from Hacker News

Grimwire.js: A RESTful Browser OS that does Peer-to-peer over WebRTC

by wesray on 4/5/13, 3:16 PM with 13 comments

• by nkoren on 4/5/13, 4:04 PM

  Very interesting! I've long dreamed of an architecture which does exactly this, and is geared towards implementing fully distributed social networks. P2P and social networking were made for each other -- it should be a lot more efficient to peer with your actual social circle rather than a group of strangers, since the data you're most interested in is more likely to already exist somewhere within your own social circle.

  Imagine a simple Twitter-like system built on top of this, for example. Each web client would function as a store-and-forward. Every time you connect with a friend, both parties would reconcile the latest posts from all friends that they share in common. In this way, information on social networks could be disseminated rapidly and efficiently with no centralisation whatsoever.

  Seems to me like just two other bits of technology would be needed for this: ubiquitous dual-key authentication, and a good UID system. I don't think either of those would be a problem, and I really hope somebody does this, since centralised social networks bother me more than a little bit.

• by wmf on 4/5/13, 6:31 PM

  P2P frameworks sound interesting, but I'm very skeptical of any "browser OS" since we already have browser tabs.