whyrusleeping
commented
6 years ago I like this idea! You could probably implement consensus rules in a plugin like this, and end up with a proper blockchain.
(and there is probably a gotcha: nodes storing the record in the DHT may not have the required plugin to check its validity)
Yeah, this is the main issue. It could work in a private swarm where all nodes involved are running the same plugins though, which is definitely a useful thing.
Farther in the future, we want to do interesting things like shipping plugins as content addressed portable code. But thats another topic entirely :)
mildred
TL;DR: I suppose we'll need to have a plugin system integrated with IPRS so we can have different validity schemes.
IPRS is based on the fact that you can choose different validity schemes and naming systems for your needs. There are some basic types you probably want everywhere (ordering based on time, sequence number or previous record hash) but it's entirely possible to imagine records that are more specific to an application.
Just like a blockchain where each other day there is a new blockchain appearing with slightly different rules about how blocks are being made, records could go the same route (except that for IPRS we don't keep history). A simple example: a microblogging application (twitter like) where a record points to a feed of events. A new record would be considered valid if the pointed IPFS object follows a specific format, 144 chars no more, and references all the previous items of the feed so history can be reconstructed.
This is highly application-specific and hat's why I was imagining a plugin system (and there is probably a gotcha: nodes storing the record in the DHT may not have the required plugin to check its validity)