Body hApp for Holo, for serving webpages

Team Size: Almost one

Description: An app for serving web pages

Resources: Pitch document: https://dral.la/pdf/body_white_paper.pdf
Please read. It’s a bit dated, filled with really good intentions, some nonsense and some idealist BS, and then more. BUT let me say we need a place to post regular html pages, that’s hosted as a Holo hApp, that is safe, pure and without nefarious bells and whistles, with search capabilities built-in, and backward compatibility with WWW… serving personal websites, and storefronts, without data harvesting, all in the open… That could be Body for Holo

Similar app or site: WWW

I am at…: Idea stage

Skills:

  • Holochain concept knowledge: Some(2)
  • Holochain technical knowledge: Minus zero(-0)
  • Front-End: (see UI/UX)
  • Back-End: Way back(-0)
  • UI/UX: HTML5(6), CSS3(4), Graphic design(9)
  • Others: Fund raising(1 to 10, depending…)

Commitment: It’s badly needed, and I can invest lots of time in it as an eventual team member

What do I need: Need technical guidance, and technical backing, and all alike minded people we can have (you like the idea? join)

Q&A

Q: There’s already a place where to have web pages and websites: it’s called the web, duh! Why would you have another place to do the same thing, dumba$$?

A: Because the web game is rigged. And unfair. And opaque. And greedy. And unfair. Look, try this out: make your own webpage or blog, about some really really relevant topic, say climate change, or veganism, or about anything trendy that people want to know about. Then, apply some really great SEO, you know, so you can get some attention to your message, or product. Put it out there, on the web, then watch what will happen. Watch carefully, pay attention. What do you see? Nothing. That’s right, nothing at all. Why? Because the search engines don’t care about the millionth opinion or product on that very important matter, because nobody talks about your thing in relation to the topic, because you don’t have a community pushing with you on social media platforms and click farms.

If you had, if by any chance your meaningful and important message would emerge and miraculously end up floating around, and be seen, chances are you would soon be the target of so many sharks, conterfeiters, imposters - in other words: bad actors, that you would soon be ready to pay for someone to bring you out of it. That’s how bad it has become.

Q: Duh! That sucks. And why do you think your thing would be any different?

A: Let just say that internet that has regular webpages and blog posts has become tiny mini, insignificant, compared to everything huge happening online. So little, that it would probably be a good thing to have it become an app. First came the web, with all its colourful pages and blogs and forums and reviews, then came the giants with their apps that ate everything. Holo is a giant too, one that is actually growing up, but it is a gentle giant, a humane giant. So to me, it makes perfect sense that a new “website” app that would be fair and gentle and durable should be hosted on the Holochain.

Q: Hmmm. Okay then, fair enough. But how do you plan to make an app if your back-end knowledge is “minus freakin’ zero”?

A: With your help. If what I’m saying means anything at all to you, please invest some of your attention, and help me focus on what should be done. It has to start somewhere.

A proper way to do so would be to have a (h)app, let’s call it “Stuff Store (H)app” (much like @guillemcordoba’s file-storage, but on steroids) whereby you can request high-volume & high-frequency data to be stored by multiple agents. The data could be anything, and nothing gets censored; the data could even be encrypted.

The NO-CENSORSHIP rule shall be enforced not by “good-conduct” of the actors hosting the data but by virtue of the way the (h)app is programmed, i.e., enforced by code, not conduct. Basically, all data gets chunked into small and unintelligible pieces, and only the customer (i.e., the uploader) knows what sets of chunks compose his file (thanks to some tree-based data structure that the (h)app leverages off of in building/breaking chunks). Each chunk has its own entry-hash, and same chunks in different contexts get stored once only, thereby offering some storage-optimization as well!

Also, by “file-storage on steroids”, I mean the (h)app should make use of monetary incentivization, much like the Holo app.

Hosts should get to earn money for hosting & storing data.


Read the below protocol; it’s a piece of art, indeed! [#swarm-for-holochain]


Once the data layer has been sorted, we can focus on the DNS layer.

Basically, a customer (like you and me) should be able to create a website (locally) and then push it onto the Stuff-Store (h)app, with very little monetary overhead (something like 1$ per month for personal-websites that weigh no more than a few 100 MBs).

Sharing a website would be as simple as sharing a hash or something; then anyone (whom I intend to) would be able to recursively figure-out all the chunks that make up my website, retrieve them, decode them (in case they were encrypted and I had given them the encryption-key) and finally join them and have the website drawn on their browser. Simple!


Once this layer is complete, we’d be able to focus on the DNS part of the system; basically, who wants to remember long hashes, right?


Note that I’m not a great software-architect, so take this approach with a grain of salt…
Also, I’ve not spend long enough contemplating about what I just said… Its just an outline of how one might approach this problem, so take it as such (and nothing more; meaning that I won’t be doing any of this myself; it’s too too complicated and requires in-depth understanding of Holochain’s under-the-hoods, something that I don’t possess)…


I’m sure @th1j5 has something to add???

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Thanks @The-A-Man.

I’m a bit familiar with the concept of swarm applied to file distribution, which is inspiring at least one project I know about (Cubbit?). Then, how is it different from bit torrent? I shall go through the book of swarm, which looks like an interesting seminal work.

Yes, probably that @guillemcordoba File Storage Module + some DNS layer would be sufficient for a start. Brilliant!

In relation to holofuel transaction fees, I’d go with the flow. Once the holofuel hosting market is installed, a ballpark price for storing and moving data will be known, then one could implement file moving rates on top of it.

The important thing I see is, we might want text and image information to be universally accessible for free. And for the bigger file download, you would need a holofuel account, unless one is ready to pay for others to download its big files (this could be addressed with some file ownership/permission system).

Price grid example:
Put any stuff in: free for all
Get small stuff out (things under 150KB or so each): free for all, with speed limits (for barring outsider hoarding robots)
Get big stuff out (download any larger file): X holofuel per Y file chunk
Domains (or better: hAdd for Holo Addresses): X holofuel one time fee (or yearly or else fee), with rules (hAdd to be used, not to be parked, etc.)
Ad system (which shall finance most of the free access: hAds?): X holofuel per Y clicks

Another point: anything “public” that is uploaded is scanned for metadata and text, which is triaged and stored, to be used for search purposes. Anything “private” will not be scanned. By not allowing hoarding data outsiders, we make sure to keep search and discoverability safe and fair, with algorythms that shall be 100% open sourced, with rules agreed upon by the community.

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I want to do this now! #justsaying. I have a pilot project to put a trauma resources page out as a public service. A precursor to a co-coaching network and I would dearly love to put the landing page on Holo followed by further developments.

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Hi @LiminalMike. I now know developers have been active at setting up proxy functionality inside Holochain. I’ve heard Eric Harris-Braun mention it in this Holo AMA #45 bit. This will probably render a project like “a web app inside Holochain” obsolete, as we’ll have ability to link through proxys… This doesn’t look like it’s solving much of the web’s shortcomings, but hey, maybe it does.

I don’t really have anything to add…
About DNS like things, I’m doing my thesis (95% certainty) about Ouroboros and with less certainty about DNS/naming systems on Ouroboros (having a meeting tomorrow).
I’m explicitly going for Ouroboros, not for Holochain, but I’m certainly keeping in mind the agent-centric approach. Anyway, you can expect a post on my ideas (probably on this thread), regardless if I can continue with this for school or not.

Since it’s explicitly Ouroboros, it probably has less direct usefulness outside this academic setting (I mean, the internet will stay IP based for quite some time), but maybe the ideas are interesting.

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