_Note: There is a Russian translation of this blog post, courtesy of HTR.

Radicle is a system for code collaboration that has several advantages over existing tools. In particular Radicle is:

• Completely peer-to-peer
• Easily modifiable & programmable
• Extensible

We've built several "utilities" using the radicle system. One example, rad-issues, is a P2P issue tracker:

$rad issue list state # title author updated open 32 can't log in juliendonck 2019-01-25T13:27 open 23 typo fix cloudhead 2019-01-25T13:27 closed 12 why doesn't this work? xla 2019-01-25T13:27  $ rad issue new
<opens text editor>

\$ rad issue comment 33 'I have doubts'
Commented on issue 33 in docs


You don't need to understand any of what follows to use these utilities. But how they work behind the scenes is quite interesting. What exactly happens when we create a new issue tracker? Or when someone submits a new issue? How do peers see it? How are messages replicated? Or validated?

The radicle stack uses IPFS (InterPlanetary file system) for replicating state. IPFS is a peer-to-peer distributed file system. One can think of IPFS as a network of computers operating in a manner similar to a BitTorrent swarm, exchanging files within a single Git repository, using hashes for addresses. Radicle is built on top of the IPFS protocol, but runs on its own network.

The core component of each utility is a Radicle machine. The word 'machine' refers to state machine, that is, an abstract mathematical function rather than a piece of hardware.

Where does a machine "exist"? Where does it execute? Part of the idea behind the Radicle architecture is to abstract away any such notion. Whether on your local device, or the larger P2P network, as long as a machine is available it can be retrieved from its IPFS address. For the most part, it's sufficient to know that a machine exists, and that you can interact with it. But in this blog post, we'll bore down into these abstraction layers.

Formally, a Radicle machine is a state machine defined by:

• a set of possible states $$S$$
• a set of possible inputs $$I$$
• a set of possible outputs $$O$$
• a transition function $$f : S \times I \to S \times O$$
• a distinguished starting state $$s_0$$

The state machine starts in state $$s_0$$, and this state is updated according to the inputs (elements of $$I$$) given to the machine. If at some point the machine is in state $$s$$ then the input $$i$$ will cause a transition to state $$s'$$ and output $$o$$, where $$f(s, i) = (s', o)$$.

A simple example is a counter machine where:

$$S = \mathbb{Z}$$

$$I = \{\mathtt{increment}, \mathtt{getCounter}\}$$

$$O = \{\mathtt{ok}\} \cup \mathbb{Z}$$

$$f(n, i) = \begin{cases} (n + 1, \mathtt{ok}) & \text{when } i = \mathtt{increment} \\ (n,n) & \text{when } i = \mathtt{getCounter} \end{cases}$$

$$s_0 = 0$$

People can define their own Radicle machines, or set up new ones with an existing definition.

Crucially, machines are deterministic. If you start from any machine, in any state, providing the same set of inputs will always result in the same set of outputs, and the same new state. Therefore, in order for everyone to agree on the current state of a machine, we need to communicate two things:

• The definition of the machine
• The inputs that have already been processed by the machine

We then end up with several machines $$M$$, $$N$$, etc. with starting states $$M_0$$, $$N_0$$, evolving according to the various inputs they receive:

Rather than come up with a separate way to formally specify machine definitions, Radicle starts from a single root machine $$R$$, a special machine which may eventually behave like any other, given the correct inputs:

In this way a Radicle machine's definition and its operation are coincident. A machine is completely determined by its input log, and its state is recovered by feeding these inputs into the root machine $$R$$.

For example, to produce the counter state machine above, we can input the following:

;; prelude here

(def s (ref 0))

(def eval
(match input


(In this example we've omitted the Radicle prelude, which is a set of basic modules containing many useful functions for writing state machines. The prelude is necessary here in order to access pattern matching functionality. Note that helper functions exist to write this in a more natural style. Note also that Radicle-the-language is likely to change considerably in the near future.)

Machines are materialized from the sequence of all received expressions. This sequence is maintained via a pointer to a linked list stored on IPFS. To materialize a Radicle machine, the pointer is resolved, fetching data from IPFS, and the resulting set of expressions is evaluated. One can then make a query to inspect the materialized machine. For example, requesting the current state with get-counter.

Fetching data will also replicate those IPFS blocks automatically, ensuring availability if other peers go offline. One nice feature of this architecture is that popular machines will be more available. Currently we pin all data indefinitely, however, with a system to unpin rarely used data, we get a simple and elegant replication and garbage collection infrastructure. Another useful feature is that machines with common prefixes -- i.e. those that share initial definitions -- will also share IPFS blocks. This means that a) if you already have those blocks you won't need to fetch them again, and b) if anyone has the blocks because of a different machine, they will still replicate and increase availability for other machines that need those blocks. Most machines will share the prelude blocks; issue machines will additionally share the issue-definition blocks; etc.

Instead of fetching and materializing manually, Radicle network participants each run a radicle daemon instance in the background.

A query of the current state is made to the Radicle daemon. The daemon then resolves the pointer, fetches the data stored on IPFS, re-materializes the machine, and returns the result. After the initial query, your daemon will subscribe (follow) that pointer for updates, automatically replicating and materializing further updates. If you make another query, you will get the latest data almost immediately.

Mostly you'll be running this daemon locally—meaning it won't be available to anyone else but you. However, you can also choose to serve this data publicly, which has two advantages (each with caveats, for now):

First, it makes running a machine-replication service trivial. If you're worried about your data being unavailable while offline, you can simply query a public daemon for your machine, causing that daemon to replicate from your instance. Then, when you go offline, the remote server can continue to make your machine available. We provide several such public daemons, but you can also run your own and help seed your favorite machines. Since you still control the pointer, and all data is identified by hash, you don't need to trust these public daemons.

Note: While Radicle is still in alpha, daemons have no authentication mechanism, thus there is a possibility of DOS attacks if you enable this option.

Secondly, because the radicle daemon is just an HTTP server, this opens the possibility of creating websites using your machine as a data layer.

Note: This can only be accomplished manually at present. We aim to automate and simplify this process in the future.

How does the pointer work? We back it with an IPNS pointer. IPNS (InterPlanetary Name System) is a way of maintaining mutable links to IPFS objects. An IPNS name is simply the hash of a public key. The owner of the corresponding private key controls that IPNS name by signing updates to the IPNS pointer. The owner of the pointer is also, in a way, the owner of the Radicle machine. In theory, they can choose which new inputs are accepted (though accepting inputs is an automatic process guided by the semantics of the machine, so under normal conditions this won't happen). The owner's radicle daemon subscribes to an IPFS pubsub channel, and anyone who wants to submit new inputs to a machine sends their input to the relevant pubsub channel, so that the owner can add it to IPFS and update the machine's pointer.

Note: This means that if the owner is offline, writing won't work, and the machine becomes read-only.

Any expression that's submitted and throws an exception will be rejected by the owner's daemon, making validation trivial. In the counter machine above, for example, if the input is not :increment or :getCounter, the pattern match will fail, resulting in the expression being rejected.

## Conclusion

Hopefully this blog post clarifies how Radicle is implemented, and helps to give a sense of both its limitations and possibilities. In particular, we hope its clear that none of the architecture limits it to the few utilities we've released. Radicle is in a sense a truly "serverless" architecture - a system where programs can be deployed without worrying about provisioning and configuring physical servers, in a completely peer-to-peer way.

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