git ssb

Secure-scuttlebutt vs scuttlebutt vs scuttlebot vs sbot?

An explanation of terms, repos and project history

• scuttlebutt: a gossip protocol that synchronises messages via a vector clock of per-node timestamps or sequences. Dominic got this name from an amazon paper "Efficient Reconciliation and Flow Control for Anti-Entropy Protocols". This is the original scuttlebutt module which should now be known as "insecure scuttlebutt". This repo is generally no longer used by the ssb community.

• secure-scuttlebutt: this is the database part of ssb. Previously this term referred to the protocol/database as a whole.

• scuttlebot: this repo adds networking behaviour to the database (secure-scuttlebutt).

• sbot: short for scuttlebot, also the cli command name.

There have been suggestions to rename some repos to better reflect their use and purpose:

secure-scuttlebutt --> ssb-db
scuttlebot --> ssb-server