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 for the spell-checker. On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxtst-dev libxkbfile-dev

Be Invited To A Pub

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

Here's an 100-use invite to @mixmix's pub:

pub.mixmix.io:8008:@uRECWB4KIeKoNMis2UYWyB2aQPvWmS3OePQvBj2zClg=.ed25519~gq+n8AXMdhzwnGWZxWitgczTkbr70drnbEaOi3Noo5M=

In patchwork, click "+ Join Pub" and paste the code.

This will cause you to follow @mixmix's 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 gitbook, browse to http://scuttlebutt.nz.

You can also build and serve this with gitbook locally. The following assumes you're running a scuttlebot server and are in the follow neighbourhood of mixmix or his pub.

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

cd ssb-handbook
npm install
npm start

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

If you see a job that needs doing - that is your job.

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