Zbay is an experimental app for Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux that builds a decentralized community chat (like Slack or Discord) using Tor, IPFS, OrbitDB, and Zcash.
For more on the values behind the project, read this essay.
Getting started hacking on Zcash is easy. Be sure to have Node and Rust installed. Then...
npm install
Next, copy the Tor binary for your platform to a file called tor in the tor directory in the repo. On macOS, for example, you'd run this command:
cp /Applications/Tor\ Browser.app/Contents/MacOS/Tor/tor.real ./tor/tor
Then use npm run start to start Zbay. That's it!
Zbay supports most popular operating systems. If you want to build a version for these platforms use one of our scripts:
macOS npm run dist
Windows npm run distwin
Ubuntu npm run distUbuntu
The built installers can then be found in the dist folder.
To remove all your data from a machine, be sure to delete the Zbay and Zcash folders. Here's where to find them:
On Linux ~/.config/
On macOS ~/Library/Application Support/
On Windows %HOMEPATH%\\AppData\\Roaming\\
To make a backup, simply copy both the Zbay and Zcash folders from the location above to somewhere safe.
To restore a backup, move your backed-up Zbay and Zcash folders to the location above.
Questions? Find us in the #zbay channel, in Zbay, or email h@zbay.llc.