# GUN

## Stats

- 11K+ [github](https://github.com/amark/gun) stars
- 10M ~ 30M [downloads](https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/gun) monthly

## Whitepaper

https://stanford.edu/~nadal/A-Decentralized-Data-Synchronization-Protocol.pdf

## Stack

- [ERA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HJdrBk3BlE) (economic system)
- [AXE](http://axe.eco) (routing)
- [DAM](https://gun.eco/docs/DAM) (networking)
- [RAD](https://gun.eco/docs/RAD) (storage)
- [SEA](https://gun.eco/docs/SEA) (security)
- [GUN](http://gun.eco) (data)
- [HAM](https://gun.eco/distributed/matters.html) (conflict resolution)

## Bluesky

- Creating customizable interfaces: See [Party](https://party.lol/) which reuses any existing website (gmail, twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc.) for E2EE messages.
- Communities setting norms: See my article on [emotionally intelligent social networks](https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotional-intelligence-e45dcddb1bdb), also check out the wild [Notabug](https://notabug.io/t/notabug/comments/59382d2a08b7d7073415b5b6ae29dfe617690d74/welcome-to-notabug) experiment.
- Keeping public conversation from fragmenting: Check out ["How to fix the internet"](https://hackernoon.com/what-is-wrong-with-the-internet-and-how-to-fix-it-c67w32no) by [Martti Malmi](https://twitter.com/marttimalmi) (Satoshi's 1st Bitcoin contributor) which is exactly this.

## Network structure

Decentralized/p2p.

Uses data replication via message passing.

It daisy-chains, [routes](https://gun.eco/docs/Routing), & relays messages.

Think of it as doing also what the internet, routers, switches, etc. already does.

But also works over most existing transports: WebRTC, UDP multicast, TCP/HTTP -> Websocket, etc.

## Identity

Iris adds a [reputation system](https://medium.com/@mmalmi/learning-to-trust-strangers-167b652a654f) to SEA which provides the underlying cryptographic Security, Encryption, & Authorization.

The most important differentiating factor is that we support multi-device login that is cryptographically secure yet uses "normal" UX.

This technique can be extended to secure password resets (no servers)

And, password recovery using a 3-Friend-Authorization approach that we cutely call 3FA (please don't use this with your Bitcoins).

- Decentralized identity (ECDSA)
- Key management (Iris)
  - Key verification (Iris)
  - Key backup (GUN+SEA)
- Reputation, Trust (Iris)
- Account recovery (3FA)
- Privacy (ECDH, AES)

#### Data

- Data models (graphs, key/value, document, table, relational, hyper-graphs)
- Data availability ([AP](https://gun.eco/docs/CAP-Theorem), strongly eventually consistent)

#### Money

- Business models (Open Source, donation, enterprise, + decentralized PaaS, dBaaS, SaaS, Marketplace)
- Payment (AXE bandwidth credits)

#### Filtering

- Queries (GUN, [GraphQL](https://github.com/brysgo/graphql-gun), historical prototypes of SQL, Mango [Mongo])
- Curation (Iris, also see [NAB](https://notabug.io/t/notabug/comments/59382d2a08b7d7073415b5b6ae29dfe617690d74/welcome-to-notabug))

#### Moderation

Iris and NAB (see above link).

- Protocol level (no)
- Server level (no)
- User level (yes)
- Content level (yes)

### Social/Discovery

See "identity" section.

### Privacy and Access Control

1.  Cryptographic keys are assigned to roles, groups, or data points.
2.  This information is either used to derive a shared ECDH secret to decrypt (read)
3.  Or used to load collaborative multi-writer edits (signed).

For more information, please watch our [Cartoon Cryptography](https://gun.eco/docs/Cartoon-Cryptography) explainer.

### Interop with other systems

Via plugins, such as backup storage on centralized databases or file systems, or transport layers to other protocols.

### Scalability

- We've seen a [70% cost savings](https://twitter.com/cagataycali/status/1245442681251205120) on projects with 1M+ page loads a month.
- We've seen in-production deployments with 5M+ monthly active users without increasing infrastructure costs.

### Metrics

See "stats" section at top.

### Implementations

- [Internet Archive](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682) (library meta-data)
- [HackerNoon](https://hackernoon.com/state-of-hacker-noon-2019-2020-8w1ls3axx) (annotations)
- [Meething](https://meething.space/) (Mozilla backed secure & decentralized video conferencing powered by GUN)
- Iris, Notabug, DTube, others...