Warm greetings from the PeachCloud team! There has been some solid progress on solar since the last newsletter so let's dive into an update.

EBT

By far the most exciting development of recent months has been the implementation of SSB-flavoured Epidemic Broadcast Trees (EBT) in solar! This means we now have a working Rust implementation of EBT and that solar is capable of efficient replication with Manyverse. It involved a lot of work and head-scratching but we got there in the end. ^_^

In the process, the Scuttlebutt Maintenance Fund supported glyph in updating the Protocol Guide with a section on EBT. It should now be easier for others to understand and implement EBT.

Database Indexes

Message content indexing has been added to allow efficient database look-ups. This should be especially helpful when it comes to client implementations. The indexes have also been exposed as JSON-RPC methods so that clients can query them from an external interface.

JSON-RPC Client Library

The most recent work has been devoted to the creation of a JSON-RPC client library for solar: solar_client. Any solar-curious Rust devs should be able to use the library to quickly implement a simple client application; there is more work to be done but the basics are in place.

New Release

All of the aforementioned updates are included in the v0.4.0-beta release. Please give it a go and let us know what you think!

Website

I (glyph) recently had a very inspiring call with @cblgh in which we brainstormed possible futures for solar. It seems that solar is well positioned to be the core for many different kinds of applications; everything from inventory management to community food distribution and networked art installations. In order to get the word out there, I'm going to create a simple website that highlights solar's capabilities and potential applications.

Tor Connectivity

The Tor-in-Rust team have been making strides with onion service support in arti. There are still some rough edges and missing security features but it seems likely that we'll be able to integrate arti into solar in the coming months. That will allow solar nodes to run as Tor hidden services and connect to one another over the Tor network. We're looking forward to sharing our experience in the next newsletter!

The majority of our funding has now dried up, though we are super fortunate to have continued support from various friends of the project! If you're excited by solar and are in a position to support, now would be the ideal time to do so! If you would prefer to contribute to me directly, I have a GitHub sponsors page and a Liberapay profile.

Until next time, much love from the PeachCloud team!