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1. Embed this notice
   silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 04:53:09 JST silverpill

   I finally got around to trying #iroh

   It nicely complements FEP-ef61, because it allows you to connect to another actor by its did:key. In theory, we can completely replace the federation of HTTP servers with a federation of iroh nodes.

   However, I'm not convinced that iroh is the best solution. The most obvious problem is a lack of anonymity. Newer versions of iroh support custom transports, and Tor transport is among them, though still experimental. The work on I2P transport has not started yet.

   Another problem is the requirement to be online all the time. A potential solution is iroh-gossip, which I haven't tried yet, but I doubt that it works good enough for nodes that come online once per week.

   A more traditional approach to FEP-ef61 with a combination for clearnet, tor and i2p gateways might be simpler and better. But iroh is an interesting project that's worth keeping an eye on.

   https://codeberg.org/silverpill/minimitra/src/commit/2dd4e4f82b476f6b0a3d2610f158691ad5f46d11/src/p2p_iroh.rs

   • Embed this notice
     silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 18:17:11 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • doesnm

     @doesnm Not all of us have always on devices.

   • Embed this notice
     doesnm (doesnm@holos.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 18:17:13 JST doesnm

     in reply to

     @silverpill@mitra.social
     > Another problem is the requirement to be online all the time
     Sounds like not a problem if you have always on device like singleboard or wifi router but don't have routable ip for standalone federation

   • Embed this notice
     silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 19:05:48 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • FenTiger

     @fentiger I think for p2p apps one iroh instance is enough, because you have identity, data and network in one place.

     But it should also be possible to use iroh nodes as gateways. In that case:

     ap://did🔑z6MkhaXgBZDvotDkL5257faiztiGiC2QtKLGpbnnEGta2doK/actors?gateways=iroh://c0af44a8cdced53867c01dc58e903be5

     (discussion on 'iroh' URIs: https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh/discussions/1928)

   • Embed this notice
     FenTiger (fentiger@zotum.net)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 19:05:51 JST FenTiger

     in reply to
     @silverpill If you're doing nomadic identity then an actor's data might be replicated across multiple network nodes. Presumably they'll all need their own Iroh keys, rather than being able to reuse the actor's did:key for all of them?
   • Embed this notice
     FenTiger (fentiger@zotum.net)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 20:12:36 JST FenTiger

     in reply to
     @silverpill Yes, I think there are reasons to want to do this even in a pure P2P setup - such as having one copy on a mobile device for portability, and another on a home device as a backup in case you lose your phone.
     
     Agreed that it's worth looking at Iroh - even if it's not useful in the long term, it'll be worth trying to work out what the dependencies on HTTP actually are, and what it'll take to separate ActivityPub from its transport more generally.
   • Embed this notice
     silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Jul-2026 20:12:37 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • FenTiger

     @fentiger Oh, multiple nodes might be useful if you sync between your own devices.