automerge-rs VS rust-libp2p

See also, Autosurgeon (with a 0.3.0 release today), which is a higher level API on top of Automerge for Rust:

I'm building a mobile app with a server backend, and I was looking for resources to build them in an offline-first way (since unlike on the browser, people expect to use apps offline, if they can, such as fitness or habit trackers).

I found the concept of conflict-free relational data types (CRDTS) interesting as it allows you to have fully offline experiences while also having a conflict-free syncing experience. I was looking for some good libraries and came across automerge [0] and yrs [1], but both had some rough APIs as they're primarily low-level Rust libraries that are wrapped by higher-level TypeScript APIs.

Autosurgeon wraps the low-level API of automerge to make it much more ergonomic, closer to the TypeScript experience, but in Rust of course. You can for example use `struct`s which autosurgeon will serialize and deserialize automatically, which is not present in base automerge, which focuses more on string keys and arbitrary values.

I am planning on using this together with Flutter and flutter_rust_bridge [2] in order to use this same Rust library everywhere. In this case, the server just becomes another (albeit more privileged) client.

[0] https://github.com/automerge/automerge-rs

[1] https://github.com/y-crdt/y-crdt

[2] https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_rust_bridge

I found the concept of conflict-free relational data types (CRDTS) interesting as it allows you to have fully offline experiences while also having a conflict-free syncing experience. I was looking for some good libraries and came across automerge and yrs, but both had some rough APIs as they're primarily low-level libraries that are wrapped by TypeScript APIs.

Yes, the plan is to use PostgreSQL. I had a discussion with one of the devs in this ticket about the strategy for this.

In any case, my current plan is to use Automerge for the data handling itself (so I can easily do collaboration), but that crate doesn't handle on-disk storage. For this I need another solution, and a K/V store is well suited for this task.

15 years working in software, Rust has been my favourite language for the last 2. Recently completed a contract to prototype a distributed Tailscale-inspired VPN built on Ink and Switch's CRDT project automerge-rs.

Complex topic. There's a very easy-to-use CRDT library for Rust (automerge), while there isn't much support for operational transforms (although Aper is new to me, I have to check it out).

I've been watching automerge-rs like a hawk, because they seem to be the only CRDT implementation where you don't need a Mathematics master to understand how to use it. They've been working on a rewrite for the last two years, hopefully they'll do a new release soon.

https://github.com/automerge/automerge-rs

By the way despite that particular repo (@localfirst/state) last being touched 6 months ago, Herb Caudill definitely seems still active in this space (I believe he's been working on other parts of this more recently -- e.g. ideas about authentication), and I think automerge development itself is quite active right now leading up to a 1.0 release which seems fairly imminent, for which a lot of fundamental work has been done, also coordinating with automerge-rs.

Substrate and Lighthouse use libp2p as a networking stack for communication between nodes. The libp2p framework is a versatile modular peer-to-peer networking stack. It provides a collections of abstractions, mechanisms, and protocols for facilitating communication in P2P systems. In particular, libp2p supports multiple transport mechanisms (TCP, QUIC, WebSocket, WebTransport, etc.), encryption schemes (TLS and Noise), and stream multiplexing. Higher-level protocols in libp2p are implemented on top of reliable, ordered, bidirectional binary streams, which are transparently encrypted and multiplexed by the framework.

It's a peer-to-peer "engine" with switchable components. Seems to run on different platforms (browsers, mobile, desktop, server).

At a glance, it looks pretty much like libp2p (https://libp2p.io/) but seems to integrate with libp2p as well (meaning you should be able to use Bifrost on one end, and libp2p on the other), so I'm guessing there is at least some fundamental difference, but I cannot spot it. Seems to use slightly different terminology compared to libp2p.

ComposeDB is a graph database created by 3BoxLabs, a company well-known in the Web3 ecosystem for their work on decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and their main product the Ceramic network. Ceramic is a network of nodes that store and share composable data streams on top of libp2p, the network stack that also powers IPFS.

Yes, there is already a Rust version (https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p) that behaves well at this level but I think we can reach a higher level of performance on this point with Zig. Also, if you look at the long term roadmap of libp2p (https://github.com/libp2p/specs/blob/master/ROADMAP.md), the mobile devices and IoT integrations for example are part of the considerations.

libp2p

At Filecoin Foundation, we see the technologies in the Filecoin ecosystem offering rock-steady stepping stones to this better future. Libp2p lets individual users find and talk to each other, without needing central servers. IPFS gives new services a way to find data, wherever it is stored — freeing them from dependence on one social media company over another and letting users move from one service to another. The Filecoin network itself, with incentivized storage, not only provides a provably stable basis for hosting content, but also shines a light on the kind of incentive systems that will enable independent social media to sustain and provide for itself for the long run, without relying on the largesse of the current tech giants.

Maybe https://libp2p.io

So, after rolling my eyes and saying to myself 'not another web3 protocol', I began to understand the need for something new that not only takes advantage of the cutting edge in peer to peer networking but also acknowledges the fact that the client-server architecture is also not going away (which is incredibly important in a world full of low-powered, embedded devices).