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Brave now part of the Decentralized Web

On January 19, 2021, the Brave browser released version 1.19.86. A MAJOR feature was added:

IPFS support

Now, if you enter an IPFS URL, such as:

ipfs://Qmf93BEm2UsgEm949QY3uSrXxn5UfDH83ZFSvQsBGyxPRt

It will resolve the reference and deliver to you the file.

The method in which it resolves this depends on your local settings and whether or not you’re running a local IPFS node, the IPFS browser plugin, or neither. In all 3 cases, it will still resolve the URL and find and deliver the file.

In addition to that, it will give you the option of running an IPFS node on your PC. I highly recommend doing that, IF you’re not low on resources. All it takes is a single button click.

Then YOUR PC becomes part of the global InterPlanetary File System network, increasing the geographical distribution of files and speeding up the global performance of the entire network, in addition to speeding up YOUR use of it. Any file, DAPP (distributed application), or decentralized website (which is just a DAPP, BTW), will load for you much faster the second time you access it AND it’ll be available to you even when you’re offline!

IPFS is a critical part of the infrastructure of the new world wide web, which is being built out as fully decentralized and censorship resistant. Unlike centralized websites that get bogged down and slow down when more people use them, DAPPs actually get FASTER as more people use them!

This is a BIG deal that IPFS is now fully supported in a browser.

Go get the Brave browser here. It’s build from the Chromium source code, so it looks and feels similar to Chrome and all Chrome extensions work in it. It also strips out all the Google spyware and has an ad blocker built in, so browsing is faster without all the page loading delays caused by the ridiculous amount of ads loaded in most web pages these days.

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IPFS: Bypassing Big-Tech Censorship

Government Censorship

It used to be abusive, dictatorial, tyrannical 3rd world governments that blocked and censored information from the victims that lived in oppression under their rule. Technologies like TOR and encryption products were invented to help squeak through the iron fists of the banana republic tin pot governments hold on information flow.

Tech Censorship

Now, as you’re probably painfully aware by now, web sites, apps, and even PEOPLE in FIRST WORLD countries are being DELETED from the internet by a small group of emotional and sanctimonious people with little interaction with the vast majority of the public. But they are running the technology services that everything runs on and they’ve decided that THEY are your moral superiors and overlords and have appointed themselves the arbiters of “truth” and “morality” and are now ENFORCING that, aggressively on everyone, especially those in the first world. And the scary part about it, is these are the same people the created many of the technologies to HELP third world victims circumvent their government’s censorship!

Liberators

Now, there’s a NEW group of technology experts working to create new technologies to liberate the victims of censorship in the first world, as well as those in the third world. They’re reinventing the world wide web. The problem with the current (legacy) web is that it’s centrally controlled. All the technologies for creating your own website are dependent on multiple 3rd parties, each of which are in control of one or more aspects of your website. They are:

  1. DNS (Domain Name System)
  2. Registrars
  3. ISP (Internet Service Provider)
  4. Web Hoster
  5. Storage Provider
  6. Database Provider
  7. Client Software for users (Browsers)

IPFS solves the problems of:

  • Web Hosters
  • Storage Providers
  • DNS (partially)

Here’s how it works…

Volunteers, like you and me, and even some organizations, run software on their PCs that makes them nodes in the IPFS global network. If you want to “publish” a file, you simply make it available via your local node. That’s it. It would probably help if you give out the hash of the file. With that hash, people can request the file form the IPFS global network. The network will hunt through the nodes until it eventually finds YOUR file, then will deliver it to the requester. As a result of that request and transfer, your file is now in more than one place. The NEXT person that requests the file could get it from any of those places, and it gets replicated again.

The more a file is requested, the more it spreads and the faster its found by those requesting it. After it’s been replicated once, you could even turn off your machine and people can STILL get it.

You can even publish a website onto IPFS instead of a web hoster. Now your website is decentralized and available even if you shut down your PC from which you originally published it. Side note: If it’s decentralized, it’s an “app”, not a website.

Since there’s no central server, there’s no one place to attack to try to bring your site down.

Since there’s no central server, NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, not even the U.S. government can take down your app. In fact, not even YOU can take it down! The ONLY way it disappears is if people stop requesting it AND no one has your files “pinned” (marked as “do not delete”). Most files will eventually get deleted if they’re not accessed enough as newer files being requested start filling up the nodes’ storage space, older ones get flushed out.

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This is what the Decentralized Web 3.0 will look like

The Decentralized Web 3.0 will bring you the following benefits:

  • The end of ISPs and governments spying on your online activities.
  • The end of big tech collecting all your private data.
  • The end of email providers being able to see your personal email.
  • Encryption of EVERYTHING.
  • The end of social media censoring you.
  • The end of demonetization.
  • The end of spam.
  • The beginning of making money by receiving marketing email (if you choose to).
  • The end of censored banking.
  • The end of domain name confiscation.
  • The end of web hosters shutting you down.
  • The end of registrars shutting you out.
  • The end of app stores removing your apps.
  • The beginning you YOU being in FULL CONTROL of your personal data.

Here’s how, but first a short history…

Internet 1.0

introduced the world to the idea of everyone being a publisher.  Unfortunately, there was no security designed into the architecture and it was mostly static and difficult to have interaction.

Internet 2.0

was a more structured way of creating websites, with more user friendly user interfaces and lots of interactive content, in addition to improved security models.

But something went wrong.

Something went HORRIBLY wrong!  As individuals started becoming effective communicators across geographical and political boundaries, they started being silenced for multiple reasons… sometimes by anti-competitive companies with deep pockets, but usually political reasons by tyrannical regimes in back-assword countries, then in first world countries, by corporations (Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Instagram, etc…) and so-called “educational” institutions, and in some cases, even first world governments, themselves.

Anti free speech campaigns began successfully shutting out an entire class of voices via social media outrage mobs demanding voices they didn’t like be silenced and for some reason, the big social media companies complied and shut them down by shadow banning, removing them from search, suspending their accounts, or deleting their accounts altogether, frequently with no warning and no explanation.

Then they went after their income.

YouTube began demonetizing video creators.  PayPal began killing users’ PayPal accounts.  It even spread out to the real world.  Credit card companies began shutting down people’s accounts and even BANKS started deleting their OWN CUSTOMERS!  All for political ideological reasons!

They rewound the freedom clock back to the early 90s, and in some cases, back 100 years or more.

Enter Decentralization…

Decentralized services were already being created before “the purge” started, but decentralization started to accelerate because of this.  The FIRST popular decentralized service to hit the scene was #BitCoin, which is a fully decentralized, global currency.  What makes it so powerful is that there’s no central point of failure, and more importantly… no central point of attack.  It’s a BRILLIANT system that prevents double-spending, prevents counterfeiting, and gives control of assets back to the people.  Governments CANNOT control it!  It first rolled out in 2008 and has grown exponentially since then.  It’s been so successful, than many millionaires have been made because of it and thousands of other cryptocurrencies have been created.

The technology behind it can be used for so much more than JUST money.  In fact, all the strangle-points (or censor-points) of the current (or “legacy”) internet can be censorship resistant using the same or similar decentralized technology that BitCoin uses:

  1. DNS
  2. File Storage
  3. EMail

DNS

is the Domain Name System that allows you to type in human readable names into your browser like https://BitCoin.org or other sites you’re familiar with.  The reason this works is because your browser takes the name you enter into your browser’s address bar and looks it up in a publicly distributed database to find the actual IP address of the computer you’re really wanting to connect to.  Even though the database is decentralized, there’s a centralized authority that authorizes the names AND they are beholden to governments, so when a government demands control of your domain name, then you lose your domain name and all your visitors and paying customers, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Domain name registrars can also take your domain names away, and this has been happening due to political reasons.

There are now several decentralized DNS replacements.  One of which is https://NameCoin.org  This is an open source project designed to have NO central authority.  It’s controlled by a blockchain (the technology that drives BitCoin).  In fact, it’s copied directly from Bitcoin, using BitCoin’s source code.  When you register a domain name on THIS system, you do it with a cryptocurrency called NameCoin.  Once registered, you own the domain name like you own your cryptocurrency.  It CANNOT be taken from you.  For now, there’s a problem in that current (legacy) browsers are unaware of this technology and so those names can’t be used with regular browsers unless you install plugins for them.

File Storage

Another weak point for censorship on the legacy 2.0 web is web hosting.  The way it works is you rent space and CPU capacity on someone else’s servers to host your websites.  If the hoster doesn’t like your politics, you’re GONE!  This has been happening at an accelerating pace.

The solution is decentralized file storage.  One of the most popular at the moment is https://IPFS.io which is a fully decentralized file distribtution system.  IPFS stands for InterPlanetary File System.  The genius behind this is that you don’t request content via a URL with a domain name and a path and file name.  Instead, you request it from the decentralized IPFS network via the HASH of the file you want.  (A “hash” is a mathematically generated number based on the CONTENTS of a file.  IPFS hashes are unique for every file).  If you’re a web publisher, you publish your files to the IPFS network.  Users can request your files (like website HTML pages) via the unique HASH of your file.  The IPFS network goes into action, looking for any node that has that file, and if found ANYWHERE on the network, delivers it to the user.  As a file is requested more often, it starts to spread across the globe, becoming more and more decentralized and faster to load.

Decentralized DNS systems, like NameCoin can be configured to return an IPFS file.

EMail

Your EMail will radically change too.  From your usage point of view, it will still look and feel similar to what you’re using now, but it’ll have the following, drastically different and improved features:

  1. Censorship-resistant, meaning no one can shut down your e-mail account.
  2. Decentralized.  There will be no central server that you connect to.
  3. Encrypted.  By default, ALL of your email will be heavily encrypted, without any effort on your part.
  4. Spam-Free:  NO ONE will be able to send you email unless you authorize them to.  You’ll also be able to set prices that spammers must PAY YOU in order to send you spam, should you elect to even receive spam.  The global system will prevent any email going to you unless you’ve authorized it AND that it includes the proper amount of cryptocurrency you’ve specified.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the dark forces trying to silence you or block you from seeing speech that THEY do not approve of are coming to an end.  No websites will be blocked by other people deciding what you can see.  Your sites will not be blocked.  Your web hosting cannot be blocked.  Your social media will not be blocked.  Your videos will not be blocked.  Your content will not be demonetized.  Your banking will not be stopped.  Your web browsing cannot be spied upon.  Your email cannot be read by third parties.  Spam will be a thing of the past.  Censorship will be much more difficult for the censors.  And everything will be encrypted all of the time.  AND you’ll even MAKE MONEY by receiving marketing email and ONLY if you choose to do so.

All of your data will be 100% in YOUR control.

Your data will be stored, fully encrypted on your end, across multiple, replicated hosts (or locally only on your hardware), readable ONLY by YOU!

Decentralized Resources in the making (or already made):

The list keeps growing and is far far bigger than this list.  Check out all the decentralized apps on https://Blockstack.org as plenty of examples.

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The Importance of Decentralized Apps & Services

First, a definition:  What IS a decentralized app or service?

A decentralized app or service, its data, and the user accounts are available from multiple locations.  If any one of them go offline, the app or service continues to be functional and distribution of the app or service does not cease, the data does not go away, the user accounts do not die, and no functionality ceases to function.

Let’s review how legacy (centralized) apps and services currently work…

Ordinary, legacy services that you’re probably used to are things like Google Maps, Google GMail, Google Search, Google Drive, Google Docs (seeing a pattern here?), Google’s YouTube.  Aside from the obvious fact that all of these are from A SINGLE COMPANY! they’re also centralized.  In spite of the fact that Google has a planetary wide system where they distribute their services and storage, they have the following centralized points of failure:

  1. They’re all owned by one company.
    1. Google could, in theory, go out of business.  Wait!  Stop laughing.  Where are you going?  Obviously, that’s not likely to happen any time soon, but it’s always a possibility, especially with the possibility that they may be broken up into multiple smaller companies, due to their gigantic control of virtually the entire internet.
    2. They can (and DO) censor.  THOUSANDS of YouTubers have had the following problems, increasing and accelerating in occurrences, frequently for political, not safety reasons:
      1. Demonetization.
      2. Shadow banning.
        1. Removing their videos or channels from “suggested videos”.
        2. Hiding their videos or channels from search results.
        3. Marking them as “age restricted”, which hides them from search results where “child safe” restrictions are enabled, such as public libraries and schools.
      3. Videos deleted.
      4. Channels deleted.
    3. Falsification of viewer counts.
    4. Blocking of voting.
    5. Blocking of comments.
    6. Simply not paying the creators what they’re owed.
  2. They’re all reliant on the centrally controlled DNS system.
    1. Though the DNS is a decentralized service, the CONTROL of it is NOT.  The CONTROL of the DNS is controlled by an organization called ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).  They’re the ones that can take your domain name away from you.  They used to be a U.S. based organization, but in 2016, the U.S. government, in a highly controversial move, transferred control to an international body that is not adherent to your first amendment rights.  At the time of this writing (2020/1/4), there are fears that tyrannical governments like Russia or China may start to get partial control of this too.  Both of them are already creating their own DNS and many countries block domains from their entire citizenry.
      1. See this:  UN Moves Towards Handing Dictatorships Power to Control the Internet
  3. They all have access to your PERSONAL data.
    1. Any data you enter into their apps or websites is viewable by them and stored on their servers.  YOUR data is controlled by other people.
  4. Your user account is proprietary for THEIR services
    1. You’ll have to create separate accounts for apps and services on OTHER centralized apps and services not owned by Google.
    2. Your user account and password are known and stored on these organizations servers.  They have access to EVERYTHING you do with their apps, and so do their employees and contractors!

Decentralization solves ALL of the above problems!  Here’s how:

  1. No centralized DNS.
    1. Decentralized apps do not rely on the centrally controlled DNS (Dynamic Name System).  Once you install and run the app on your local device, most of the functionality happens on your own device.  In cases where data needs to be shared, it’s either done so directly from your device to your friend’s device, if you’re having a private conversation, or it’s distributed to a decentralized, public data system like IPFS (InterPlanetary File System).
  2. Decentralized account management:
    1. Instead of creating a user account on a centralized web site for each and every website you visit, you create ONE account.  And you do this on your own device.  And you do not publish it (unless you want to).  This is how cryptocurrencies work.  You create your “wallet” using software running on your own computer.  It’s essentially a very large and random number, run through a cryptographic algorithm that generates TWO keys:  One private (that you hide from everyone) and on public (that you can share with the world).  These keys work in unison.  If you want to prove to anyone that you created content, you encrypt it with your private key.  Anyone with your public key can decrypt it.  Technically, that’s not what we call “encryption”.  It’s “digitally signing”.  If something can be decrypted using your public key, it’s proof that it was encrypted (or signed) with your private key, meaning only YOU.  If someone wants to send you something private, they’ll encrypt it with your public key.  It can ONLY be decrypted with YOUR private key.  This key combination is your “account” and you can use that on any decentralized app that uses that particular technology.  You can also create multiple accounts, if you like.
      1. You create your accounts on your own device.
      2. You use the same account everywhere (if you want).
      3. You can create as many accounts as you like.
      4. No one, but YOU has control over your accounts.  No one can delete them.
  3. Decentralized app deployment:
    1. Apps are made accessible on a network of nodes, rather than a centralized app store.  Some examples of decentralized networks are BitTorrent & IPFS.  This prevents a single entity (Like the Apple App Store or Google’s Play Store) from deleting them.  It also prevents a centralized authority, like ICANN from taking away the public’s access to your content via the DNS.
  4. Personal Data & Remote Storage
    1. While personal data does NOT need to be decentralized, decentralized apps SHOULD handle personal data ONLY locally, on the user’s device, OR, per the user’s intention, encrypt, then store on the user’s choice of cloud storage, preferably a decentralized cloud storage, like SiaCoin or FileCoin, or replicated (after encrypted) across multiple accounts on separate centralized cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Google Drive, DropBox, etc…
  5. Monetization
    1. Content creators should receive payments DIRECTLY from the consumers of their content, usually in the form of cryptocurrency.  The app providers need only provide the means for the content creator to accept cryptocurrencies.  This is usually done by the content creator registering their cryptocurrency wallet addresses with their content and users being able to tap or click it and then transfer crypto directly to the creator.  There should be no middleman involved.
  6. Elimination of DDOS
    1. Distributed Denial Of Services is an attack against a CENTRALIZED web site.  For example:  Multiple machines send thousands or millions of requests to a website, overwhelming the CENTRALIZED servers, causing them to be unable to respond to legitimate requests, because they can’t tell the difference.  If your services or content are decentralized, there’s no central server to attack.
  7. Faster Downloads
    1. When you download content from a decentralized network, you’re not relying on the limited server resources of a single organization or single server anymore.  The system finds the closest or fastest nodes to you that have the content and deliver it to you.
  8. Global bandwidth
    1. Decentralized distribution means closer physical transfers.  In other words, as a downloaded item gets distributed via the act of downloading, it spreads organically across the internet.  Each download is done via the closest neighbor, preventing clogging up the longer path connections, making the rest of the internet faster for everything else too.

Decentralization provides massive benefits for BOTH publishers AND consumers.

  1. For Consumers:
    1. As a consumer, the content you love cannot be taken away from you just because of the politics of the day or the preferences of the owner of an organization.
  2. For Publishers/Creators:
    1. You can’t be censored.
      1. Twitter, Facebook, & YouTube have gone on a massive censorship craze and in spite of being hauled in front of Congress multiple times and facing backlash from the public, they’re only accelerating their censorship.  Decentralization puts an end to that.
    2. You can’t be demonetized.
      1. A sinister part of censorship is demonetization.  In addition to silencing dissident voices, they’re also cutting off their funding and propping up the distribution of funding of only the voice they approve of.  Decentralization puts an end to that.

Speaking of Decentralized Monetization,

If you like my work, you can contribute directly to me with the following cryptocurrencies:

BitCoin:

bc1qx6egntacpaqzvy95n90hgsu9ch68zx8wl0ydqg
bc1qx6egntacpaqzvy95n90hgsu9ch68zx8wl0ydqg

LiteCoin:

LXgiodbvY5jJCxc6o2hmkRF131npBUqq1r
LXgiodbvY5jJCxc6o2hmkRF131npBUqq1r