# Russian Farcaster: How Bastyon Works (as Russia bans Discord) Source: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/bastyon-works/how.html Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Russian-Farcaster-How-Bastyon-Works-as-Russia-bans-Discord?index=0x67114a68c1410d74ccf81cdc2ae24def5f67b40249ba7fd8c11ac61e9c05ad5d9b39b661 Submitted by simplifiedprivacy.eth on 2024-10-17 UTC, 6 upvotes, 0 comments ## Summary Bastyon is a decentralized social media protocol in which posts are blockchain transactions while text, images and video are stored off-chain, according to an interview with lead developer Daniel Satchkov conducted by Simplified Privacy. Every node stores all post data, so any node a user connects to is interchangeable, which the article says is critical for reaching the network across a firewall. Bastyon has no official foundation or development funds, and Satchkov said "everyone chips in." The article also reports a total Pkoin supply of 24 million 375 thousand and a market cap of over 8 million USD at the time of writing. ## Article We got to interview Bastyon's Lead Dev Daniel Satchkov. Daniel Satchkov Simplified Privacy had an opportunity to sit down with Daniel Satchkov the lead developer and creator of Bastyon. Rather than use a traditional Q&A format, instead we will summarize and simply the technical information we learned from him about the protocol. Off-chain data Posts are transactions Every post is a transaction on the blockchain and costs a tiny bit of Pkoin, Bastyon’s native cryptocurrency. Pkoin is Proof of Stake, and the nodes serve the social media content. Off-Chain Storage The text and videos of posts is kept OFF-CHAIN, but the blockchain transactions keep track and coordinate which users posted and that they paid the nodes to do so. Nodes Store ALL data The biggest difference between Nostr and Bastyon, is that on Bastyon, ALL nodes store ALL post data. This turns which node a Bastyon user connects to into a commodity, since they are all the same. Which is critical for accessing information across a firewall, since if only a single node is on your side of it, then it can serve as a lifeline to the whole network. Domains optional Bastyon does NOT require nodes to use government domains or the traditional DNS system. Future Scaling In the future to scale, the dev plans to group many social transactions together. For example a bunch of likes from one user into one transaction. The total text of posts is currently around 60G, but in the future the dev plans to have pruned nodes with only the most recent social posts and transactions. This system would radically save overhead on the blockchain. And then there will be larger nodes for search purposes. BitTorrent Pictures & Video The videos and pictures are delivered differently using BitTorrent, coordinated and rewarded by the same blockchain. This can be thought of similar to Peertube but rewarded by the blockchain so users don’t have to federate with a whole CDN network like Peertube requires. Right now, it’s a mix of nodes and torrents. But it is on path to be fully using BitTorrents in the future. Faucet comes from Devs (Not Protocol) When new users first create a Bastyon keypair, they are automatically given a small amount of Pkoin to be able to make their initial posts. However, this might mistakenly make a Pkoin investor very concerned about degrading the value of their coins with new unlimited supply. But the Bastyon dev explained to us that these new coins come from a faucet of the developer’s supply and NOT from the protocol itself. In other words, the devs are willing to give away from their wallets, to encourage new users and adoption. Rewards Nodes The protocol rewards the nodes for delivering social content and validating transactions, and these rewards are based on how much they stake. Content Creators Additionally content creators are rewarded for having popular posts to encourage quality and participation. None for Devs Keep in mind the developers of Bastyon do NOT get a cut from the protocol’s outgoing supply. There’s no “dev tax” Supply More than half is already released, with a total supply of 24 million 375 thousand. At the time of this writing, Pkoin has a market cap of over 8 million USD. No Foundation Bastyon has no official foundation or development funds. Daniel Satchkov said “everyone chips in”, referring to both devs and support staff. No Centralized DNS Bastyon.com The Bastyon.com website could be a client for some users with a browser extension. However, the protocol is NOT dependent on their centralized domain name. Censorship is a big risk, and so the developers encourage people to use the real desktop client and not the website. Bootstrap The desktop and android clients bootstrap similar to Bitcoin, where it has some nodes added to begin with, and then these nodes communicate other nodes for a list. Routing traffic through Tor is another option. Conclusion War In conclusion, perpetual war requires distrust of entire societies. Bastyon breaks down the barriers for people all around the world to speak to each other, which makes foreigners feel more human. This diminishes the ability of politicians to demonize a distant foreigner, when normally restrictions and censorship on the internet prevent it from happening. It’s more critical now then ever to have free speech “bastyons”. We’d like to thank Daniel Satchkov for answering our questions. 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