcoin is, but if I'm getting this wrong, I'd be interested to hear about it from folks who have better context!
Also, Filecoin has fairly high non-storage hardware requirements so miners aren't just providing storage; they have to spend significant energy and capex to prove that they are providing storage.
Almost like it's not all speculation and it actually provides a utility....
I hope they simply cash out the fund they received and implement none of the IPFS crap.
On April 1, 2021, the date of the archive.org article mentioned in this f-droid article, FIL jumped literally to its all time high. The 50,000 FIL archive.org received was then worth $7,965,000. Today, the same 50,000 FIL are worth $919,500.
It's almost like it's all about speculation and the actual utility is making early investor rich.
Filecoin uses about the same energy as a comparably sized data center. Specifically, Filecoin provides about 0.77% of all data center storage capacity across the world and consumes about 0.62% of total data center electricity use.
We're also ramping up our ability to help build new solar generation, including a $38M fund to build new solar projects in the US, to produce at least as much renewable energy for the grid as the network consumes.
More on this here: - https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/12/02/filecoin-might-have... - https://github.com/redransil/filecoin-energy-estimation/blob... - https://filecoin.energy/methodology
So redirecting funds from investors/people and resources (production capacity) that could have gone to make everything renewable, to make your blockchain use renewable energy? Why not just not use a PoW blockchain but instead use DHT, IPFS, and other technologies for decentralization?
(I'm using git here as a bit of a hyperbole to indicate something we all know as being a cryptographically linked list of things while clearly not requiring miners, currencies, or power-hungry infrastructure. Feel free to replace git with a better example if there is one, I'm not sure how to better differentiate between blockchain with and without consensus mechanism than this.)
This is why I lump all cryptocurrency together, even when some projects consider environmental concerns: you're willing to cover for, greenwash and promote the worst actors. There is no scenario where intentionally wasting energy helps us solve the climate crisis.
That is in part because of one flaw in your reasoning: believing that simply switching to renewable energy will solve the problem. Concepts like Jevon's paradox and induced demand really need to be general knowledge at this point... when technology becomes more energy-efficient, people just use more of it, and total energy use doesn't decrease. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energ... So long as total energy use keeps rising, adding renewable energy sources won't replace fossil fuels, fossil fuels will continue being used at the same (or growing) rate: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/11/renewable-energy-i... And even if you succeeded in moving entirely to renewable energy, that would not be a license to use as much energy as you please, because installing renewable energy still causes emissions and there are hard limits to e.g. how many solar panels we can install each year and still remain within our carbon budget: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/04/how-sustainable-is...
Relatedly, when you say "Filecoin uses about the same energy as a comparably sized data center", you're assuming that ordinary data centers are compatible with our continued existence as a civilization. The current internet may not be sustainable, we may already have too many energy-intensive data centers: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/can-the-internet-r... The time has come for frugal computing, and Filecoin incentivizing people to put more data storage online seems incompatible with that: https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/frugal-computin...
Finally, insofar as you're pursuing "carbon-neutral" or "carbon-negative", I'm skeptical of carbon offsets in general. It's the same financialization of everything which is a core problem underlying all cryptocurrency. Gresham's law should also be common knowledge at this point: carbon offsets are a market for lemons where the most meaningless offset will be the cheapest (because it requires doing no work) and real offsets will be sidelined or driven out of business. https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwash... If you don't have a solar panel sticking out of your Filecoin server directly powering it, I don't trust it, I assume it's some sort of shell game. Relatedly, how will I be able to hold you accountable, if every project I use ends up using Filecoin or something like it, so I can't avoid it? At some point, consumer choice will be as imaginary as it is when opposing multinational conglomerates: https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/24/greenwashing/
Let me be clear, this is not an attack on your intentions, I'm sure that you as a person have ethics and there are ethical people working with you who do not wish to destroy the world.
Several months ago, a local low-waste shop was using carbon offsets on their shipping, and I noticed they were using the exact fake Nature Conservancy offset exposed here: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-nature-conservancy-c... I mentioned its uselessness to them, and they thanked me for the info, and continued to use it. I think they mean well, but running their business (which I otherwise like and support) is higher priority for them than navigating the details of carbon offsets, or researching all of their limitations. So they send money to a scam, because that appearance of sustainability makes more business sense for them than the real thing.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." And so I forgive you in advance for not understanding this, but I won't forget. I think your project has bad effects, no matter how well-meaning you as an individual are.
for example, can you cheaply verify repeatable builds? (on a phone even?). can you do intense linting for privacy violations like phone-home, then publish a 'lint payload' that's cheaply verifiable against the built binary?
feels like if f-droid leads here, commercial software will have to adopt their tools to maintain their position of trust
(also huge fan of f-droid project, I donate, I think it gets more important every year)
When I was still interested in blockchains back in 2018 I was thinking that instead of proof of work, wouldn't it be nice to have a distributed CI where you run your builds & tests on end-user machines, it computes a hash of the resulting artifact. Which is validated by multiple nodes that run the same job for validation (then split the PoW fees among themselves).
It's not an easy problem to solve of course, and didn't go too deep into what TPM (Trusted Platform Module) can do, but I think you would need an isolation unit from the kernel/OS to allow running untrusted code, and prevent tampering. There's definitely a fine line between such a functionality and spyware that would need serious safeguards.
> I guess you can just run it on enough machines that you hope they're not collaborating?
Right validation through numbers. Still susceptible to a 51% attack, if I recall correctly what Sybil attacks are about.
This type of proof of work gives you a way to find collusion post fact. For example if your last commit on a PR (which triggers a decentralized CI), is the same commit on which you base you distribution build (assuming reproducible builds, same output), that's run on your fully trusted system, you would find out if jobs were faked.
https://www.fossjobs.net/job/10840/seeking-androidpython-con... https://guardianproject.info/contact/android-python-contract...