MihaiAlisie

Hello Aaron,

First of all thank you for taking the time to check out our project! Indeed the website feels a bit outdated atm as it was designed for the project announcement[1] and alpha signup, but we will change our website when we enter the alpha phase (Oct/Nov most likely).

We progressed quite a bit since the website release/announcement and we are now weeks away from sending pre-alpha invitations to the people who have signed up on our website.

The challenge you are pointing with regards to quadratic voting and proof of identity is indeed an interesting one and difficult to solve. Fortunately there are many bright minds in the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond who are working on this specific issue.

For us, especially in the pre-alpha/alpha stage, the quadratic voting is mainly used to support the authors with ETH for their contributions with minimal cognitive effort for the supporter - in a couple of clicks you could send anything from 1 cent to $1 for example.

There could be weird side effects such as a sea of alt ids created with the purpose of trolling, but it is worth mentioning that there are some costs associated with broadcasting these new identities on the blockchain so in some sense "trolling" will involve money.

That alone should discourage trolling to some extent, but again without real data and real people using the system this is just a theory. We will know more once the dapp is out in the wild :)

[1] - http://blog.akasha.world/2016/05/03/unveiling-akasha/

Hello everyone,

AKASHA founder here.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, happy to answer your questions!

First of all thanks for the encouraging words!

> If a user is to run a "node" on their PC, how will the network react if a friend/follower is offline when data is requested from them.

There are some things currently in development such as IPFS clusters that can tackle this issue. There's also the IPFS filecoin token (not yet live) which would provide an incentive for people to keep the hash "alive". This is similar to how Ethereum's Swarm will work.

In the meantime the gateways mentioned in a comment bellow would act as a sort of "seed" even if the OP goes offline.

> will a node be runnable on a home server system, allowing for higher-availability and easier backups of personal data?

I don't see why not. Remains to be tested though :)

We will definitely experiment with Swarm once it's out and see how well it fits with our needs. This document covers some of the differences between swarm & IPFS for those interested: https://github.com/ethersphere/go-ethereum/wiki/IPFS-&-SWARM

For the MVP we will gift a bit of ETH to each user that installs AKASHA and creates a profile. We are talking about enough ETH to enable an average user to publish, comment and vote for a few good days. The "perfect" amount will most likely be determined after observing how real users interact with the application during the alpha. If along the way the user will generate content or comments that will in turn generate upvotes he will refill/increase his ETH balance.

It's important to note that users will be able to read entries and comments without needing any ETH so access to information is free in this regard. ETH is required only when you want to interact with the dapp living on the Ethereum network.

In any case, from my rough calculations, the costs involved in publishing an entry with 1 tag would be recovered after receiving 1 upvote. All the upvotes beyond that point would be profits going to the author.

We are also open to experimenting with things that might enable us to take over some of the interaction costs at the smart contract architecture level, but that is outside the scope of the MVP.

As for the business model we don't like ads in general so we want to experiment as much as possible on this side as well to see if we can co-create a sustainable social media network model that does not rely on ads to survive.

We don't know yet if that model means a custom token, a micro-fees scheme or something completely different that we can't even imagine at this point so we chose focus first on building the dapp and learn from the actual usage what direction we should take.

Thank you for the kind words and support!

Hello,

In the first phase an application is needed as interacting with the Ethereum/IPFS network currently requires a local Ethereum/IPFS node.

IPFS for example is currently working on a javascript implementation that would make it usable from normal browsers and basically "invisible" for average users. Ethereum also has some efforts in this direction but most likely we will see these things coming together somewhere around Q3/Q4 2016.

When these options will be available we will definitely make use of them as we understand the potential adoption gains we can have by removing the need to install an app.

In the meantime we were thinking to setup a few IPFS gateways that would serve a static version of the content in the form of a normal website (http://akasha.world for example).

This way people can at least access the content/read/share it over traditional Web 2.0 mediums. On the other hand, if they want to interact with the network (publish/comment/vote) then they would need to install the app. Not the best solution, we know, but seems like a decent compromise while the tech "gets there".

> PS., not sure if you noticed, but some of your comments on this page are marked dead. I have no idea why this has been done to you.

I have no idea why this was done either...Did I broke any HN posting rule without knowing?

Many thanks!

> Will Akasha leverage existing social graphs (fbook, twitter, email, phone)

This is actually something we were discussing yesterday with Dr. Gavin Wood, one of the founders of ethereum and ethcore. It is a bit tricky to do without compromising the privacy of the users (associating an insecure form of identification to a key/address) due to the nature of blockchains, but there are a few interesting ideas on how to solve this issue. We’re looking into it but we need to experiment and see which one is the best before deploying something like this inside our application.

> Does Akasha plan to interoperate with any of them?

Social web 2.0 applications such as Twitter and Facebook are not necessary the friendliest when it comes to interoperability but as we will approach the beta we will look into making an API allowing interesting things to be done in an IFTTT fashion.

> Why is a blockchain needed? What aspect of decentralized publishing does this solve? Verifiability of content? Pub/sub relationships?

The chain removes completely servers from the picture and enables us to create a truly decentralized publishing mechanism by adding IPFS to the mix - since it is expensive to store content directly on chain, we're storing IPFS hashes on chain.

Besides verifiability and pub/sub relationships, identity/profile management and micropayments are also a big pluses that come bundled with the ethereum chain.

Hope this answers your questions!

We are aware of zapchain and their issues. I'd like to point that zapchain is not completely decentralized - it is rather a hybrid application using servers for content distribution and blockchain for payments.

Regarding security/spam - Proof of Work is not the only way you can secure networks; one of the interesting potential solutions we explored is a sort of Proof of Stake mechanism.

Basically this would allow a sort of "deposit" scheme where you would deposit an X amount of tokens for an Y amount of time and depending on the feedback received such as votes for example you would either get the deposit back or lose it. That would make it expensive to spam while not affecting the people generating good content as they would get back their tokens.

Things get a bit tricky when we're talking about controversial topics and how that would be treated but that's a different thing.

That being said, this is an open and complex discussion that probably will take a while to figure out.

In the meantime we're happy with proving that it is possible to have a completely decentralized publishing system that doesn't need any servers, creating in the process a product that empowers people with unfettered freedom of expression. One step at a time :)

I agree that not everyone cares about these sort of things. However there are still people out there that do care and now those people will have an alternative.

For those that do not care about the decentralized/freedom of speech/privacy aspects embedded in our app we think they might find it interesting thanks to the way good content and thoughtful commentary can generate "real money" rather than "points".

For those that don't care about the money either and just want a nice user experience without being bombarded with spam and ads, we think that they might find it attractive thanks to the clean and intuitive UX/UI we designed. We don't like ads either and we're set on experimenting with alternative business models made possible by cryptocurrencies in general in the pursuit for a sustainable social media network model that doesn't rely on ads.

Then, there's also the people that actually create and do things such as writers, artists and activists. They might appreciate AKASHA for different reasons as it allows them to connect more directly with their fan base/followers by-passing in the process some of the blocks that come in various forms on Web 2.0 platforms.

We are using a quadratic voting system for the microtransaction side with weights between 1 to 10. Basically this enables people to easily support their authors/artists/cause via votes/likes with amounts from 1 cent to 1 dollar.

Quadratic voting is also quite interesting as it allows people to express "how much they like/dislike" a particular thing - which is not possible with the traditional 1 like/vote per 1 person mechanisms.

We are aware of the potential problems that might emerge from this model and this is why we are very interested in exploring various solutions such as Proof of Individuality and reputation systems that can bring both local and global rankings into the mix.

These areas are still in the early days of pioneering but we are determined to experiment as much as possible in the search for the best solution.

Anyone that is interested in this sort of things is more than welcome to join the discussions on our slack at http://akasha-slack.herokuapp.com/

Hello,

akasha.world is at the moment just a presentation website hosted via GitHub Pages. We needed javascript to make it pretty :)

If you want to find out more about our project with javascript disabled, our blog should be readable http://blog.akasha.world/

Hi there!

In the first release/MVP stage AKASHA will resemble a lot to Twitter/Medium in this regard, in the sense that your published entries will be public and visible by everyone.

That being said, access control is on our roadmap but it is not a priority at the moment.

The updates are broadcasted via the Ethereum network through a smart contract that records and dispatches events associated with profiles such as new entries.

This way, the people that follow you on AKASHA will receive in their stream a notification letting them know that a new entry has been published and can be accessed via IPFS at hash X.

Hello everyone,

AKASHA founder here.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our project!