ssb handbook

A work-in-progress guide to the ssb-verse and key concepts and influences

What Is Scuttlebutt?

Historically, sea-slang for gossip - a scuttlebutt is basically a watercooler on a ship.

Scuttlebutt is a decent(ralised) secure gossip platform.

This seems like a silly name, but I assure you, this is real science. Read this: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/rvr/papers/flowgossip.pdf

Or, if you're lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt (laziness will get you nowhere, btw)

How To Get Started

The easiest way to get started is using patchwork, a classic social networking application.

Download and Install Patchwork

Download installers for Windows, macOS and Linux from patchwork/releases

Or you can build from source with node and npm installed:

$ git clone https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
$ cd patchwork
$ npm install
$ npm start

On Linux you'll need some more dependencies. On Debian:

sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxtst-dev libxkbfile-dev g++ m4 automake libtool

Be Invited To A Pub

In order to gossip outside your local network, you'll need to connect to a Pub.

You can find an invite to an available pub at the Pub servers registry.

Get an invite, then in patchwork: click "+ Join Pub" and paste the invite code.

This will cause you to follow the Pub and vise versa. If you haven't synchronized to this social network yet, prepare to wait a few minutes while your local server synchronizes.

About This Handbook

To view the public handbook, browse to http://scuttlebutt.nz.

You can also build and serve this with gitbook locally.

The SUMMARY.md is the manifest on which the compiled gitbook is based. Edit that if you want content in/out of the book.

Contributing With git-ssb

To use the public portal for the handbook code, browse to https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25lJsDWwnF4bDxHWYuSjw%2FbW37xg%2BsaF8WtPZYZsefKj0%3D.sha256.

To use your local scuttlebot server to clone the handbook code:

npm install git-ssb -g
git clone ssb://%lJsDWwnF4bDxHWYuSjw/bW37xg+saF8WtPZYZsefKj0=.sha256 ssb-handbook

cd ssb-handbook
npm install
npm start

To contribute to the handbook code, make a pull request with

git ssb pull-request

Contributing with GitHub

Our public GitHub repository is at ssbc/ssb-handbook

Feel free to make an issue or pull request here if you see something that needs doing.

Other Projects

Scuttlebutt is not the only project working in a decentralized space. Here are a few other projects also working on solutions:

• Matrix
• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Zerocoin
• MaidSafe
• IPFS
• Dat
• Solid
• cjdns
• Syncthing
• Indie
• Twister
• WebTorrent
• StrongLink
• RetroShare
• ZeroNet