The Grapevine Project
Stephen Blackheath
stephen@blacksapphire.com
Wed, 5 Dec 2001 18:35:41 -0500
Hello everyone,
I just found out about this mailing list and I thought I'd better
introduce my project - The Grapevine Project
(http://www.grapevineproject.org/).
Briefly, it's a decentralized network with goals of global scalability,
efficiency, anonymous publishing, and resistance to denial-of-service
attacks.
I was originally inspired by Freenet. In June I started having ideas of a
new way to approach the problem, and since it was different enough from
Freenet, I thought I would start a new project. Right now the design is
largely complete, and we're in the early stages of development.
In terms of things you know, the routing is a cross between the
Content-Addressable Network and Freenet. We use a 'hash cash' technique
(which we call "Solve A Hard Problem") for defence against
denial-of-service attacks - the assumption being that legitimate nodes
have more CPU power than attackers.
We have strategies to get good use out of nodes that are only connected
for a short time (i.e. dial-up). We have strategies to deal with the
'karmic debt' problem - where a node should not take more than it
contributes. We also hope to employ some mix-net strategies and
reputation strategies, but those are not finalized.
Everything is on the website, but we still need to write a good technical
summary.
Steve