Decentralised
Repository Hosting
Decentralised hosting of git objects will provide
immutable, programmable, censorship-resistant
and highly-available source code repositories
for collaborators.
Our Motivation
Our drive to develop a decentralised git hosting system is
due to the problems of ownership and censorship.
Ownership
The ability to create genuinely decentralised source code repositories makes it possible for communities to develop different ownership structures that are enforced by cryptography. Repositories may be privately-owned, open but permissioned or fully open. As a decentralised repository, contributors are assured that repositories are not managed by a central authority but by a protocol that is incapable of bias or conspiracy.
Immutability
On Ellcrys, repositories will forever remain immutable and indestructible. It will not be possible for any party to make a repository inaccessible by destroying it. Internally, a git repository is composed of objects that are organised and stored with a tamper-proof, immutable data structure which eliminates tampering and the replication of these objects on many nodes make it impossible to remove a repository. On centralised hosting services, as repository can be easily deleted from storage if desired.
Governance
Collaborators can create or import pre-designed governance templates that will help their decision-making process be more transparent, fast and inclusive. Repositories can make use of native governance primitives like proposals, votes, reputation, stake, coin and autonomous functions to build simple to complex governance structures.
High Availability
Every so often, developers are made to endure long hours of service outages. Basic operations like pushing and pulling of git objects are limited by technical, economic or political issues such as platform outages, service suspension due to outstanding bills or adversarial attacks by hostile entities. On a decentralised git hosting system, access is unrestrictable, guaranteed and only limited by the scalability of the protocol and the governance structure of communities.
Censorship Resistant
Today, big corporations can prevent the propagation of thoughts that are deemed unacceptable to a majority or a government. As technology continues to evolve there will be a strong desire for governments and corporations to stifle controversial innovations by censoring access to places where collaboration happen. There is a need for protocols that ensure fundamental rights like speech via coding can be expressed without fear.
Programmable
With Autonomous Functions (a.k.a Smart Contract), repositories can both serve as a centre for code-sharing and also provide applications that perform arbitrary tasks. They can include functions that when executed, alter the repositories state and protocol default behaviour. Repositories can use autonomous functions to manage ownership, membership, governance, treasury and more.
Interoperable
The decision to base the protocol on the git technology allows contributors to continue to build great tools and technologies using the tools and workflow they are already accustomed to. Ellcrys tools and protocol will be compatitible with existing git-supporting tools and services.
