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Decentralized Consensusand the

Death of the Server

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sp0rkyd0rky

gordonwritescode

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The Client-Server Model is Broken

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Popular services become susceptible to targeted attacks

Use of software requires an active network connection

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Your data is stored, handled, and secured by a third party

The remote server is a single point of failure

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Necessitating Trust has Consequences

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You are only as secure as the remote host and there is no means to audit remote software

Experience is controlled by a man behind a curtain

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Using centralized social networking software is the most widely demonstrated

form of a MITM attack.

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(centralization === tyranny)

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Monetization becomes more important than user privacy and freedom

Software products begin manifesting as instruments of power

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●Users are reduced into tools serving the interest

of the software.

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Which, in turn, serves the interests of the

developer.

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while(true) { resist() }

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To say that anarchists subscribe to anarchism is like saying that pianists subscribe to pianism

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Anarchy is simply cooperative self-determination – it is part of everyday life.

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It is a mode of being, a manner of responding to conditions and relating to others, a class of human behavior.

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Peer-to-peer networking undermines the necessity of authority.

Decentralized systems empower users to compute freely.

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Trust is not vital to the operation of decentralized systems.

Cryptography replaces the need for trust with math.

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Really, really hard math.

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This enables you to restrict who can access information that belongs to you.

And can verify the authenticity of information shared with you.

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Decentralizedor

Distributed(or the difference between agnostic and atheist)

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The difference lies in trading some trust for some performance.

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if (centralized > decentralized) process.exit(1);

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Centralized application design is popular because it is easy to control.

Peer-to-peer problems are more difficult to solve.

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Software should improve life by enabling users to solve problems they have in common, collectively.

Why do you write software?

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Building Decentralized Consensus with Node.js

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Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications.

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

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I mean, duh.

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SmokeSignal is P2P networking in a box.

Tiny is an in-process key/value store.

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The protocol defines how peers communicate.

Defining this is more than half of your application design.

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{ message: JSON({ id: String(base64(sha1(pubkey)), key: String, value: Mixed, time: Date }), pubkey: String, signature: String(privkey.sign(message))}

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The public key and signature allow peers to verify the authenticity and origin of the message.

The timestamp prevents old messages from taking precedence.

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The message ID lets peers store the record under a namespace that is unique to the message author.

Key/value pairs are unique per identity.

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Consensus can be defined as the aggregate of values for a given key.

This resembles a vote for a arbitrary topic.

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When peers connect, they stream their record of history from each other.

This is used to synchronize the consensus.

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All peers have the same record of history.

Trusting nobody unless it's everybody.

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Streams are your best friend.

They are indispensable for both performance of nodes and maintainability of software.

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var parser = new MsgParser();var handler = new MsgHandler();

node.pipe(parser).pipe(handler);

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npm install -g dside

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(decentralization === liberty)