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Introducing The Space Daemon: Build Privacy-focused and Peer to Peer Apps

We’re excited to introduce our latest and most exciting decentralized development, the Space Daemon.

The Space Daemon packages together IPFS, Textile Threads/Buckets, and Textile Powergate (Filecoin) into one easy to install and JS interface to make it easy to build peer to peer and privacy focused apps.

Installing the Space Daemon is easy and comes with all the tools packaged together including IPFS and Textile nodes, and also exposes gRPC methods specific to the features you want for your app including File Upload (encrypted), File Sharing (peer to peer), Filecoin Markets, and User Controlled Data. You can access the same methods using our JS client, so you don’t need to worry about gRPC calls.

Space is the next evolution of Cloud, where users can interact with apps fully private, p2p, and control their own data. The Space Deamon can essentially act as a data repository for user controlled data that apps can interact with and applications can build an ecosystem around. Imagine applications opting in for users to store their own data locally and provide experiences that ensure the best privacy and even boast peer to peer interactions between users without touching company servers. Big tech has taken advantage of user data for far too long, it’s time to let users take back control and privacy of their data. Here are the features the Space Daemon will bring to your application:

  • Fully Private file upload via encrypted textile buckets.
  • Peer to Peer file sharing selectively with other people and/or within teams.
  • Identity solution enabling users to be fully anonymous or have as many identity associations
  • Filecoin network interaction for file storage and retrieval market.
  • Super easy to use Js library with easy to understand functions for File CRUD, Sharing, Identity, Backups, etc.
  • Datastore for applications and application registry to enable user data controlled applications
  • Trustless Data backups
  • Local file system mounting
  • More…

Getting Started

Installation

The installation process is done in two parts. The first part to download the daemon and the second is to set up the client so your Javascript application can communicate with the daemon.

The daemon is available for any desktop platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux).

We have detailed instructions in our docs on installing the space daemon.

Privacy-focused file commands

You can perform any CRUD(Create, Read, Update, Delete) operation with the Space Client, such as adding files, opening files and managing the encrypted buckets in which your files reside. Each action interacting with files is interacting with client-side encryption methods and storing the files privately on IPFS and/or Filecoin. The files are stored locally on the users computer with utmost privacy and security.

These operations are performed in a manner mindful of users’ privacy through the use of cryptographic keys.

Learn more about CRUD commands.

Sharing

Space daemon enables the most peer to peer capabilities for users to share files directly between each other, selectively with one another, within a team, etc. All the Sharing commands come ready to go with the Daemon to make it easy for application developers to give users the peer to peer experience of sharing data without touching any servers while preserving the privacy of the files.

Read more about sharing files via the Space Daemon.

Identity

The Space Daemon comes with an out-of-the-box identity service that is open-source and allows anywhere from the most anonymous all the way to the user having as many identity proofs as they like. This provides for a very user-friendly experience of users being able to use friendly recognizable names while taking full advantage of privacy via encryption keys and peer to peer sharing.

To start, the Identity service supports usernames and/or emails that can be associated and verified to the user. We are quickly adding more types of identities and proofs that users can associate and prove their association with to connect more easily with other users.

Learn more about how to use identity in the space client.

Open Source

Everything about the Space Daemon is open source! The Daemon that gets installed, the Javascript client for developers to easily build on top of the Dameon, the identity service, and more.

We believe in open source and the community behind it. If there is a better way to do things we want it to be heard, contributed, and pluggable. There will be an app ecosystem of plugins, services, and applications that can utilize the benefits of the foundational Space Daemon as a user-controlled, private, and peer to peer data repository.

We’re really excited to receive more feedback and see what people build!

Example Desktop App

We’ve also created a repository with an example desktop application to show off the features that can be utilized from the Space Daemon. It’s a simple create react app + electron implementation to show space-daemon and space-client features.

Run the project:

You need to install and run space-daemon to run this project

Install project dependencies:

npm install

or

yarn

Run the project:

yarn electron:dev

Share your creations!

We are excited to see what cool projects you will come up with using the Space Daemon, so share your ideas with us on Twitter.

Happy hacking!

- Fleek Team