Bitcoin Copyright (c) 2009 - 2013 Bitcoin Core developers
libtorrent Copyright (c) 2003 - 2007, Arvid Norberg
twister Copyright (c) 2013 - 2018 Miguel Freitas
Freech Copyright (c) 2023 Martkist Core developers
Freech is an experimental peer-to-peer microblogging software forked from twister-core by Miguel Freitas.
User registration and authentication is provided by a bitcoin-like network, so it is completely decentralized (does not depend on any central authority).
Post distribution uses kademlia DHT network and bittorrent-like swarms, both are provided by libtorrent.
Both Bitcoin and libtorrent versions included here are highly patched and do not interoperate with existing networks (on purpose).
Build instructions are in flux as we improve the state of the forked freech-core, which had incomplete build instructions. See docs/build-XXX.md.
You can also make reference to the Dockerfiles in docker and releases to guide you. Note the releases are cross compiled with dependencies built from source, and the compiliation steps on the native OS would be considerbly simpler when using precompiled packages.
Alternatively, you can run Freech on an isolated Linux container, using Docker. First, install Docker on your system. Then run:
# Leave out the "sudo -E" if you added yourself to the "docker" group
sudo -E ./freech-on-docker run --remote
The above command downloads and runs a pre-built image from the Docker index. You can also build and run your own container:
sudo -E ./freech-on-docker build
sudo -E ./freech-on-docker run
Run FREECH_TAG=v0.9.35 ./build.sh in releases to produce macOS, Unix and Windows release builds. This replaces the legacy gitian build process until we can migrate to Guix. Release builds use the Bitcoin depends infrastructure to build dependencies, and can be updated with the Bitcoin equivalents as needed.
-
Prepare a
freech.confin e.g./home/<yourusername>/freech:
gen=1
addnode=91.197.0.248:4033
addnode=195.135.252.162:4033
This command tells Freech to contribute to the network by mining, and allows you to specify nodes for faster startup.
- Start your container and publish the default Freech ports (4033) and various DHT ports:
docker run -d --cpus=0.10 --restart always --publish 4033:4033 --publish 4433:4433 --publish 5033:5033 --publish 5033:5033/udp --mount type=bind,source=/home/user/freech,target=/root/.freech -it martkist/freechd:v0.9.35
This command limits your CPU miner to 10% usage, and ensures that your container will restart on failure/server restart.
Bitcoin is released under the terms of the MIT license. See COPYING for more
information or see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
libtorrent is released under the BSD-license.
freech specific code is released under the MIT license or BSD, you choose. (it shouldn't matter anyway, except for the "non-endorsement clause").
There is no development process defined yet.
Developers of either bitcoin or libtorrent are welcomed and will be granted immediate write-access to the repository (a small retribution for bastardizing their codebases).
Some security checks are disabled (temporarily) allowing multiple clients per IP. Therefore it is possible to run multiple freechd instances at the same machine:
$ freechd -datadir=/tmp/freech1 -port=30001 -daemon -rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 -rpcport=40001
$ freechd -datadir=/tmp/freech2 -port=30002 -daemon -rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 -rpcport=40002
$ freechd -rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 -rpcport=40001 addnode <external-ip>:30002 onetry
Note: some features (like block generation and dht put/get) do now work unless the network has at least two nodes, like these two instances in the example above.
Bitcoin and libtorrent protocol signatures have been changed on purpose to make freech network incompatible. This avoids the so called "merge bug".
- Bitcoin signature changed from "f9 be b4 d9" to "f0 da bb d2".
- Bitcoin port changed from 8333 to 4033.
- Torrent signature changed from "BitTorrent protocol" to "freech protocollll".
- Torrent/DHT query changed from "y" to "z"
- Torrent/DHT answer changed from "a" to "x"
In order to use JSON-RPC you must set user/password/port by either command
line or configuration file. This is the same as in bitcoin
except that freech config file is /home/user/.freech/freech.conf
To create a new (local) user key:
./freechd createwalletuser myname
This command returns the secret which can be used to recreate the key in a different computer (in order to access the account). The user should be encouraged to make a copy of this information, either by printing, snapshoting or even writing it down to a piece of paper.
The newly created user only exists in the local database (wallet), so before the user is able to fully use the system (post messages), his public key must be propagated to the network:
./freechd sendnewusertransaction myname
The above command may take a few seconds to run, depending on your CPU. This is normal.
To create the first (1) public post:
./freechd newpostmsg myname 1 "hello world"
To add some users to the following list:
./freechd follow myname '["myname","myfriend"]'
To get the last 5 posts from the users we follow:
./freechd getposts 5 '[{"username":"myname"},{"username":"myfriend"}]'
To send a new (private) direct message:
./freechd newdirectmsg myname 2 myfriend "secret message"
Notes for newdirectmsg:
-
The post number (2) follows the same numbering as
newpostmsg, make sure they don't clash. -
The recipient must be your follower.
To get the last 10 direct messages to/from remote user:
./freechd getdirectmsgs myname 10 '[{"username":"myfriend"}]'
Notes for getdirectmsgs:
-
These direct message IDs (max_id, since_id etc) are not related to post numbers. The numbering is local and specific to this thread.
-
This function will return messages which have been successfully decrypted upon receiving or that have been sent by this same computer. A different computer, sharing the same account, will see the same received, but not the same sent messages.
To setup your profile:
./freechd dhtput myname profile s '{"fullname":"My Name","bio":"just another user","location":"nowhere","url":"freech.net.co"}' myname 1
Note: increase the revision number (the last parameter) whenever you want to update something using dhtput.
To obtain the profile of another user:
./freechd dhtget myfriend profile s
To obtain the full list of commands
./freechd help
First you'll need to grab the latest version of the web UI code and put it in your freech data dir:
cd ~/.freech/
git clone https://github.com/martkist/freech-html.git ./html
In OS X
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/freech
git clone https://github.com/martkist/freech-html.git ./html
Next, run the freech daemon. The RPC username and password are currently hard coded as "user" and "pwd" in the web client so you'll need to specify them:
./freechd -rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
Visit http://user:pwd@localhost:4032 in your web browser and you should see a page asking you to choose between the Desktop and Mobile interfaces.
See CONTRIBUTING.md
See COPYING