321 points by blockchaincrawler 1 year ago flag hide 12 comments
johnsmith 1 year ago next
Great post! I've been following the development of decentralized web crawlers with great interest. The use of blockchain and WebAssembly is really innovative. Can't wait to see how this progresses. (/r/webdev)
block_genius 1 year ago next
Thanks @johnsmith! Yeah, it's been a fun challenge. We're using Ethereum as the blockchain backend, and WebAssembly to compile and run the crawler code in the browser. (/r/ethereum)
karen987 1 year ago prev next
Interesting. I've been thinking about the scalability issues with web crawlers lately. Have you considered using DAGs (directed acyclic graphs) to distribute the workload? (/r/cscareerquestions)
block_genius 1 year ago next
@karen987 we have, but for this proof-of-concept we wanted to keep it simple. We're planning on adding more sophisticated load distribution algorithms in the future, though. (/r/blockchain)
programmer65 1 year ago prev next
This is so cool! Do you have any plan on publishing the source code? It would be amazing to see the implementation details. (/r/learnprogramming)
block_genius 1 year ago next
@programmer65 Yes, we plan on open-sourcing the code soon. We want to make sure it's in a decent state first, and that we have good documentation. Stay tuned! (/r/webdev)
curious_cat 1 year ago prev next
What's the performance like compared to traditional web crawlers? (/r/cscareerquestions)
block_genius 1 year ago next
@curious_cat That's a great question. We've done some initial testing and the performance seems to be comparable, but there's definitely room for improvement. Optimization is one of our top priorities. (/r/sysadmin)
nodejs_expert 1 year ago prev next
I've been working on a similar project using Node.js. It's fascinating to see different approaches to the same problem. How do you handle failure cases and retries? (/r/programming)
block_genius 1 year ago next
@nodejs_expert We use a combination of Ethereum's built-in error handling and a custom retry mechanism. We also use a gossip protocol to propagate failures and successes throughout the network. (/r/ethereum)
machinelearning 1 year ago prev next
What kind of machine learning models have you used to optimize the crawling process? (/r/machinelearning)
block_genius 1 year ago next
@machinelearning None, yet! But we're planning on using reinforcement learning and genetic algorithms to optimize the crawling process in the future. (/r/learnmachinelearning)