“Cool idea, but to be of any use, it would need more functionality and more content” was my impression when I first looked into zeronet. Back then static web pages were all there was, and no UI support for any managing tasks. The next time I checked, probably more than half a year later, it had a blog engine, subscription on the welcome page, mail, chat, forums, wiki, boards and more. Blogs was what hooked me this time. The interesting feature was that you could subscribe, and have the news listed on the hello page. So I started to write new blog posts both on wordpress and on zeronet. True, wordpress has lots of more functionality than the zeronet blog engine. Some things are nice gimmicks, but none of it is really essential. ZeroBlog is really all you need.
Some people started to leave twister for zeronet, but I couldn’t quite understand why. For me, it filled another niche. They are both very nice in their own way.
How it works
To create a site, you can execute a python command on the commandline, or simply clone an existing zite. In both cases, a private key is generated that you need to later sign the content. Signing is really easy, but you better take good care for your private keys. Make sure not to share them, but do make backups for yourself. From the private key, a public key is derived and from that a BitCoin address. The BitCoin address serves as the unique identifier for your zite. If this identifier looks too complicated, you can register a shorter name on the NameCoin blockchain, and link it to your bitcoin address for the zite. Once you sign and publish your zite, you can give the address to your friends, or publish it where other people can pick it up. Whenever another zeronet user requests your address, he sends the query into the mesh. Whoever is closest, serves the files anonymously. Now the user who visited, becomes a seeder who also serves your content. No central server required. Now you can switch off all your computers, and your zite is available. Your zite stays online for as long as there is at least one other user seeding it.
Proxies
To visit zeronet sites, or simply zites as they are called, you should run the zeronet client. The software is written in python with few dependencies. So it is really easy to run. You can either run it locally, or on a personal server. Then just visit the entry page with the browser and navigate from there. But if you want to visit a zite without installing any software, there are also public proxies. There are many reasons why running the software is better than using these proxies, but I won’t go into the details now. And I don’t list the proxies here.
ZeroMe
Then came merger zites. I read about the concept before the release, and was really curious. Some things are not as easy to accomplish with a decentralized anonymous system as with a centralized architecture. But when I had my first play with ZeroMe, my reaction was “Wow this is what I have been waiting for”. I don’t use most social media because of the centralized architecture, and because they own all the data of the users and can make with it whatever they please. There have been decentralized social platforms before, but they were usually a hassle to install and maintain or not so great from a usability standpoint. Now with ZeroMe you choose a hub to store your data, an identity provider, and a presentation. So you have three orthogonal aspects to your experience.
Data Hub
You can subscribe to as many hubs as you wish, but store your data to only one of them per identity. They can be organized by region, language or interests. The more you subscribe to, the more data will be stored on your harddrive, and the more bandwidth will be consumed. You can also run your own hub, and use it only with your friends.
Identity
The identities existed for a while. You needed an identity to write a blog, to comment on other people’s blogs, to write and receive ZeroMail, to write to boards and chats and talks and wikis. Again different identity providers have different requirements. For ZeroId you have to register your handle on the namecoin blockchain. For Zeroverse you had to send a bitmessage. For KaffieId no external proof is required. You can maintain as many identities as you like. Some can be more credible, others totally anonymous.
Presentation
The official frontend is Me.ZeroNetwork.bit. But as it is all opensource. The first forks or clones started to appear. There is the darker themed Dark ZeroMe. There is ZeroMe Plus which adds some nice features.
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