DAPPCON 2025: Radicle for Resilience, 5 Things You Didn't Know (But Should) - Elefterios

Transcript

Hi. Hello. Can you hear us? Okay. Yes. Awesome. Uh so uh you see two of us on stage today because we will actually do a live thing. So give us a few seconds to um to set up. Uh today we will talk about radical and um uh what does that mean for code collaboration um and resilience? How many of you uh have you heard about radical out of curiosity? Okay. Uh almost half. Uh amazing. Okay. So uh uh so uh let's do this. Um so uh we uh started working uh on radical in 2018. Um the main um belief we had back then was that things were about to get

weird in the world and unfortunately in 2025 things are already weird in the world. And um we um really value open source. We think that is one of the digital treasures of the world, a symbol of global uh collaboration like no other. And we thought that everything that's happening on the geopolitical landscape will actually impact negatively the thing we love. Uh and we are already here. I believe that many of you are familiar with that. that uh in 2025 um the openness in open source is to be challenged depending on where you live in the world, depending on which countries you visit uh and many more uh weird things. Uh so we started working on Radical. Um uh Radical is a

peer-to-peer protocol for code collaboration. Uh you can uh check it out on radical.xyz. And um today I want to share five things that I think that you know are interesting and exciting about it that you should know. Uh so the first one is that uh radical is 100% git compatible. Uh fundamentally radical extends git in uh three interesting ways. Uh the one is um it adds um a cryptographic identity layer um and we will talk about that. The second thing is that uh it actually brings the social artifacts within the git object the things that became familiar with things like GitHub, GitLab. Now you can have them in a sovereign truly peer-to-peer environment

and then lastly uh Radical extends GitHip network and I will I will explain why that is. Uh so let's start with cryptographic identities. Uh so within within Radical uh we use cryptographic identities across the board. you know, you can create them locally. We're using ED25519 keys and that that are also DID uh compatible and we already support uh DID key. Now we can we can actually show you how how easy it is to get started and I'm going to pass the ball to Finton. Finton, can we hear you? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Hello. Hello. Cool. Um yeah, so I'm going to take over and show uh how you can get off of GitHub. So I'm going to clone an old repository of mine uh called Dalbat. Uh so let's clone and we're starting with GitHub just simply to show you how you can actually go from a GitHub repo to exactly sovereign mode and we're still get compatible. So okay, I'll routin it and that brings up like a a wizard. um dalbat I'll skip the description default master and going to create a public

visibly uh repository. So here we see the repository being created. Um it's got its identifier and it's synced up with the the network. Um, at this point I can actually actually click this and we see the repository in our web app view potentially. Yeah, there we go. Um, and so it's like a fresh radical repository. Um, as well as this, I can actually go over to the desktop and um, okay, it's not showing up. get this refresh and I think

um but yeah I'll show you a little bit how it's um git compatible. So um as I said we have the repository identifier here and essentially your um your forge is locally on your computer. So here we have radical storage followed by the identifier and I can actually tree the refs and all the references get references are in there um sitting in there including like the identity. Um so that is also the part of like the social artifact. Um yeah,

amazing. Uh so yeah, and as you can see for the ones of you that are familiar with git, you know, the storage model here is you know uh very very similar. So so that's the first thing R radical basically means git. You don't need to go into a completely different uh workflow. Uh the second point that uh I would like to talk about is that uh radical effectively extends git with uh social artifacts and what's exciting about this beyond you know the security properties then that everything is actually signed you can address anything. Additionally, everything is also local first. Um, uh, which is something that gives you really nice performance, uh, and really nice experience. It's something that also

surprised us being used to the cloud model versus actually having everything on your device. So, let's actually look at this. Um, so first, all right, I'm going to try find it on the desktop again, maybe by restarting. Um if not I will drop back to there we go. I'll drop back to the CLI. Okay. So here we have um tabs for issues and patches. Um let's create an issue. So I'll start off uh with the title. Let's move this off of GitHub entirely.

uh create.github read me to point to radical instead to point users to radical instead. Uh actually before I do that before I create it I'm going to stop my node so that I can show you it is offline first not only local first. Um, so I'll jump back to this repo here on the web view. There's no issues.

Uh, I'm going to save this. Let's refresh. Nothing. Let's add node start. Uh, sorry, my band got in the way. So, we started my node again, and I'm just going to hop into that repo and call rad sync. And I'll go verbose. So, got to wait for the the pipes to clear out and let the information hit that peer-to-peer network. Apologies about our janky spinner.

Um, so should I refresh again? There it is. all offline first. You can work on the airplane or uh answer your issues, make pull requests or patches as we call them and sync back up with the network when you're back online. Uh sorry, if we can go back to the desktop app as well, you can we can just navigate there so you can see how instant everything feels because it's literally on your computer, right? Uh so yeah, some some really nice performance um that you get out of the box. Uh I think uh many engineers in the room will probably appreciate that. Um awesome. Okay. So, so that's the second thing. So, first thing radical means

100% git you know. Second thing is you have this locally signed local first social artifacts. Uh and this of course extends to everything right like things like is huge things like comments things like you know patches is is our equivalent of PRs all of those are locally on your computer cryptographically signed and you know you can you can interact with them instantly. So now let's move to the to the third thing. Uh so so one of the things that many decentralized protocols actually you know don't get to is is some degree of privacy. Uh but when it comes to uh open source and specifically the state of open source we think that privacy actually is extremely important.

Uh both you know privacy uh with regards to how you reveal your work in the open. How do you go from a private repository to to an open source repository, but also uh with regards to how you protect yourself when you're contributing to um uh challenging uh projects uh with regards to power. Uh so Radical comes out of the box with both private repos and a door integration. Maybe we can show a little bit about how uh how a private repo looks like. Sure. Um I'm going to take a really old repository that I call talks. Apparently, I only made two talks. Um, so let's do the same dance GitHub clone and

we'll do radit again and this time we will pick private. Um so I'm going to do a little inspect of um maybe inspect of the repository. Uh so in this case rad inspect identity shows visibility type private. Um essentially at this point I can um allow certain nodes in the network to know about this repository and um I will show that flow by grabbing the seed.radical radical garden and rad ID

allow and don't need the address part and in fact I need the key part. So at this point I've created um a new revision which should be no I apologize. Uh let me see if it just got accepted. Maybe I've done something wrong. Live demos.

Yeah. But fundamentally uh you have the possibility to actually specify an allow list. And this is the these are the only nodes that you actually sharing that repo uh with. And then additionally as I mentioned there's a tour integration that you can use. You can route all your traffic via door if you would like that or partly like you can operate in mixed mode and and full mode. Uh so that's the third thing. Um yeah, let's move to the to the next one. So this is this is one of my favorite ones. Uh so u in radical you can have um canonical references, canonical branches and signature thresholds. Let let's break down what that means and what that enables. Um uh so so if you think about the GitHub model, right? So so on GitHub, let's say

you're interested in a repository. Let's say that this repository is Bitcoin core. Uh if you want to find that repostor, you have to go to github.com/bitcoin core, you know, bitcoin core, right? Uh so that's location specific specific effectively you trusting that location to give back to you the content you want. Uh in a true peer-to-peer network, um of course we can't do that. Uh what we do want to do instead is we want any node uh to be able to share with you uh the content that you're after and you to be able to verify this fully. And the way Radical does that is by actually introducing um a gossip network where effectively nodes gossip to each other what kind of repositories they have and

what kind of um updates within the those repositories and then for transport uh radical actually uses git. So effectively you know when you know that Finton's node has the the content that you're interested in then your node basically fetches that from him. And uh if the thing that actually enables us to do that is is is this idea of of an identity document. And let me explain what's happening here. So every repository in radical um contains an identity document. Uh in fact the hash uh for the repo identifier is is a hash of of this identity document. And in that identity document we codify a bunch of interesting things. Um the one thing that we codify is something that we call

the the delegates. You can think of this as the signers, the admins, the governance of that repo. Uh and then additionally, you have the possibility to specify what we call a threshold. And in this particular example that you see behind me, the threshold is one. You have one signer and the threshold is one. So in order for you to change the state of a repo, all it takes is is one signature from from from that from that node. Um but what's interesting here is that of course you can do many more things around that concept. You can have for instance like five signers and you can have you know threshold of three. Uh and to the ones of you that are familiar with the cryptocurrency industry this starts to feel a bit like what the

multisig does for your assets but actually doing the exact same thing for your code. Uh and the way we're using this within radical is we um actually um uh going from the trees of the different maintainers into a cano the canonical state of a repo. let's say the master branch, right? So the master branch effectively is dynamically derived uh from from from this logic and what the maintainers are doing. We're running a little bit late of uh on time, so maybe we we won't show that uh further. Uh but if we can go to the next slide. So so with this capability um this specific capability, you can think of them as you know decentralized branches with uh cryptographic policies enforced. uh and

these of course are very handy for us with regards to um code collaboration as they allow us to codify the governance of a repo within the repo itself. But as it turns out to be this this specific aspect is also um very uh interesting and has benefits in more applications. Uh today as the last thing I want to show you uh is something new that's coming out of of our ecosystem. So a group within our community has been using the radical protocol and um this these aspects of it that I showed you in order to solve a a large problem we think uh for the industry the problem of um uh locally verifiable and secure frontends. Um so if we can go to the

next slide um so so uh today I would like to show you um uh something new that's coming. This we call the rad works app for secure and verifiable frontends. uh it's building of on the existing technology uh but it's actually a consumer product. Um so up to this point you know our ecosystem was very focused on developers uh but now we realize that actually consumers need to also enjoy some of the benefits of locally verifiable software as well. Uh so so based on this logic that I described as a multisig for code um uh we actually planning to introduce uh to the market a consumer end product uh it's a it's a launcher for front ends um

in this specific example that you see behind me um you see unis unis swap the unis swap app uh safe uh and lido and as a consumer what you will be able to do is actually you will be able to uh install those apps um and verify them locally And as you can see, let's let's zoom in on unis swap. You will have also the possibility to see a few more properties about what's happening with that developer team. Are they doing source code signing? Great. Uh are they doing binary signing? Awesome. You know, what kind of trust policy do they have?

Okay, it's three out of five maintainers. Uh and then finally, if they're doing reproducible builds, even better. Although for many of those um apps, this isn't the case. Uh so effectively you will be able to download um front ends locally on your device uh verify them and then consume them use them uh enjoying some of the same cryptographic properties both uh on the way you know you receive content uh but also like the the trust logic the the social policy that I show behind the scenes and this of course is also building off of the radical network and and the thing that gives you is again you know you have a local first to consume your favorite front ends This uncensorable is truly tapping into a

peer-to-peer network and all you need is a single node that has you know the front end that you're interested in. Uh it's also chain agnostic. This can support you knowis chain and ethereum chain and you know bitcoin defy related frontends etc. And then the last thing it it's building off this idea of repro reproducible trust. even a single developer machine is compromised. As long as the majority of the maintainers machines are not compromised, then you actually have um you know uh secure uh delivery and consumption of of front ends. Uh so uh that's it for us for today. Um you know again to remind you like you know we're working on this because we think that open source is at risk. Uh we think that you know radical is providing

a better home for open source today. What you see behind us is actually uh you know the pushes to the radical network. It took us a while to get this to a stable state but Radical is stable since September 2024. We've been shipping more software than ever. Uh so yeah, we would love to get your feedback. Uh we will be uh around the conference today and if you care about decentralization then you should use this decentralized forge. Thank you very much.