What is this all about?

Radicle is an open-source code collaboration stack built on Git. It's partly peer-to-peer, but its creators and proponents usually leave out the "partly," conflating it with more well-known P2P networks such as BitTorrent.

Cradicle is designed to fix that, offering a truly P2P network, in order to provide git repo hosting freedom.

If successful, Cradicle should allow anyone to share their projects and app downloads freely, without relying on GitHub or equivalents.

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Added features

Universal peerage via Tor

Unlike Radicle's "peer-to-peer-to-peasant" design, Cradicle is designed to allow any user to become a seeding peer, using Tor onion service integration.

JavaScript-free browser interface

Instead of a "web app" relying on JavaScript, Cradicle's web interface pages are generated in plain HTML.

Planned: nostr keypairs

While nostr desperately needs decentralized git hosting, nostr devs have complained about Radicle's keypairs being incompatible with nostr's. Therefore, Cradicle will add a nostr keypair mode.

What do we mean about "peer-to-peer seeding?"

Decentralized git hosting isn't just for code

What else could you use this for?

Decentralized wiki backend

Wikipedia is famous for allowing users to write and rewrite encyclopedia entries. A wiki based on a decentralized git would provide better ways to organize contributions from all users, instead of simply blocking users and erasing entries a central authority disagrees with.

Decentralized databases, lists, charts

Wikipedia is also famous for hosting many lists and charts. A wiki based on a decentralized git could not block certain datasets from being included or completed. For example, there are paywalled climate databases, obfuscating data for researchers and allowing a central authority to manipulate it. Wikipedia props up such databases by refusing to provide space for free versions. With Radicle or Cradicle, users are free to make that space available.

Any tool that relies on public databases

A weather app needs a database of weather measurements, and potentially forecasts. You can't have a decentralized weather app without decentralized databases of things like air temperatures. Social media apps also require databases. Nostr and other similar projects have struggled to make those databases less centralized. Nostr itself can't even standardize how editing posts works under the hood. Maybe nostr is another thing that would be better if it used a network designed around a "version control system."

Tools that can't even work without decentralization

Honey is an infamous tool that promised to track prices and discount offers across the entire internet, so users could get the best price available on a product. It was an obvious scam, as it offered users no way to reinforce the quality of the database. Decentralized database storage with "version control" could be vital to creating a real version of a price comparison app like Honey.

Community policies and governance

Members of Congress take credit for bills written and rewritten by shadowy lobbying groups. Millions of voters have to select one representative to rephrase every paragraph of a bill they'd want to rephrase. Imagine if bills were written and passed through a decentralized wiki, where every user can review segments, suggest changes, and track each part's origins?

If Radicle and/or Cradicle aren't ready for some of these use cases, they should be refined until they are. Decentralized hosting with version control has the potential to change the world's data infrastructure completely.

Additional links

Cradicle feedback thread on Radicle's Zulip board

Radicle on Wikipedia

GitTorrent by Chris Ball (a different project with similar goals)