Charlotte Aten<p>I was curious about ZeroNet again today. ZeroNet was a <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/P2P" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>P2P</span></a> web project from the 2010s along similar lines to I2P (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P</span><span class="invisible"></span></a>) and <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/Tor" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Tor</span></a> hidden services. The idea of hosting dynamic webpages in a completely P2P fashion, like torrents, remains super cool and appealing to me. In fact, at one point the <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/BitTorrent" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>BitTorrent</span></a> company had a similar proposal (<a href="https://www.bittorrent.com/blog/2014/12/10/project-maelstrom-the-internet-we-build-next/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">bittorrent.com/blog/2014/12/10</span><span class="invisible">/project-maelstrom-the-internet-we-build-next/</span></a>).</p><p>The ZeroNet website (<a href="https://zeronet.io/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">zeronet.io/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a>) is still up, but the project hasn't been updated in five years as per the GitHub repo (<a href="https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNe</span><span class="invisible">t</span></a>). Someone was maintaining a fork at some point, and at other times I heard that ZeroNet was (now?) insecure, although I know no details. Certainly anything P2P isn't anonymous by default.</p><p>I found this question (<a href="https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/2749" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNe</span><span class="invisible">t/issues/2749</span></a>) about the creator of ZeroNet. Disturbingly, this article (<a href="https://www.newsbtc.com/news/sam-maloney-creator-of-morphis-and-dpush-shot-dead-by-london-police/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">newsbtc.com/news/sam-maloney-c</span><span class="invisible">reator-of-morphis-and-dpush-shot-dead-by-london-police/</span></a>) about a different developer killed by the police under unusual circumstances was shared.</p><p>My impression was that ZeroNet actually worked (works?) to some extent. Why aren't projects like this being funded? We need censorship-resistant ways of communicating online, after all.</p><p><a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/ZeroNet" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>ZeroNet</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/I2P" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>I2P</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/censorship" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>censorship</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/DistributedWeb" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>DistributedWeb</span></a></p>