DSide

A proof of concept demonstrating decentralized consensus via distributed key/value store.

Setup

Install the DSide program globally using Node Package Manager:

$ [sudo] npm install -g dside

After installation, DSide will create an app directory at $HOME/.dside and generate a public/private RSA key pair that will identify you on the network as well as create a default configuration file.

You can regenerate your identity and configuration by simply deleting these files and running:

$ dside bootstrap

Next, if you want to connect to a known seed, edit your configuration file to add the seed:

$ vim ~/.dside/config.json

If you are acting as the first seed, don't worry about this step.

Usage

Start your node and accept connections from other nodes:

$ dside start

Leave this process running in one terminal or feel free to background it. From another terminal, you can interact with your running node via RPC. More details on commands and options can be found by running:

$ dside --help

Submit a Key-Value Pair

In general, DSide is built as a means to distribute a key-value database. To submit a pair to your local database and propagate it across the network:

$ dside submit -k foo -v bar

Recalling a Key-Value Pair

Your record is stored using a special key that proves you are the author to allow for easy recall and to prevent others from tampering with your data. Included in each message is your public key and a signature. Your record is looked up by it's <key>::<pubkeyhash>.

The pubkeyhash is a base64 encoded SHA-1 hash of your public key. Using the CLI, you don't need to know this value, since DSide will compute it for you. Simply run:

$ dside recall -k foo

And this will return the value you submitted for that key.

Determining Consensus

A prime use case for a distributed key-value store such as this, is to use the public record of other's submissions to gain consensus on a given key. This can be thought of as a sort of "vote" or "poll".

To get the top value for a key along with a list of other values in order of popularity:

$ dside consensus -k foo

Programmatic Example

DSide also exposes itself as a portable module that can be used within your own application.

// require dside
var DSide = require('dside');

// create a dside node with a config object
var node = new DSide(config);

node.on('ready', function() {
  // start node
  node.start();
});