cjb/GitTorrent: A decentralization of GitHub using BitTorrent and Bitcoin \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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cjb/GitTorrent: A decentralization of GitHub using BitTorrent and Bitcoin github.com/cjb/GitTorrent

29 sats \ 25 comments \ @fiatjaf 21 Apr 2022 bitcoin

10 sats \ 11 replies \ @random_ 21 Apr 2022 freebie

Could this be better implemented on the Lightning Network? I've been wondering about some way to incentivize seeding torrents.

1 sat \ 9 replies \ @k00b 21 Apr 2022

Perhaps. I'm waiting to see more projects that do this and incentivize good behavior in decentralized systems with Lightning.

Casey Rodarmor tweeted about incentivized seeding model:

Easy lightning project idea: Paid bittorrent seeding. Lightning node + rtorrent. Serves an API that takes an infohash, and amount of time to seed, and returns an invoice. If the user pays it, the node joins the swarm, downloads the data, and seeds it for some amount of time.

The biggest problem I see with this model is you're trusting the seeder to not take your money. I don't think this is a huge issue, because maybe the seeder can build reputation and earn trust, but I think we can do better. Perhaps you pay the seeder to seed, but they also get paid by leachers.

I've been thinking about this shallowly over the last few weeks. How do you incentivize relays (in a decentralized system like nostr) who might only participate spontaneously and not be able to build reputation. How do you introduce Bitcoin miner like incentives into such a system? That is, doing critical "work" without having to trust them?

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @random_ 21 Apr 2022

Yea, I was looking at a hackathon project for torrenting over lightning and it has a similar trust problem as you described.

Maybe the security issue of reusing a preimage can be made into a feature? 🤔 You can settle an invoice if you know the preimage, right? What if the preimage were a chunk of the data you were interested in?

1 sat \ 5 replies \ @k00b 21 Apr 2022

Can you elaborate on how you think that might work? There might indeed be some hackery with preimages, which is really the only way a layer 3 can hook into Lightning.

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @random_ 21 Apr 2022

There's trade-secret, but I'm not sure how it works.

By paying an invoice, you are essentially buying the preimage, right?

Request hash of the data you want from nodes who signaling they are seeders. They make an invoice using the hash of the file or a chunk of the file. The preimage is revealed when you pay the invoice. Nodes routing the payment would be incentivized to store these preimages, too, if they were revealed to them. (This relates to what I was saying about preimage reuse.)

Searching for seeders with they data you want could work similar to lightning escrow.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @247bf84fda 25 Aug freebie

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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @k00b 21 Apr 2022

This is one reason I'm so concerned about lack of proof of payment in AMP/LL's implementation of static invoices. How do you build a decentralized layer 3 without being able to prove that things happened on layer 2, without "hooks" into layer 2?

Anyway, the best hackery of preimages I've seen has been done by @03bcf114f6 on squeaknode and he ran into some pretty big hurdles.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @247bf84fda 25 Aug freebie

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21 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b 21 Apr 2022

This is interesting.

I don’t understand why commits need to be served over BitTorrent. I guess it would make the data more available.

It seems like the real missing decentralized piece of GitHub is discovery, an index, and content like issues being stored outside of git.

The last point, issues, reputation, and other content being stored in centralized db, is the main centralization problem I see with GitHub. If all of this were stored in the git tree, it’d be trivial to move from host to host, or self host.

This is something I wanted to do with https://gitern.com.

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @fiatjaf OP 21 Apr 2022

Wow, I love gitern now, looks amazing!

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 22 Apr 2022

Warning: currently not maintained. 😂 it’s pretty simple though

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatjaf OP 22 Apr 2022

That's what I feared.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @247bf84fda 25 Aug freebie

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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @random_ 21 Apr 2022 freebie

Those tarot cards with documentation are sick!

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @k00b 21 Apr 2022

Thanks! My wife was kind of deep on Tarot at the time and I wanted to go with a medieval theme and for actions to have a pictorial representation.