Haven't read the post yet (I should, I have been vaguely following y'all along but obviously not close enough!) How is this different from delta-based CRDTs? I've built (admittedly toy) CRDTs as DAGs that ship deltas using lattice operations and it's really not that hard to have it work. There's already CRDT based distributed stores out there. How is this any different?
Good question! Freenet is a decentralized key-value store, but unlike traditional KV stores, the keys are WebAssembly (WASM) contracts. These contracts define not just what values (i.e., data or state) are valid for that key but also when and how the value can be mutated. They also specify how to efficiently synchronize the value across peers using summaries and deltas.
Each contract determines how state changes are validated, summarized, and merged, meaning you can efficiently implement almost any CRDT mechanism in WASM on top of Freenet. Another key difference is that Freenet is an observable KV store, allowing you to subscribe to values and receive immediate updates when they change.
