Note: all the peering servers have stopped running, so this no longer works unless you run your own. It's currently unmaintained, but still interesting. A new iteration of similar ideas is Dynamic ID, which is actively under development.
Gravity is an open and decentralized private social network.
Why does it have to be decentralized?
- 3 second answer: competition.
- 3 minute answer: The Case for a Decentralized Social Network
Do we really need yet another social network? Surely this space is over-saturated...
- Short answer: We looked really hard but couldn't find anything that was private, didn't rely on any third parties, and was more than just a messenger.
- Long answer: Check out our extensive survey which resulted from that research.
This repo is a sample implementation of the protocol underlying the Gravity social network. Since it's open and decentralized, anyone can participate; you don't need to use any particular app, or even use this code, to do so.
This software is still in alpha, and as we all know, software is made of bugs. (If you find one, please open an issue!)
Breaking changes to the protocol/interface will occur, but we will always provide a mitigation path to avoid losing any user data.
This protocol has not undergone an independent professional security audit. We think it's secure, but I'd avoid using it for anything illegal.
npm install --save gravity-protocol
Or to build from source, clone the repo then npm install in the root directory.
const GravityProtocol = require('gravity-protocol');
const gp = new GravityProtocol();
gp.ready.then(() => {
const myIdentity = {id: gp.getIpnsId(), publicKey: gp.getPublicKey()};
console.log(myIdentity);
});For a real example of the protocol in use and interacting with the rest of the network, see gravity-minimal.
Gravity relies very heavily upon IPFS and libp2p, together an ambitious open source project to re-decentralize the internet, and one for which we are very grateful.