World's first Ethereum web browser released!
I've heard about "hidden messages" in the Bitcoin blockchain a few weeks ago. But I thought Ethereum's chain must be more interesting to do this. (It was designed to send custom data with transactions)
And I was right!
There were some people before me who created undeletable text messages in the ETH blockchain.
Like these enlightened ones:
(Click link then scroll down to "Input Data", and press "Convert to UTF8" button)
If we store text why don't we store HTML?
This was my main question. So I created ETHscape, the Ethereum based web browser. (Hey, don't take it too serious, it's just a working techdemo now...)
How to store webpages on Ethereum network?
First step is to create some HTML. If you don't know where to start, try this online editor. It has nice basic functionalities and a "compress HTML" button, which can save you some Eth by purging unnecessary characters and tags.
Here you can see the compressed HTML code:
Once you designed your page, you must convert its html code to hex code for example here
This page will generate the final code for you. You can send this code in a transaction and it will be stored on ETH blockchain. Forever. Wow. It's impressive.
Testing
When you have the hex code , I suggest you to test it by pushing the Hex button in the top and paste the code to the window. (Instead of sending it blindly to blockchain)
If everything is fine, your webpage should show up. You are ready to send.
How to became eternal?
Send a transaction to anybody, and put the hex code in the data field.
And when you paste your transaction's Tx number into the 'address bar' the ETHscape browser will convert your Tx data to HTML and will display it as a webpage.
It's cool.
Ha! ;)
You can check my own page in transaction 0xbe62210e9ffbad5caebcd76e9b33969809ef1507c1b213b404ef3aaca882703a by clicking the link or viewing it in the ETHscape browser:
Please note, the ETHscape browser is still in an early development stage. It's buggy and shitty. I know it very well. Please don't post about it. ;)
If you like this project, please send transactions with HTML-hex datas to my ETH address. It will help me a lot with testing :)
0x1487e06CFAB2Be159C455863A72E6Ba2D5f624D1
Please share your thoughts with me here, I'm really curious. It's a very new concept in our online world. :)
Try it out:
Source is available on Github
Very interesting, wondering what this will look like in the next 2-4 years, or even the potential EOS browsers coming out.
Very cool! This is something that I have never previously thought about. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to seeing the source code when you release it!
Thanks,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
I've updated the post, source is available. It's a little shitty now, but it's only a demo :)
Here you can find it: https://github.com/Deybacsi/ethscape
Interesting
Is possible to use an script or webapp-kind-of in a normal web browser to pull from the Etherium blockchain the HTML without needing to install any app?
Really interesting app by the way.
The eternity.ws website is a webapp, you don't have to install anything. But I think it's absolutely possible to develop some browser plugin which is able to get the HTML from the blockchain.
Okay, I undestand another thing in your post. And how do you manage to delete ilegal content hosted there? I mean, for example, you have a mp3 or a copyrighted book, and you manage to upload it to the Etherium Blockchain, how does the author, erase it from there? I think the world is going to rethink everything. I mean, I imagine a Kazaa or Emule, even magnet torrents or full copies of torrents hosted there. I am missing something or this is possible?
No author, no government, and nobody can erase anything from any blockchain. It's the most basic principle of cryptos. So yes, all of the above are fully possible. I think it's a huge responsibility for humanity to use this wisely... But... There will be always trolls, perverts and other people who will use the existing technology for bad things.
So, the big question is, as humans we are not perfects, how are we going to manage to minimize the risk of the bad things?
Copyrights, I'm not a big fan of this, but big studios, from Sony to Disney, will be concerned of this. And I guess they will try to shut it down. But, how do you shut down something like decentralized blockchains?
I mean, I think your project is awesome. I just can't understand how is this legal yet.... Or do you leave a trail when you upload things to the Etherium Blockchain besides the wallets IDs?
As you said, double edged sword. It will be incredible good for countries where freedom of speech is not guaranteed, but it will suck for people with bad intentions.
Your question is a very good question... But I don't know the good answer for it. I think we can't prevent the bad behavior at all. :/
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Will it be the next decentralized search engine?
I hope :D I have plans about indexing the existing tranzactions, maybe we can found already existing messages hidden there :)
wow! I didn't even know this happened.
And another thing, why don't define in one tx all the txs that compone a website so you can have one website distributed in lots of txs and more space. Is this possible too? This could be so much usefull for the Onion websites.
Yes, I was thinking about a similar page :) But I still didn't have time to made it :D
MUY EMOCIONANTE ES REALMENTE GENIAL
Hey!
Interesting idea but is it possible to alter the site later on or do you only have one chance to edit it. Because the blockchain entries can't be changed, can they?
Regards
Well, you could put some external call to the parts you wanna change in the future inside the HTML.... don't you?
Yea, but those "external parts" can disappear in the future, so then we are talking about regular HTML pages again... I think "noneditability" is the price for imperishability.
No, you can't edit anything after it's stored in the chain. :/