silverpill

I suggested the following definition for Fediverse Enhancement Proposals:

The Fediverse includes applications, services and communities using the ActivityPub protocol, its predecessors, and other historically related protocols that foster decentralized and diverse social media and culture.

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/pulls/544/files

Under this definition, Hubzilla and Webfinger are parts of Fediverse.

Unfortunately, this PR was bike-shedded into oblivion.

Yes, it is known as “nomadic identity”:

https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/nomadpub.md

If you run a small micro-blog instance, you follow some people and maybe some communities. Tagged posts come only through these follows, so you only see a tiny portion of all tagged posts.

A hashtag relay tries to aggregate tagged posts from the whole network. By following a hashtag on such relay you can see more posts on the topic that interests you.

I think it is a useful service, because it helps small instances discover content. However, this idea is not new and another service of that kind, FediBuzz, has been operating for a long time.

You can find some useful tips in this guide: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/guide.md.

>Any common pitfalls or things to avoid early on?

Don’t use JSON-LD.

Forte and tootik use FEP-ef61 with server-managed keys. I am working on an application where keys are stored on the client side: minimitra. This is probably closer to your idea.

Do you want to use iroh for transport, or for identity?

@robert.meyer86 See also https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md. This is already part of Fediverse and has multiple implementations.

@SorteKanin My server translates Lemmy upvotes into likes and downvotes into dislikes. That blends quite well in the UI with Mastodon’s “favorites” and Pleroma/Misskey emoji reactions, so I think Lemmy’s assumptions are correct

Identity based on a pubic key is already not theoretical, it is supported by services that implement FEP-ef61.

I am not sure whether it makes sense to separate data hosting and feed generation, this will probably require a specific network architecture, similar to Bluesky, which tends to be centralized.

I doubt that it will be implemented in Lemmy, the application architecture needs to be different in order to support cryptographic identities.
But there are other implementations (they are listed near the end of the document).

That’s correct.

did: prefix is used to denote cryptographic identifiers, in theory one could even take a did:plc identifier from Bluesky and then use it as identity for an ActivityPub application:

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/pull/3943

Yes, domain names can be replaced with cryptographic identifiers: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

DID-based identity already exists in Fediverse: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

We currently use did:key but in theory any DID method can be used, someone even tried to use did:plc: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/pull/3943

It does not. That is as optional as fiat exchanges with cryptocurrencies.

Taler claims to be “not a currency”, that means it has to be used with existing currency such as Euro. That means an exchange is not optional. I guess it can be used with a cryptocurrency too, or fake money, but obviously this is not what people are interested in.

And the resulting tokens are like physical cash and can not be de-anonymized by the exchange or anyone else in the chain.

Again, according to the Taler website, the exchange tracks every transaction in order to prevent double spends. If it has a full view of the network, it can employ statistical analysis.

I think you should really inform yourself better before making yourself look really stupid by confidently spreading such non-sense.

Only you make unsubstantiated claims here.

If you believe Taler is decentralized, provide an example of it being used with a widely accepted peer to peer currency such as Bitcoin.
If you believe Taler is fully private, show us a security audit which confirms Taler’s resistance to statistical analysis.

It’s not centralized at all

It depends on the banking system with its proprietary APIs and centralized money issuance.

privacy for buyers, but not sellers

In order to spend money, you need to receive it first. I don’t know if it makes you a “seller” in Taler, but in any case, this partial protection probably makes de-anonymization of all transactions via statistical analysis much easier.

Potentially, maybe. Taler is centralized and has poor privacy protections, but if it ever takes off it might become a good option in jurisdictions where decentralized currencies are illegal.

Meanwhile, Monero already works for the Fediverse:

https://deadsuperhero.com/the-fediverse-and-content-creation-monetization/#honorable-mention-mitra

Blockchain is a bad choice for a social network, it’s expensive and all data is public. But since we’re talking about decentralization, let’s make a rough comparison.

Bitcoin: 24229 nodes (source: https://bitnodes.io/)
Fediverse: 30005 nodes (source: https://fedilist.com/)

Most of blockchain networks are much smaller than Bitcoin, so they don’t even come close to the Fediverse in terms of decentralization.

Yes, it is feasible and such instances already exist.

For example, you can run a Mitra instance on Tor, I2P or Yggdrasil. It is a lightweight micro-blogging server similar to Mastodon:

https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra

Tor / I2P docs:

- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/onion.md
- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/i2p.md

I mean event kinds: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips?tab=readme-ov-file#event-kinds

ActivityPub has Note and Follow, Nostr has 1 and 3.

I don’t know much about recent developments, but the early version of the protocol had several major flaws:

- Identity is based on a non-rotatable key, other types of identity are not supported.
- No privacy without encryption.
- Media attachments are not supported, all images are stored on a single server.
- Servers only store data and don’t do anything else, so they get abstracted away and everyone uses the same 5 relays (in Fediverse each server has a personality, and that creates a strong incentive to self-host).

There are also many minor things that I dislike, for example the use of numbers instead of human-readable names, unusual cryptography and so on.