IPFS Virtual Meetups, 11 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Building with IPFS and decentralized DNS - Bradley Kam

Description

Bradley Kam from Unstoppable Domains joined us at our August meetup to give us the step by step on just how easy it is to build with IPFS and decentralized tech.

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Hi everybody. I am brad one of the co-founders at unstoppable domains. We are onboarding users to the decentralized web. uh So just a real quick on what we've built. uh We have built two blockchain domain registries. These are suites of smart contracts on uh on blockchains, we have two registries.crypto and dot zill. We also have a registrar unstoppabledomains.com, where you can buy domains and manage domains and what managing domains means is you add your crypto addresses to your domain, so they resolve so you've got brad.crypto.

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You can send me bitcoin or ethereum or any other cryptocurrency to my domain name, but you can also add ipfs hashes. So if you go to unstoppabledomains.com manager, you can, inside of our ui, add an ipfs hash to a dot crypto or a dot. Eth domain uh sign a message with your private key and write that uh write that ipfs ipfs hash the blockchain.

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uh We also have uh several decentralized web tools. We have a demo browser with an ipfs node inside of it we have a browser extension.

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We have a template marketplace, which is a very simple set of tools for non-technical users to launch ipfs websites, uh and then we also have uh have libraries for developers. uh So just very, very quick. Why do we need a decentralized web?

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Well, because domain and hosting providers can censor and they do so registrars in the traditional world like godaddy, are mandatory custodians of domain names, meaning that they can take them away from you. Registries themselves, like the owner of dot.

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Com can also revoke domain names, which would take down your website and then, of course, hosting services can take content offline entirely, uh not just off of their platform, uh and so, however, decentralized web websites and alternative well domain names are nfts, so they're stored inside of your wallet, there's no custodian required uh blockchain domain registries like unstoppable domains and ens cannot revoke your domain and hosting is on ipfs. Instead of on centralized hosting servers, so blockchain domains plus ipfs equals decentralized websites.

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uh Here's a very quick little picture of our template marketplace, so stats on us so far, there's been 270 000 domains registered. There have been 19 000 ipfs websites launched using our tools. Since february, uh so this is pretty exciting, most of them are very basic uh template websites, but what we're?

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What we've been bringing so far have mostly been users who are non-technical users, there's also some dap developers and things like that, but our tools are mostly for non-technical users right now, although much more to come in this area, so ways to view websites, there's the browser, there's extensions and more coming. There's opera browser for android, which dietrich mentioned and then there's, of course, a lot more exciting work going on with browsers this year as well as dns resolvers.

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So I think, there's you know at the end of 2020, I think there's going to be a lot of different ways to access access, ipfs websites, a couple of websites that are currently live. This is kyber.crypto uh simple, dex, uh there's also myetherwallet.crypto a fully functioning version of my ether wallet.

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I hear some companies that we're working with uh one to call out in case anybody hasn't hasn't played around with it yet is blockscan launched by etherscan, which is a decentralized search engine that works right now, so it's very cool check it out.

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So the main thing that I wanted to talk about today was some decentralized website ideas, uh and so internally we've been talking about. You know what are some of the you know. What do we think are going to be some very popular use cases uh for decentralized websites in the short term, and so one that we've already been seeing a lot of are defy apps.

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I showed you uh kyber.crypto, there's also switchio.crypto, so we think there's going to be a lot of dexes and lending apps and things like that launching on ipfs and launching ipfs very soon, and the value proposition for adap is uh okay, so you have the suite of smart contracts. You have this way for users to be able to interact uh directly with your you know, with your product without having any intermediaries.

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But then, if you have a non-technical user, somebody that can't interact with your smart contract on the command line, they have to use your interface, and if your interface is something that can be taken down by your domain service or your hosting service, then you potentially have this this point of failure, at least for your non-technical users. So if you put your front end on ipfs, you can solve this problem.

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Another category that hasn't really gotten a lot of movement. Yet that I think should is our video apps and I'm sure this is going to get a little bit more exciting. Once filecoin is launched and people can pay a cert for a certain amount of time for videos to be up, but some things that our community has been asking for and if there are those of you out there who are looking to build something.

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uh I would take a look at this. So a few things that have been asked for uh there's a bunch of crypto youtubers and if any of you have been following these people uh youtube has been taking down their videos and their channels and when youtube takes down your videos or your channels, they don't tell you why they just take it down and then maybe they pop back up in a few days and they blame their algorithm. But it's never explained uh it's never! There's no solution at any moment in time.

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They could just take you down again and you're off the internet, you're screwed. uh So video content creators that are talking about crypto are looking for an alternative and very very specifically. They want a way to easily upload their content to ipfs and in a dream world. They would love to use the youtube api, because youtube is uh their place where they're doing their content uploading right now, and they want a very easy backup and youtube. Api apparently makes this quite easy for them.

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uh So if you were looking for a solution that you wanted to build for the crypto youtuber audience, I think it would be this easy upload to ipfs using youtube api.

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Another thing that people are asking for is video with a paywall, so you can watch my video pay me a dollar, something very simple like that.

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uh The last thing- and this is the one I put a star next to because we've been getting so many requests for this- uh is a live streaming app a lot a way to do. Video live streaming on ipfs with tips and there's a lot of reasons why people in the entertainment industry might want to use ipfs. I won't go into all of them right now, but suffice to say it's kova time everyone's singing at home.

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Everyone's bored musicians are not able to go around and tour, and so they're looking for more interactive things that they can do online with their fans and hopefully get paid. So there's huge demand right now. Anybody who wants to build an ipfs video app, please come talk to us.

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We have grants available and then one last category- and this is one that I think is quite simple, but also quite cool, uh so dowsed and the reason why dows are such a great use case for decentralized websites is because you can give the dow the domain name and then the dao can vote on updates to the ipfs hash, and so what happens as a result of doing this is that, instead of having currently with your dns, you have some administrator.

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You have somebody at your company who's in charge of the domain, but if you put the domain inside of a dow and the dow votes on updates to the ipfs hash, then what you have is a website that is controlled by a community instead of by a person.

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This is completely new, something that could only be done on the decentralized web and, if you think about the problem that dao's have doubts, don't want to have in many cases they don't want to have one person uh in charge. They don't want to have one person responsible, whether that is from a practical perspective, whether that's legally, whatever the reason uh and so there's a whole bunch of projects right now uh where daos are trying to uh take their domain names and then vote on what the websites should be.

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So anybody out there who has a doubt anybody out there who wants to build a dow uh we're happy to get you a domain uh so that you can do this. So what are we? You know? How are we interacting with the ecosystem? Right now we are trying to give out grants for awesome, decentralized websites. So we have a kind of default grant out there of two thousand dollars for any uh awesome decentralized website.

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uh The other thing that we can do is we can launch your app to our community, so we have uh fifty thousand email subscribers. uh We have more than a hundred thousand twitter followers. We have a community of relevant influencers that are excited to talk about new decentralized web apps. So if you launch a cool decentralized website, whether it's uh a defy app, a video app or a cool dow doesn't or something else doesn't really matter.

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uh If you have cool ideas, let us know, let us know how we can help we're happy to offer a grant. We're also happy to blast it to the world. So here's how you can get in touch with us and that's it thanks uh thanks a bunch to uh to to molly and dietrich and everybody else from ipfs for having us and uh excited to excited, to see uh excited to see what comes from the community in.

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