Universal Connectivity
Realtime highly decentralised chat app.
Showcasing libp2p's superpowers in establishing ubiquitous peer-to-peer connectivity in modern programming languages (Go, Rust, TypeScript) and runtimes (Web, native binary).
On top of this strong foundation, it layers a GossipSub: A Secure PubSub Protocol for Unstructured Decentralised P2P Overlays. By analogy, an event broker with distributed brokering, or a distributed PubSub protocol.
This is the gossip event protocol that powers Filecoin and Post-Merge Ethereum.
Some of the cool and cutting-edge transport protocols used by this app are:
- WebTransport
- WebRTC
- QUIC
- TCP
Packages
| Packge | Description | WebTransport | WebRTC | QUIC | TCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
frontend |
Next.js based browser UI of the chat app | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
go-peer |
Chat peer implemented in Go | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
rust-peer |
Chat peer implemented in Rust | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
node |
Chat peer implemented with TypeScript in node.js | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
✅ - Protocol supported ❌ - Protocol not supported
- Uses the GossipSub PubSub protocol for decentralised messaging
Connecting to a peer
There are two ways to connect to a peer:
- With a PeerID using peer routing (adds a step to resolve the multiaddr for the PeerID), using the IPFS/Libp2p DHT, e.g.
12D3KooWLMySi3eEWscUnKmMCYRSXL3obYJ4KNimpShJK6shUy2M - With a multiaddr directly (skips the peer routing step), e.g.
/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/64434/webrtc/certhash/uEiA_tkndZQWf7jyFqgCiwH_CqsS7FTWFTb6Px8MPxxT9gQ/p2p/12D3KooWLMySi3eEWscUnKmMCYRSXL3obYJ4KNimpShJK6shUy2M
8-minute project setup & demo video git
Using a multiaddr
Load the UI, and enter the multiaddr into the UI. Ensure that it includes the peerID, e.g./ip4/192.168.178.21/udp/61838/quic-v1/webtransport/certhash/uEiCQCALYac4V3LJ2ourLdauXOswIXpIuJ_JNT-8Wavmxyw/certhash/uEiCdYghq5FlXGkVONQXT07CteA16BDyMPI23-0GjA9Ej_w/p2p/12D3KooWF7ovRNBKPxERf6GtUbFdiqJsQviKUb7Z8a2Uuuo6MrDX
Getting started: frontend
The project uses npm workspaces.
1. Install dependencies
Run npm install from the root of the repo:
npm i
2. Start Next.js dev server
Enter the frontend folder, start the dev server
cd packages/frontend
npm run dev
Getting started: Rust
1. Start your own Rust peer
If you are the first peer in the network, simply run:
cd rust-peer
cargo run
However, for this repo, we have a rust server already running in the cloud, and you can add your own Rust server peer to the chat network with cargo run from the rust-peer directory.
To connect your rust peer to the rest of the network, you need to add the remote multiaddress of any peer already running as a the command line argument.
Below we have added our already running Rust peer as the arg remote-address:
cd rust-peer
cargo run -- --remote-address=/ip4/18.195.246.16/udp/9091/quic-v1/p2p/12D3KooWSmtsbL2ukwVwf8gDoTYZHnCd7sVNNVdMnCa4MkWjLujm
This will bootstrap your peer to the rest of the network, so you will see all messages sent on the chat topic in your own peer. It needs to connect via quic-v1 because it works with all servers.
You should see the multiaddr of the peer once its loaded, e.g.
Listen address: "/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/49350/webrtc/certhash/uEiAs1mQgRDVdSqMsQAuEnpMW0sSj6qc5jNvx2d0r3bQoiA/p2p/12D3KooWMzXTNGDLCKy6i6eAgJPMGCxuu7NJz33T9oC5kjByY27W
Getting started: Go
1. Start peer
cd go-peer
go run .