Biblion is a platform for building peer-to-peer file sharing communties. The collection of these communities and their data forms a gigantic decentralized web of information.
A decentralized web is a set of linked documents stored on computers all over the world. There is no central authority, and publishing power is in the hands of individuals. The early World Wide Web was itself a decentralized web, but over time we gave up data to large corporations. New "decentralized web" projects encourage a return to peronsal data ownership and massive community driven hosting. It's expensive to compete against a large corporation, but it's possible if you can get enough peers on board!
See our getting started guide here. You have to download the Biblion software. Then, we can walk you through getting some Biblion and creating a new library.
Technically, yes. But you can create your own community! This is like starting your own website. In Biblion, this is easy! Everything you publish within a library belongs to your website. Keeping your data in library makes it easier for people to find and archive your data for you.
Be careful! Running a community carries a lot of responsibility. If you run something like a decentralized Imgur clone, you would want to make sure people are not uploading illegal or disgraceful content. Without moderation, who would participate in such a community?
Maybe! Biblion allows users to backup other peoples content. This means that other people have the option of serving your content while your away. But there is no guarantee that someone will want to host your content! If you publish something and can convince your friends to help you store it, it will be accessible as long as someone has it available.
HTTP and the "world wide web" is the classic "web". It's what you navigate through in a web browser, and it is likely what you're using right now to read this. With HTTP, content is referenced by the server you're reading it on. This means that if that server ever goes down, the content disappears. People can and do[archive.org] make backups, but you have to know where to look, and there is no guarantees the backups will survive either. Biblion tries to solve this by allowing users to securely backup content. If the original server goes down, the content will live on among users of the Biblion network.
There are many technologies appearing for building out the decentralized web, and all of these technologies are related. Each have their strengths and weaknesses.
IPFS is the Interplanetary File System. IPFS has many of the features that Biblion has. It allows backing up data, and routing is based on content rather than server name. There is little incentive for people to back up data in IPFS, resulting in a lot of dead content. Biblion tries to solve this with credits and community structures. IPFS was a major influence in the design of Biblion!
Filecoin is a major development from the developers of IPFS: Protocol Labs. Filecoin is blockchain-based distributed file hosting server. You could compare it to Dropbox or Google Drive, but it is completely autonomous. They are working on proofs-of-spacetime that would be an exciting development for the whole decentralized web community. In Filecoin, users pay to have their data stored. In IPFS and Biblion, data is hosted voluntarily.
DAT Project is similar to IPFS but is focused on scientific data. (Need more info...)
Maidsafe stores and accesses data anonymously. You never know what data you're storing, and nodes don't technically know what you're accessing either. A credit system is used that doesn't use a blockchain, but instead reaches consensus among nodes that have behaved well for a long period of time. It seems similar to Freenet in philosophy. In Biblion, you are aware of you're hosting and credits are backed by a blockchain. Biblion emphasizes community building, which is at odds with anonymity.
No, because we believe there is no "winner" or correct path forward. In the future, there will be a number of "decentralized" webs that serve different purposes. This has already begun, and exists outside the open source community as well. For example, streaming movies from the Netflix app is kind of like accessing a "private web". Different technologies offer different advantages, and everyone has different goals for them. We believe that openness and competition between web technologies is what will make the future so exciting.
Biblion is a distributed web. It also tries to solve the problem of "free ridership." Free ridership is an issue where some users want to download a lot of data without contributing anything back to the network. There are many approaches to try to solve this problem, but we think the best solution is to track your contributions numerically. As you contribute to the network, you earn credits. As you take from the network, you lose credits. This encourages taking only as much as you are willing to give back. To make this work in a truly decentralized trustless manner, Biblion does have a central "currency" that is backed by a blockchain. However, Biblion has the soul of a data network, not a cryptocurrency. It is experimental software, and the coins may not be proven to be secure!
No, we are not planning an ICO. If investment is your goal, you are better off investing in a technology that offers better financial security. Biblion is a decentralized web technology, and happens to have a coin as part of it. The mechanics of that coin may change, but it will always be focused on building a fair "economy" among web services.
If you are looking to "mine" based on free hard drive space, check out Filecoin and Chia.
Biblion mining is currently based on Scrypt proof-of-work mining. Eventually we would like to switch to proof-of-storage, but the current available options did not look performant enough to scale on commodity hardware. We are also willing to experiment with proof-of-stake based "mining" at a later time. For more technical details, refer to the [Specification].
If you are looking to "mine" based on free hard drive space, check out Filecoin and Chia.
It is not required. You can fully disable mining and participation in the blockchain. Follow the instructions here: [].
We wish we didn't need it, but it's the only viable truly byzantine fault tolerant ledger that we have found. If you like the concepts behind Biblion but don't want to participate in the mining part.
We want Biblion users to be able to start contributing to the network starting from nothing. If we built on an existing blockchain, library owners would need to buy the local coin to support paying for transaction fees. Eventually, we would like Biblion mining to be based on proof-of-storage or proof-of-stake, as it would lend itself well to existing behavior on the network.
If you have ideas for ways to integrate Biblion into existing blockchains, or how to solve Biblion consensus, please let us know!
Every identity and record of data is cryptographically secured by our system. This means that no one can claim to be you, and no one can take control of your content. This is done by keeping your "private key" safe. Don't lose it!
Communication between two nodes is always encrypted. This means no one can snoop on your data. However, a third party monitoring the network (such as your ISP or the NSA) would be able to see that you're using Biblion and which computers you are connecting to. This is similar to what happens with HTTPS on the World Wide Web.
No. Biblion is pseudonymous. Every user is consistently identified by a unique cryptographic key. This means that users who are snooping on your activity can see that your peer is participating in some activity. It will be possible to run Biblion over Tor in the future, but be aware that the identifier of your peer will always be visible to nodes you connect to.
Biblion is a decentralized system, and thus cannot have full control over what is published. Since Biblion is not anonymous, we expect behavior to be similar to what happens on the existing web. Illegal activities are prevented by the law in your jurisdiction.
You can post on our Discourse forum here: [Biblion community] We can be reached at [email protected] Our PGP key is listed here: []