IRIS
https://iris.to/Reading through how it works and the underlying concept, it seems to really very similar to Secure Scuttlebutt in some of it's underlying abilities. Iris is currently functioning but, "The application is an unaudited proof-of-concept implementation, so don't use it for security critical purposes."
• No phone number or sign-up required. Just type in your name or alias and go!
• Secure: It's open source. Users can validate that big brother doesn't read your private messages.
• Available: It works offline-first and is not dependent on any single centrally managed server.
• Users can connect directly to each other, offline.
Okay! Excellent! These four things are the same as offered by Secure Scuttlebutt. When I first read this, I thought this must be using the Secure Scuttlebutt network, but it's not! Iris uses the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network! Wow, interesting, right?
It's the brainchild of Martti Malmi. He's from Espoo, Finland and a Bitcoin developer from 2009 to 2011. Wow, so he must know what he's doing, eh?
What else does it do?
• Communicate and synchronize with local network peers without Internet access
• When local peers eventually connect to the Internet, your messages are relayed globally
• Bluetooth support upcoming
• Opens to background on login: stay online and get message notifications!
• More secure and available: no need to open the browser application from a server.
• Opens to background on login: stay online and get message notifications!
• More secure and available: no need to open the browser application from a server.
Really weird, it sure sounds like Secure Scuttlebutt, doesn't it? The description is almost identical. How is it different from Secure Scuttlebutt?
Well, rather than running on the Secure Scuttlebutt protocol, Iris runs on the GUN protocol [I will have to do another post on GUN]. I read somewhere that Iris runs on the Bitcoin Cash Network, but that is not true; the author of that article may have assumed this from Martti's past connection with Bit Coin.
While Secure Scuttlebutt doesn't support connecting to the same account through multiple devices, with Iris you can use the same account for multiple devices. Perhaps in the future SSB will allow this, but at the moment it doesn't, although someone said that SSB cannot allow this fundamentally, so the SSB would have to be rewritten to allow this. I'm not sure if this is true, but if so, the we cannot hope for one-account-multi- device SSB usage. When using Iris, you become a GUN user of the underlying protocol, which is apparently allows multiple devices.
What if I forget my password and or lost my device?
Answer: the Web of Trust
So, imagine you are connected with your friends on Iris, you can ask these friends to verify you and allow you to reconnect with your account. Also, through this Web of Trust (your trusted friends), you can filter out spam and other unwanted content. I suppose this means that if one or more friends tag something at spam, it is filtered out for other friends, and you can set things to be automatically filtered. Not sure how it works. You can also filter on the distance, or how far outside your circle of friends it came from, such as from your friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends.
IRIS is something to keep an eye on as it develops and more options are make available, such as more privacy implementations, ability to delete sent or received content, etc. We'll see what they come up with, should be very interesting.
