ringdrop

rdrop is a streamed P2P file transfer tool with ring-based access control, built on iroh-blobs and iroh-rings.

To share a file, associate it with one or more rings and get back an rdrop:// ticket to hand to peers. Only peers who are members of those rings can download it. Transfers resume automatically if interrupted — no verified data is re-transferred after a crash or disconnect.

Access control is enforced at the connection level via an ALPN protocol (/iroh-rings/0). When a peer requests a blob, the sender checks whether that peer's peer-id belongs to any ring the blob is associated with. If not, the transfer is denied before any data is sent.

Features

• Ring-based access control — share with specific peers or groups via private rings, or open to everyone
• Crash-safe resumption — BLAKE3 bitfield tracks verified chunks; interrupted downloads pick up where they left off
• Verified streaming — every 16 KiB chunk is verified against the BLAKE3 hash tree before being written to disk
• Directory support — import and share entire directories as a single ticket

Install

Platform	Quick command
Linux	cargo install ringdrop
macOS	brew tap rikettsie/tap && brew install rdrop
Windows (PowerShell)	scoop bucket add rikettsie https://github.com/rikettsie/scoop-bucket; scoop install rdrop

For prerequisites, alternative methods, and troubleshooting see install/INSTALL.md.

Usage

Print your peer-id

Share your peer-id (i.e. your node public id) with others so they can add you to their rings:

rdrop id

Manage rings

rdrop ring new <ring-name>                                   # create a private ring
rdrop ring list                                              # list all rings
rdrop ring add <ring-name> <peer-id>                         # add a peer to a ring
rdrop ring add <ring-name> <peer-id> --nickname <nickname>   # with a display label
rdrop ring remove <ring-name> <peer-id>                      # remove a peer
rdrop ring members <ring-name>                               # list peers of a ring

Import and manage files (blobs)

Import a file or directory into the local blob store and produce a ticket:

rdrop import <file-name>                    # shortcut, warns if not associated with any ring
rdrop import <file-name> --open             # publicly accessible
rdrop import <file-name> --tag <ring-name>  # restrict to a ring

rdrop blob import <file-name> --open        # same, via blob subcommand

If no --ring or --open is given, then the file is not associated with any ring and a warning is printed. The blob cannot be transferred until it is associated with a ring. If the file was already imported, the existing rings are summarised instead.

rdrop blob groups all blob lifecycle operations. rdrop import is a shortcut for rdrop blob import.

List all local blobs with their ring tags and share ticket:

rdrop blob list

Remove a blob from the local store and all its ring associations:

rdrop blob remove <file-name>
rdrop blob remove <hash>

Grant or change access

Associate a file with one or more rings:

rdrop tag <file-name> --ring <ring-name>   # restrict to a ring
rdrop tag <file-name> --open               # anyone with the ticket
rdrop tag <hash>   --ring <ring-name>   # same, by BLAKE3 hash
rdrop tag <hash>   --open

Start the daemon

rdrop serves blobs through a background daemon. Start it once; it keeps running until you stop it:

rdrop daemon start    # start in the background
rdrop daemon status   # show status and node ID
rdrop daemon stop     # stop the daemon

The daemon serves every blob that has been associated with a ring — there is no per-file serving step to do.

Receive a file

rdrop receive rdrop://ABCDEF... [--dest ./downloads]

Re-run the same command to resume an interrupted transfer.

Activate more logging

By default only warnings are printed. Set RUST_LOG to get more detail:

RUST_LOG=ringdrop=info rdrop daemon start   # info-level logs for all ringdrop code
RUST_LOG=debug rdrop daemon start           # debug logs including iroh internals

This applies to every command, not just the daemon.

Contributing

After cloning, activate the pre-commit hooks (it runs cargo fmt --check and cargo clippy before every commit, and tag verifications before every push):

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

Dependencies

ringdrop is built on:

Crate	Role
iroh	QUIC transport, NAT traversal, relay fallback
iroh-blobs	BLAKE3 chunking, FsStore, verified streaming
bao-tree	bao encoding/decoding, ChunkRanges, bitfield conversion
redb	Embedded persistent store for the ring registry
tokio	Async runtime

License

MIT — see LICENSE.