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The aim of the P2P Basel workshop is to bring together researchers and software builders to share insights and collaborate towards the sound and sustainable development of efficient eventually-consistent (offline-first) peer-to-peer systems. Examples of related projects of interest are Secure-Scuttlebutt, DAT/Hypercore, Cabal, Earthstar, Willow, Nostr, Holochain, P2Panda, GNUnet, NextGraph, Qaul, Pijul, Iroh.

The workshop is intended for 16 participants, 4 from the Computer Networks Group @ Unibasel and 12 invited external researchers and developers. The workshop is intentionally kept small to encourage deep technical discussions, foster strong collaborations between participants, and make the logistics easier to manage collaboratively.

We are already at full capacity.

Schedule Overview

  Fri. Jan. 23 Sat. Jan. 24 Sun. Jan. 25
8h-9h Breakfast + Lunch Prep. Breakfast + Lunch Prep. Breakfast + Lunch Prep.
9h-12h Official Welcome + Mixed talks Mature Insights + Early Seeds Talks Mature Insights Talks
12h-14h Lunch + Dinner Preparation Lunch + Dinner Preparation Lunch + Dinner Preparation
14h-18h Tutorials/Lectures + Student Projects + Mature Insights TBD TBD
18h-20h Supper Supper Supper
20h-… TBD (recommended places) TBD TBD

*TBD: To Be Decided by participants (unconference style)

-> Thursday Evening

For those arriving early, you may look at our recommended places for eating and socializing.

-> Official Welcome (Friday January 23rd 9h-10h)

The official opening of the workshop will be done on Friday morning with a brief announcement from Erick, a roundtable to get to know each other, and planning for sharing cooking and cleaning chores.

-> Tutorials/Lectures (Friday January 23rd Morning & Afternoon)

Tutorials/lectures provide a presentation of fundamental concepts and skills that may help participants better understand the following talks and discussions. Tutorials and lectures should last 45-50 minutes on core topics of interest.

  1. Tutorial: “Modelling Streaming Frameworks with TLA+ and Application to Pull/Push-Stream” by Erick Lavoie [TLA+ Video Lectures] [TLA+ Book] [Pull-Stream Repo] [Push-Stream Repo] [Pull-Stream Analysis & Formalism]
  2. Lecture: “Introduction to Multiparty Computation and Universal Circuits” by Ali Ajorian [Universal Circuit Paper] [Garbled Circuit Paper]

These lectures are open to students and researchers of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Basel. Participants are invited to prepare in advance by reading the relevant reference material.

-> Student Project Presentations (Friday January 23rd Morning & Afternoon)

Some of the students having successfully completed a related Bachelor or Master project/thesis in the Computer Networks Group will present their work, in 25 minutes.

  1. “Late-Binding between Groups and Permissions based on Trust in Offline-First System” by Paul Tröger
  2. “P2P e-voting Protocol” by Martin Chikov
  3. “Gachix: A binary cache for Nix over Git” by Ephraim Siegfried [pdf] [source code]

These presentations are open to students and researchers of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Basel. Participants are invited to prepare in advance by reading the referenced reports.

-> Mature Insights Talks (Saturday January 24th and Sunday January 25th Mornings)

Format: 15-20 minutes of prepared content but with a generous time allowance of up to 20 minutes for interactive questions and discussions with other participants.

Purpose: The talks should present new insights that are likely to be useful to other participants in their own projects. These insights might come, for example, from having deeply reflected about fundamental problems, or found unexpected issues in deployments that you wished you had known earlier because they would have led to different design decisions. You are strongly encouraged, but not obliged, to publish those insights in citable academic papers (such as pre-prints on Arxiv) or blog posts on your project’s website prior to your talk. If you do so, we will link to them next to your talk.

The talks are not intended for general marketing of your project: all participants are already fully busy advancing their own project(s) and so they are unlikely to drop theirs to join yours. Marketing towards a general audience will be better served by other venues (blog posts, videos, talks in larger conferences, etc.).

Planned Talks:

  1. “Designing and Implementing a Solution for Decentralized Group Management” by Sam Andreae [notes convergent access] [blog on access control][blog on group encryption]
  2. “Private GOC-Ledger” by Osman Biçer
  3. “Vouching-based moderation” by Alexander Cobleigh [spec]
  4. “States and Diffs in Version Control” by Pierre-Etienne Meunier
  5. “Collapsing Time Machine” by Michael Toomim
  6. “State of P2P Networking and QUIC-based approaches” by Frando
  7. “Routing, Multicast, and Group Encryption in Ad-hoc Mesh-networks” by Mathias
  8. “Are we DMLS yet?” by Jan Winkelmann (Keks)

-> Early Seeds Talks (Saturday January 24th Late Morning)

Format: 5-10 minutes of prepared content with no question.

Purpose: Early seeds talks should aim to provide an interesting perspective or insights that have not been validated already, to stimulate interesting discussions and draw attention to potential topics for the unconference part.

Planned talks so far:

  1. “Funding Models for P2P Apps & Middlewares” by Erick Lavoie
  2. “Report on P2P Lectures in Berlin + Book/Video Series” by Andreas Dzialocha
  3. “Design towards a common p2p system service” by Andreas Dzialocha & Frando
  4. “Some learnings from guiding p2p feature implementation in a non-p2p org” by Alex Cobleigh
  5. “Too much plumbing, not enough living: A case for a greater focus on applications in the P2P space” by Andre Garzia
  6. “Quaul: a local-first P2P mesh communication app” by Mathias
  7. “Uncensorability” by Osman Bicer
  8. “Personal Replication” by Christian Tschudin
  9. “The human factor in immutable Linux distributions” by Pierre-Étienne Meunier

Detailed Schedule

Friday

Morning
  1. (10:00 - 11:03) Tutorial: “Modelling Streaming Frameworks with TLA+ and Application to Pull/Push-Stream” by Erick Lavoie
  2. (11:30 - 12:15) Student Presentation: “Late-Binding between Groups and Permissions based on Trust in Offline-First System” by Paul Tröger
Afternoon
  1. (14:15 - 15:30) Lecture: “Introduction to Multiparty Computation and Universal Circuits” by Ali Ajorian
  2. (15:30 - 16:15) Student Presentation: “Gachix: A binary cache for Nix over Git” by Ephraim Siegfried
  3. (17:00 - 17:45) Mature Insight: “Vouching-based moderation” by Alexander Cobleigh
  4. (17:45 - 18:30) Mature Insight: “Designing and Implementing a Solution for Decentralized Group Management” by Sam Andreae
  5. (18:30 - 19:15) Mature Insight: “States and Diffs in Version Control” by Pierre-Etienne Meunier

Saturday

Morning
  1. (09:00 - 09:45) Mature Insight: “Private GOC-Ledger” by Osman Biçer
  2. (09:45 - 10:30) Mature Insight: “Collapsing Time Machine” by Michael Toomim
  3. (10:30 - 12:00) Early Seeds

Sunday

Morning
  1. (XX:XX - XX:XX) Student Presentation: “P2P e-voting Protocol” by Martin Chikov
  2. (9:00 - 9:45) Mature Insight: “State of P2P Networking and QUIC-based approaches” by Frando
  3. (9:45 - 10:30) Mature Insight: “Routing, Multicast, and Group Encryption in Ad-hoc Mesh-networks” by Mathias
  4. (10:30 - 11:15) Mature Insight: “Are we DMLS yet?” by Jan Winkelmann (Keks)
  5. (11:15 - 12:00) “DWeb Seminar Report” by Andreas Dzialocha & Christian Tschudin

Travel and Accommodations

You will have to organize travel and accommodations yourself. Basel is easily accessible by train and by plane. The cheapest hosting option is typically AirBnB.

Volunteering and Self-Organization

Half of the program will be done in a participant-driven unconference style. You can already think about sessions you’d like to host, discussions you’d like to initiate, etc.

To keep registration fees low, we will collectively cook and clean for ourselves during the event. All participants are expected to contribute: aprons and kitchenware are provided. Meals will be organized so that they do not require more than 30-60 minutes of preparation/cleaning from volunteers during the meal breaks, and will cook (if needed) in automated cookware during the sessions.

Registration and Attendance Fees

The workshop is by invitation from the organizers only. To have an opportunity to be invited in future editions, publicly contribute to eventually-consistent peer-to-peer systems in one or many of the following ways: publish your insights in pre-print venues, such as Arxiv, write insightful posts on your blog, and contribute to the technical development of eventually-consistent peer-to-peer systems.

We ask for 75 CHF / 80 EUR for attendance, regardless of when you arrive or leave, to cover meal costs including breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Sponsoring

If you have an academic affiliation and will give a talk, the Computer Networks Group can access university funds to help cover travel and accommodation. Contact Christian Tschudin.

Contacts

References

Books

Academic Papers

Others