AljoschaMeyer

Patchwork is a user interface for displaying messages from the distributed database to the user, and to allow the user to add new messages. The underlying protocol supports arbitrary message types, patchwork exposes a UI for interacting with a subset of them. Anyone could write and use other UIs while still contributing to the same database. Patchbay[1] for example is a more developer-centric frontend.

Under the hood, patchwork connects to a scuttlebot[2] server. Scuttlebot in turn is based on secure-scuttlebutt (ssb).

[1] https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay [2] http://scuttlebot.io/

You can also use the same keypair on multiple devices. This however results in another problem: You could post content from both devices simultaneously. But the underlying protocol requires each message to refer to the previous message by the same identity. So if two different devices post a message without having received the message of the other one, one of the messages is considered invalid.

(Public) information is not only shared between friends, but also between friends of friends. So as long as they have common friends connected to the internet, the data flows without problems.

To help with this situation, the network includes so called pubs. These are basically bots that run 24/7 and friend people. The article very briefly mentions them. More information here: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/concepts/pub.html

Yep, that's how it works.

Especially since the implementation details are not set in stone. Once the lower-level protocols start to stabilize, more efficient implementations will probably emerge.

Currently, a user can simply post an `about` message in the stream. Clients will then automatically use this name instead of the key.