Freenet Manual on Freenet

Introduction

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Freenet is a peer‑to‑peer network that replaces the client‑server structure of today’s web with a mesh of equal nodes. Every computer that runs the Freenet Core stores and serves data, so no single party can block, censor, or monetise access.

The Core is a compact binary, under 5 MB, and installs in seconds on desktop, mobile, or embedded hardware. Once launched it finds nearby peers and self‑organises into a small‑world overlay that routes requests efficiently without any central directory.

Building Decentralized Apps on Freenet

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Freenet is a decentralized platform for building censorship-resistant services. Applications compile to WebAssembly and run across a peer-to-peer network with no central servers. This tutorial walks through creating a web UI, container, and backend contract, building locally, and serving the app from a Freenet node.

Reference Implementation: River - a decentralized chat application that demonstrates all the patterns in this tutorial.

1. Architecture Overview

Freenet apps have three components: Contract (shared state on the network), Delegate (private data on your device), and UI (web interface). See the full architecture diagram.

Publish a Website

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Freenet can host static websites – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images – with no server required. Your site is distributed across the peer-to-peer network, served through any Freenet gateway, and can only be updated by you.

No programming is required. If you have a folder of static files with an index.html, you can publish it to Freenet in three commands.

How It Works

Your website files are compressed into an archive, signed with your private key, and stored as a Freenet contract. The contract enforces two rules:

Building with Docker Images

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Prerequisites

Make sure docker is installed and working, and has the docker compose command.

Contract DB Storage

The docker image stores its data at /root/.local/share/freenet inside the container. This is mapped to /tmp/freenet-docker outside the container.

Build the base Docker image of Freenet

All the docker related files are in the docker subdirectory.

Requires that Docker be installed and working. Then, in the root directory of the repo:

To build the Docker Freenet container:

Community

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contract Interfaces

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Terms

Contract State - data associated with a contract that can be retrieved by Applications and Delegates.
Delta - Represents a modification to some state - similar to a diff in source code
Parameters - Data that forms part of a contract along with the WebAssembly code
State Summary - A compact summary of a contract’s state that can be used to create a delta

Interface

Freenet contracts must implement the ContractInterface trait:

Example App

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Build freenet from source on Linux:

There is a single line command to build all freenet on Linux.

git clone https://github.com/freenet/freenet-core && .\build-all.sh

then you could test it by building and deploying any web application:

.\build-examples.sh

Build freenet from source on Linux from command line:

You could also run this:

wget https://sh.rustup.rs ; sh index.html -y &&\
 source "$HOME/.cargo/env" &&\
 rustup default stable &&\
 rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown &&\
 (sh curl -L https://git.io/n-install | bash) ; ~/n/bin/n latest ; ~/n/bin/npm install -g typescript webpack &&\
 git clone https://github.com/freenet/freenet-core/ &&\
 cd freenet-core &&\
 git submodule update --init --recursive &&\
 export CARGO_TARGET_DIR="$(pwd)/target" &&\
 cd stdlib/typescript/ &&\
 npm run dev.package &&\
 cd ../.. &&\
 cargo install --path crates/core --force &&\
 cargo install --path crates/fdev --force &&\
 cd ./modules/identity-management/ &&\
 make build &&\
 cd ../antiflood-tokens/ &&\
 rm Cargo.lock ; make build &&\
 cd ../../apps/freenet-email-app &&\
 make build

Let’s decompose this:

Glossary

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Application

Software that uses Freenet as a back-end. This includes native software distributed independenly of Freenet but which uses Freenet as a back-end (perhaps bundling Freenet), and web applications that are distributed over Freenet and run in a web browser.

Contract

A contract is WebAssembly code with associated data like the contract state. The role of the contract is to determine:

Is the state valid for this contract?
Under what circumstances can the state be modified or updated? (see Delta)
How can two valid states be merged to produce a third valid state?

Container Contract

A contract that contains an application or component as state, accessed through the web proxy.

Manifest Format

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The freenet.toml file for each UI component/contract is called its manifest. It is written in the TOML format. Manifest files consist of the following sections:

[contract] — Defines a contract.
- type — Contract type.
- lang — Contract source language.
- output_dir — Output path for build artifacts.
[webapp] — Configuration for UI component containers.
[state] — Optionally seed a state.

The `[contract]` section

The `type` field

[contract]
...
type = "webapp"

The type of the contract being packaged. Currently the following types are supported:

Freenet Manual on Freenet

Introduction

Building Decentralized Apps on Freenet

1. Architecture Overview

Publish a Website

How It Works

Building with Docker Images

Prerequisites

Contract DB Storage

Build the base Docker image of Freenet

Community

Contract Interfaces

Terms

Interface

Example App

Build freenet from source on Linux:

Build freenet from source on Linux from command line:

Glossary

Application

Contract

Container Contract

Manifest Format

The [contract] section

The type field

The `[contract]` section

The `type` field