Front-Page on Freenet

Services Without Servers

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ian Clarke’s July 2026 talk at FUTO is now available on YouTube. It is a progress update on Freenet: how the network works, and the applications running on it today.

The talk walks through four applications you can use now: River for group chat, with private rooms newly added; Delta for publishing; Atlas for discovery and search, in its first working version; and freenet-git, which supports clone, fetch and push over Freenet. Along the way it covers contracts, how apps are delivered to the browser, and how to try Freenet with no install at try.freenet.org.

Ian Clarke Answers Your Questions About Freenet

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ian Clarke answers community questions about Freenet, covering topics from the project’s vision and technical architecture to its roadmap and future plans.

Freenet Lives! Real-Time Decentralized Applications at Scale

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ian Clarke presents “Freenet Lives!” at FUTO, demonstrating real-time decentralized applications at scale on Freenet, including live demos of the network dashboard and River group chat.

Also available on

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River: Real-Time Group Chat on Freenet

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve reached an important milestone: real-time group chat between users on different machines, communicating through the Freenet network with sub-second message latency. The screenshot above captures the first live conversation: no servers, no federation, just peers.

A Proof of Concept

River is our test application for Freenet’s core capabilities. It’s very much a work in progress and not yet ready for general use, but it validates what we’ve been building toward: fully decentralized, scalable applications that feel responsive enough for real-time interaction.

Developer Meeting

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Attendees: Ian Clarke, Ignacio Duart

In this week’s core team meeting, we made significant progress on two fronts:

Update Propagation Over the Network
Updates are now successfully propagating across Freenet peers, a key milestone toward stable multi-node operation. Ignacio and Ector have been working together to finalize this, and although there may still be an edge case affecting update propagation through intermediary peers, once confirmed, we expect to release a new version shortly.

Weekly Developer Meeting

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Attendees

Ian Clarke
Ignacio Duart

Key Updates & Discussion Points

Network Connection Fixes
- Most issues preventing stable peer connections have been fixed.
- The network can now maintain multiple connections, resolving a previous issue where only two peers could connect at a time.
- The root cause was a combination of:
  - The gateway not waiting long enough before cleaning transient connections.
  - A logic bug in packet receipt handling that caused repeated transmission loops.
- A fix was implemented to send receipts after a time threshold, even if the packet count limit wasn’t met.
Remaining Network Issue

Weekly Developer Meeting

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s developer meeting highlighted steady progress toward Freenet’s upcoming release. Key milestones include successful testing of peer-to-peer connections, including hole-punching, which allows nodes to communicate seamlessly across firewalls. This feature is critical for maintaining decentralized connectivity and performed well during tests.

The team has implemented an automated configuration system, enabling nodes to download gateway settings directly, streamlining the setup process. Ignacio and Hector demonstrated scripts for quickly setting up nodes and gateways, simplifying deployment for developers and testers. Once released, most users will be able to get started with a single cargo install command.

Weekly Dev Meeting - Friday, August 30th, 2024

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Key Progress:

Major Refactor Completed:
- Refactor focused on initial connections between nodes via the gateway.
- Addressed numerous issues that were causing problems in the network.
- Integration testing has been improved, leading to faster feedback for changes.
Integration Testing Improvements:
- Fixed various errors in integration code that were causing issues during testing.
- Adjustments have sped up the testing process significantly, allowing for quicker iterations.

Current Blockers:

Transport Layer Issues:
- There is a problem with the handshake process between the gateway and peers.
- The gateway and peers are not correctly syncing on the use of symmetric and asymmetric keys during communication.
- Ignacio is currently diagnosing this issue, which appears to be the last major blocker.

Other Developments:

Ghost Keys: Building Cypherpunk Reputation Systems with Ian Clarke of Freenet

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this interview, Michael from FUTO sits down with Ian Clarke to discuss the revolutionary concept of Ghost Keys. They explore how these anonymous, verifiable identities could address some of the Internet’s foundational flaws and delve into the future of decentralized, Cypherpunk-inspired reputation systems.

Also available on

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News

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How Freenet Works

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ian Clarke, the creator of Freenet, explains how we solve problems like efficiently finding data, adapt to changing network conditions, and managing a peer’s resource usage. Q&A includes how Freenet compares to other networks, the history of Freenet, and how Freenet adapts to geography.

Also available on

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Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Anonymous Reputation in Freenet

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Zero-knowledge proofs are one of the most significant developments in cryptography since the invention of public-key crypto in the 1970s. But what exactly are they, what are they useful for, and what is their relevance to Freenet?

What Are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

In essence, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) allow one party to prove that they have some secret information, but without revealing anything about the information itself. For example, you could prove that you have some data that satisfies a certain condition like hashing to a particular value, without revealing the data itself.

How to Build Apps on Freenet

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ian Clarke explains how to build apps on Freenet, including the basic components of Freenet’s architecture like contracts, delegates, and user interfaces.

Also available on

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Proof-of-Trust: A Wealth-Unbiased Consensus Mechanism for Distributed Systems

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Traditional approaches to rate-limiting the creation of things like coins, tokens, and identities in distributed networks rely on computational (proof-of-work) or financial barriers (proof-of-stake) as a source of scarcity. While effective in some contexts, these methods are wasteful and unfairly favor those with more resources.

What is Proof-of-Trust?

Proof-of-Trust offers an alternative by utilizing the scarcity of reciprocal trust between individuals as the primary resource for rate-limiting various network activities. Unlike existing models, Proof-of-Trust does not inherently favor participants with greater computational power or financial means.

Mitigating Sybil attacks in Freenet

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Every node in the Freenet network has a location, a floating-point value between 0.0 and 1.0 representing its position in the small-world network. These are arranged in a ring so positions 0.0 and 1.0 are the same. Each contract also has a location that is deterministically derived from the contract’s code and parameters through a hash function.

The network’s goal is to ensure that nodes close together are much more likely to be connected than distant nodes, specifically, the probability of two nodes being connected should be proportional to 1/distance.