The Swarm Team is thrilled to announce the release of Swarm Client v0.3, the third proof-of-concept (POC3) version. This version is the official version of the Ethereum Swarm client, and the code is now merged with the go-ethereum repository Master branch.
Swarm Testnet is now running a stable 50-node cluster and a public web gateway, available at https://swarm-gateways.net. Everyone is invited to give it a try, or even contribute to keeping the network running.
Past Year
It has been more than a year since the original POC2 series was released. In this time, the Swarm Project has launched its public beta network. 40,000 lines of code and two swarm peaks and orange papers later, it’s time for a review. The Swarm Team has grown in size to make the vision a reality, with a focus on network layer redesign, stream abstraction recovery protocol, overlay code and connectivity management code writing, and the development of sophisticated software, such as the Network Simulation Framework for the testing of algorithmic correctness, scalability and fault tolerance for various subsystems. The completion of the POC3 code was accomplished within the required time frame and the Swarm Orange Summit in Ljubljana was a week full of creativity and inspiration, as shown in this two-minute video. Talks and coding sessions demonstrate the growing number of people getting involved with this cause, including taxpayers and companies wishing to swarm.
Swarm 0.3
Swarm storage protocol is more than just a “bittorrent on steroids.” You can find more technical details in the architecture chapter of the revised Guide to Swarm, as well as in the previous blog post which introduced the basics of Swarm storage and content distribution. Further information is available in the Orange Papers, or through recorded lectures.
The Swarm API (0.3) is a service that provides APIs for uploading, downloading and routing content through URLs. It is used to create decentralized applications (dApps) without the need for web servers, using a decentralized peer-to-peer distributed infrastructure. The new vision of the Internet is fault-tolerant, has zero downtime, and is censorship-resistant, making the system financially self-sufficient through incentives for nodes that offer bandwidth or disk space. Most commonly, these incentives are used to ensure reliable, low latency, scalable recovery, and persistence of valuable but rarely accessed data.
POC3 includes new and experimental features to cover the basics of data storage.
pss
pss is a messaging protocol that combines Swarm Route (bzz) with the Whisper (shh) encrypted message format (bzz+shh=pss), making use of strong privacy features and running on the Swarm network. This could be the foundation for a new network of communication services, such as messaging infrastructure, email, twitter, and the newsletter of the future, instead of using the postal service. PSS is fully-featured but is currently an experimental feature in the POC3 Testnet. DApps can interact with it through a JSON/RPC API. The Swarm Team works closely with companies interested in using pss to create a second layer infrastructure, such as Main Frame, a collaborative group communication tool which has integrated with their