Discussion Thread

[danimesq]

Instead of creating a project that (in my view) looks like (without advanced features) ZeroNet, why not contribute with them?
https://zeronet.io/

[xuset]

ZeroNet is an awesome project, and Planktos shares the same core BitTorrent foundation for p2p websites. But both of these projects have very different directions with Planktos' main goal of bringing p2p websites to existing browsers with no plugins or special browsers required whereas Zeronet inherently requires a special browser.

I think variety and healthy competition in an ecosystem is beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole. Imagine if no one developed a new web browser after Netscape was introduced.

[danimesq]

with Planktos' main goal of bringing p2p websites to existing browsers with no plugins or special browsers required whereas Zeronet inherently requires a special browser.

How do you plan to do it in a decentralized manner? Also you can bring it to ZeroNet.

I think variety and healthy competition in an ecosystem is beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole. Imagine if no one developed a new web browser after Netscape was introduced.

Its a concept of capitalism. About Netscape, it had turned into Firefox.
Imagine if Chrome would be merged into Firefox. Both would be very better now into one product.
I'm not talking about "stop creating systems and just looking at the existing", but about contributing.

[georgeaf99]

There is a peer-to-peer protocol called WebRTC that allows browsers to communicate with each other. We are using WebTorrent, a project that implements BitTorrent on top of this WebRTC protocol.

Planktos runs entirely in the browser; it requires no plugins or any additional code running on the users machine. That means that any website on the internet can start using Planktos right now.

Since our goal is to implement peer-to-peer websites from within the browser, we have adopted a completely different set of tools and technologies than ZeroNet has. We share the same goal of making peer-to-peer websites possible, but are approaching the problem from a different angle.

We appreciate your concern and feedback!

[danimesq]

Now I understand you. I really doubt Nofish can accept this huge change to ZeroNet. Then is good to show to him a better product, maybe he merges it or move to planktos.

After updating your website's files, users viewing the website won't receive the updates until after the torrent is repackaged, which can be done by running the Planktos CLI again.

It isn't easier than in ZeroNet, any plans to make it easier in the future?

Also, plans in roadmap to support a video site?

[georgeaf99]

Yes, we assumed that our tech will be hard to integrate with existing systems. We hope that people appreciate and support our approach.

Regarding setup and updating, all the website owner has to do is run the Planktos command line interface over their static files. That line in the README is misleading, because it sounds like the user has to do something in order to see updates to the website. Most website owners already have a build phase if they are using browserify or minify etc, so Planktos shouldn't introduce any extra friction. All the owner has to do is add the Planktos command to their build script.

We are planning to support video in the future; however, we want feedback from users before we invest in the code changes required to support video. We do think that video support will be a very important part of our value proposition in the future.

I will change that line in the README to clarify that point!

[danimesq]

IPFS is planned?

[georgeaf99]

Do we plan on integrating/supporting IPFS? Planktos inherently has some limitations due to the nature of the WebRTC protocol. For example, implementing a DHT on top of WebRTC is an open problem: webtorrent/webtorrent#288. Due to these limitations we are not planning any compatibility with existing systems, like IPFS. We are just picking and choosing algorithms and sub-systems that provide the functionality that we need e.g. WebTorrent and content addressing from IPFS.

[a2nt]

Hi guys, is there a way to create a torrent using Planktos API?

I have following directory structure:
-- /assets
-- /site/js
-- /site/css
-- /site/img

I'd like to add files from /site dirs into one torrent and /assets files into an other.
Call torrent creation on /site files compilation and add files to /assets torrent on file upload