89 points by rust_network 6 months ago flag hide 12 comments
john_doe 6 months ago next
Great work! I've been following the development of this project and I'm impressed with what you've achieved. I'm particularly curious about how you implemented the decentralized aspect in Rust? Any resources or libraries you would recommend for someone looking to build something similar?
original_poster 6 months ago next
Hi @john_doe! Thanks for your kind words and great questions. For the decentralized aspect, we used the libp2p library for Rust which provides a solid foundation for building peer-to-peer network applications. The library is highly modular and configurable, allowing us to easily create our own network topology and communication protocols. I would definitely recommend checking out the libp2p documentation and examples to get started. Additionally, we also drew inspiration from projects like Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) which both use similar approaches to decentralized data storage and communication.
jane_doe 6 months ago prev next
I'm also interested in building a decentralized application and I'm wondering how you approached data consistency and coordination between nodes in the network? Did you use any existing consensus algorithms or develop your own?
original_poster 6 months ago next
That's a great question @jane_doe. For data consistency, we initially considered using a consensus algorithm like Paxos or Raft, but ultimately decided to build our own simple consensus algorithm tailored to our specific use case. The algorithm is relatively lightweight and ensures that all nodes in the network agree on the current state of the social graph. Additionally, we also implemented a gossip protocol to efficiently propagate updates and changes throughout the network. The combination of our custom consensus algorithm and gossip protocol has worked well for us so far, but it's definitely an area where we could improve and optimize further.
hacker_cat 6 months ago prev next
How did you handle user authentication and authorization in your decentralized network? I assume you can't use traditional OAuth or JWT since there's no central authority?
original_poster 6 months ago next
@hacker_cat you're correct that traditional authentication and authorization mechanisms don't work in a decentralized context. In our network, we use a public-private key pair system for authentication and authorization. Each user generates their own key pair and uses their private key to sign their actions and messages. Nodes in the network can verify the authenticity of a message or action by checking the signature against the user's public key. This system allows for secure and trustless authentication and authorization without relying on a central authority.
mike_miller 6 months ago prev next
I'm curious about the performance and scalability of your decentralized network. How many nodes can it handle, and what kind of latency and throughput can users expect?
original_poster 6 months ago next
Thanks for bringing that up @mike_miller. We've done some initial performance testing and found that our network can handle up to a few hundred nodes with acceptable latency and throughput. However, we expect that performance will degrade as the network scales to thousands or millions of nodes. This is an area where we're actively working on optimization and improvement, and we're exploring techniques like sharding and distributed hash tables to improve scalability.
sarah_smith 6 months ago prev next
I'm impressed with what you've built, but I'm skeptical about the long-term viability of decentralized social networks. Without a central authority, how do you plan to monetize or sustain the network? Advertising and data mining are out of the question, so what's the plan?
original_poster 6 months ago next
That's a valid concern @sarah_smith. Our current plan is to explore alternative monetization models like subscriptions, donations, and community patronage. We believe that a decentralized social network can provide value to users through features like privacy, censorship resistance, and community governance, and we're confident that users will be willing to support the network financially. Of course, this is an ongoing experiment and we're open to exploring other sustainable revenue streams as well.
alice 6 months ago prev next
What was the biggest challenge you faced during the development of your decentralized social network, and how did you overcome it?
original_poster 6 months ago next
There were many challenges we faced during development, but I would say that the biggest one was managing the complexity of a decentralized system. With no central authority, everything from data consistency to user authentication becomes much more difficult. We overcame this challenge by breaking the problem down into smaller, more manageable components and tackling each one systematically. We also relied heavily on existing libraries and frameworks, such as libp2p and Diesel, to handle low-level details and allow us to focus on the high-level design of the system.