Slimcoin | First Proof of Burn currency | Decentralized Web

[d5000]

That's amazing (for me) feature. Please, explain, where will be hosted my page - in blockchain or in centralized service? And also, how anybody can see my page?

Web2Web involves several steps.

The hosting is done via the Torrent network. The simplest way is to host it yourself on your computer, or on your home server, or even on a low-cost device like a Raspberry Pi which is always online. Torrent also allows hosting on servers without having to install a torrent app there. Additionally: When an user downloads the page, then he becomes also a seeder as long as the browser tab with the page is open. Readers can also support sites they like by seeding them themselves with their own WebTorrent app.

To view the website, you simply visit a gateway with your browser or save a gateway JS app on your computer (explanation below). This can be done without additional software. We have currently a gateway here. It's very simple and needs polishing, but it works.

In reality things are a bit more complex. Readers must be able to access a certain type of transactions ("inscriptions") which provide the torrent infohash (an unique identifier based on the content of the page), and the torrent infohash is then used to retrieve the page from the Torrent network.

To get the Torrent hash, the user must have access to a Slimcoin blockchain. They can install a tool on their  computer which makes the Slimcoin easily blockchain readable and searchable via the SPARQL language. In the future there will be a graphical tool for that (ACME). But they can also use a gateway which connects to another Slimcoin blockchain node, searches the transaction with the torrent hash, and downloads it. Everybody can choose to "share" his blockchain with Web2Web readers.

I'm planning to add a feature which allows direct linking to a Slimweb site via a gateway, in the following fashion:

Code:

http://slimco.in/gateway.html?address=[SLIMCOIN_ADDRESS]

The gateway itself is a simple JS app which can be saved permanently on every computer, so it is also not centralized. There is no single point of failure in the whole system, as long as several nodes provide services for Web2Web.

I had uploaded a (slightly longer) description here: The Slimweb: A decentralized web based on Slimcoin

Everything is still alpha, and currently (afaik) there is only one node providing the blockchain to gateways. If this node has a downtime, the system doesn't work. So it's not ready for productive use, but yes it can be tested.

[gavrilo77]

@d5000

How to increase the number of the nodes?

[d5000]

How to increase the number of the nodes?

Everybody with an "always-online" Slimcoin client and a static IP (e.g. on a cheap VPS) or a domain/subdomain can run a node with these little tools: https://github.com/d5000/acme-minitools  and the Fuseki SPARQL server.

It is however still difficult to use for "non-techies" and I would also not consider it "stable". So I expect the node count to grow once ACME is ready (ACME contains all tools to provide a "Slimweb node"). I'm planning, however, to start a second node (just for the case the first one has a downtime) relatively soon.

Maybe you wonder what are the incentives to run a node? Well, first if you already run a Slimcoin client 24/7 on a VPS or even on a Raspy at home, then it's not really much resource-consuming to add a SPARQL node and so deliver the data to gateways. You add value to the Slimcoin network, so you protect your investment in SLM.

It could also be a good idea to add donation addresses for SPARQL and WebTorrent nodes into the "gateway pages".

[gavrilo77]

How to increase the number of the nodes?

Everybody with an "always-online" Slimcoin client and a static IP (e.g. on a cheap VPS) can run a node with these little tools: https://github.com/d5000/acme-minitools  and the Fuseki SPARQL server.

It is however still difficult to use for "non-techies" and I would also not consider it "stable". So I expect the node count to grow once ACME is ready (ACME contains all tools to provide a "Slimweb node"). I'm planning, however, to start a second node (just for the case the first one has a downtime) relatively soon.

Maybe you wonder what are the incentives to run a node? Well, first if you already run a Slimcoin client 24/7 on a VPS or even on a Raspy at home, then it's not really much resource-consuming to add a SPARQL node and so deliver the data to gateways. You add value to your network, so you protect your investment in SLM.

It could also be a good idea to add donation addresses for SPARQL and WebTorrent nodes into the "gateway pages".

Actually i was thinking is there anything special, so need to run beside the client and acme-minitools for Slimweb

[muf18]

What about incentive part for running node with torrent seeding?
Could we like took this part of contributors and try to compensate them? Maybe from PoW or PoS rewards?

[d5000]

Actually i was thinking is there anything special, so need to run beside the client and acme-minitools for Slimweb

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean? All you need is Slimcoin + Acme-Minitools + Fuseki, and of course the dependencies (some Python libraries).

What about incentive part for running node with torrent seeding?
Could we like took this part of contributors and try to compensate them? Maybe from PoW or PoS rewards?

I would be against any "mandatory compensation" deriving from mining rewards. There is also imo no simple way to prove someone is really seeding. So let's keep it simple: If you, as a publisher, want another person to guarantee to seed your torrent permanently, then you can pay him/her - like in IPFS's "pinning" mechanism. Or you use something like Sia, or even Datacoin. But I think there are so many ways of providing a torrent without cost that this would only be needed for high-traffic websites.

There could be even a decentralized marketplace for seeding services, providing we implement some kind of "coloured coin"/"asset" mechanism (like PeerAssets, as was discussed some weeks ago). On the other hand, that's would also mean more blockchain bloat if we don't use LN or a similar technology.

With ksdme we had discussed some alternative incentive mechanisms:
- donation to seeders and/or publishers via CPU mining on the Slimweb website
- a reader should be able to seed the torrent permanently with a simple mechanism ("seed button") on Slimweb pages

[muf18]

CPU mining with SLM is apparently quite efficient, so I agree with such "reward system" based on web mining. But we must provide better code for web mining - current is quite unefficient in terms of hashing power (tested - about 20-30x worse than native slimminer).

So we could try to improve it? But it still needs pool for such mining.

For now blockchain bloat isn't necessary a bad thing - we are still nowhere near 1MB limit for blocks.

Btw. - can we somehow make this feature for full nodes "obligatory"? I mean they could seed it without problems, cause they are connected all the time nonetheless?

[gjhiggins]

So we could try to improve it? But it still needs pool for such mining.

barrystyle's been hunting for one, there was a discussion on the Peertalk forum about a pool miner for Peercoin but no actual implementation as far as I could ascertain.

Btw. - can we somehow make this feature for full nodes "obligatory"? I mean they could seed it without problems, cause they are connected all the time nonetheless?

Thus far, no-one has been able to demonstrate a practicable solution to the problem of using the Bitcoin protocol to canonically verify the availablility of compute/storage resource capacity. The task of providing a mathematical proof has defeated all comers. But I have successfully included (NOT integrated) a Qt torrent client as a wallet tab feature:



but as the resources served can not be reliably associated with the blockchain, it'd be a questionable addition -- and there's the implementation of the RPC-API to consider as well.

But as an ad hoc solution for self-served torrents out of the Slimcoin wallet, it could have some limited usage. The reason I've not pursued this implementation further is that my analysis suggests that self-curation of content is not the kind of chore that the vast majority of coinholders will be willing to engage in (as opposed to simply pressing a "Sport""Save for posterity" button) or be comfortable that they have covered all the infosec bases when the rules of the game are changing month-by-month. My analysis points me towards providing competent, reliable, community-owned/rented solutions. There's an outside chance that the whole paradigm will pivot to a degree and the wallet's nakedly acquisitive overview page will be replaced by a more pro-social summary of the OP_RETURN content stream - still a transaction browser but with the coin management stuff pushed into the background and the metadata resolved from the OP_RETURN pointer, retrieved and presented as the main focus of the functioning of the cryptocurrency.

Cheers

Graham

[gjhiggins]

I would like to take the opportunity to compliment d5000 on his excellent work in pursuing the publish-by-torrent thread. I have no reason to feel pleased and gratified but I do, it's nice to see some solidly-grounded development of the Slimcoin blockchain.

Cheers

Graham

[qlstudio]

I can't connect to any nodes.
Any addnodes? Can't find a block explorer with addnodes   

[d5000]

@gjhiggins: Thanks for the thumbs-up! This however wouldn't be posible without your awesome work on ACME and the Slimcoin client.

I agree mostly with your plans for the client. I think it could be nice to have a "Slimweb bundle", providing a reading app with social features (like you wrote) and a torrent client as additions to the normal Slimcoin client. However, (and as an answer to @muf18) make seeding mandatory is not what I would like. Web2Web pages can be enormous, as they can contain all kind of data - including videos. Many people would not install the Slimcoin client if it's forcing them to move to a more expensive VPS/hosting plan.

As censorship is not easily possible, you would also face danger to have to seed illegal content. With seeding independent from the Slimcoin client, if someone wants to include child porn, warez or other illegal things, then he would have to find seeders himself, or take the risk to seed everything from his machine. The rest of the network would not be affected, as only the infohash is stored on the blockchain.

What we can do, however, in addition to the "Slimweb bundle": include a list of known, stable WebTorrent seeders into the client and recommending users (and miners/minters) to donate to them - in the same fashion Electrum looks for donations to Electrum server nodes.

A question: Is the Torrent client you included into your test version WebRTC compatible? This would be needed to be read from a browser without having to install third party software. Otherwise, I would opt to make it simpler: include a script into the bundle that downloads the last version of the WebTorrent software. WebTorrent isn't perfect still (the command line version is extremely bloated, and also the desktop app isn't very resource-efficient) but as the project seems to be in good health I hope they could release a lighter (preferently without Electron dependencies) app than the current one.

[sluggo]

I edited my Reserve Balance in wallet and now my wallet wont open I get an invalid reserve balance error upon launching then it shuts down. editing the conf file does nothing

[d5000]

I edited my Reserve Balance in wallet and now my wallet wont open I get an invalid reserve balance error upon launching then it shuts down. editing the conf file does nothing

Hm. I vaguely remember a similar error some months ago, but I don't remember how I solved it.

Can you try to start the wallet with the -reservebalance parameter? This would look this kind:

slimcoin-qt -reservebalance=9999

(in Windows: it should work with slimcoin-qt.exe instead of slimcoin-qt)

slimcoind -reservebalance=9999

replacing 9999 with your desired amount. If it works, you can try to re-configure the balance set in the wallet.

I think that was what allowed me to fix it for me (although I'm not sure). However don't know where the reservebalance value set in the wallet is stored. So if it doesn't work, maybe you'll have to backup wallet.dat and delete all data/blockchain files.

[muf18]

I can't connect to any nodes.
Any addnodes? Can't find a block explorer with addnodes   

Can you try those from OP post?

[muf18]

Or updated addnodes
https://justpaste.it/6p8mp

[muf18]

Whitepaper link in OP post is on old website - would you change it @d5000?

[d5000]

Whitepaper link in OP post is on old website - would you change it @d5000?

Oops. So the link was wrong about a year now ... Done!

I just had a discussion about Shift (the decentralized web project based on a Lisk fork). Basically, the outcome affirmed, for me, that the way we're going with Slimweb/Web2Web is the right one.

Shift is a cool project, it is maybe currently the one closest to the goal of achieving a torrent/IPFS-based web readable with a simple browser, much closer than TRON. But it has a number of aspects that are not completely decentralized - for example, the Phantom app, which provides most services, runs on a sidechain with an unique owner, and if the owner's keys are lost or get seized (or hacked) the project is close to failure. Gateways and DNS-IPFS "connections" are also currently centralized; they can be decentralized but are rather complex and resource-consuming.

A set of simple KISS tools, like Web2Web, is much easier to decentralize, as everybody can host every component of the system on a cheap VPS of $2-3 or on his own Raspberry Pi. DNS integration would also be easy: simply link with a CNAME entry to a JS gateway providing the address as a GET parameter.

[gavrilo77]

Formerly blackcoin will become blacknet. Intention to use PoB

http://blacknet.ninja/burn.html

[d5000]

Formerly blackcoin will become blacknet. Intention to use PoB

http://blacknet.ninja/burn.html

They seem to use it like Counterparty - to "bootstrap" a new cryptocurrency and distribute them to people "burning" another one (in this case, people burning Blackcoin get Blacknet coins). That's completely different from Slimcoin's "PoB as block generation mechanism".

In the Qora thread I read that they are planning to include a PoB mechanism a bit similar to Slimcoin's. But it seems more a long-term goal. I'm not following them closely though.

[muf18]

Whitepaper link in OP post is on old website - would you change it @d5000?

Oops. So the link was wrong about a year now ... Done!

I just had a discussion about Shift (the decentralized web project based on a Lisk fork). Basically, the outcome affirmed, for me, that the way we're going with Slimweb/Web2Web is the right one.

Shift is a cool project, it is maybe currently the one closest to the goal of achieving a torrent/IPFS-based web readable with a simple browser, much closer than TRON. But it has a number of aspects that are not completely decentralized - for example, the Phantom app, which provides most services, runs on a sidechain with an unique owner, and if the owner's keys are lost or get seized (or hacked) the project is close to failure. Gateways and DNS-IPFS "connections" are also currently centralized; they can be decentralized but are rather complex and resource-consuming.

A set of simple KISS tools, like Web2Web, is much easier to decentralize, as everybody can host every component of the system on a cheap VPS of $2-3 or on his own Raspberry Pi. DNS integration would also be easy: simply link with a CNAME entry to a JS gateway providing the address as a GET parameter.

Ok thanks.
With whom did you speak about SHIFT? Seriously it was my first project I have stumbled upon reading about decentralized web content more than a year ago.

Could we try to work with namecoin's .bit domains?