One day, I was scrolling through Twitter and I noticed that many people were using the .eth domain in their nicknames. I was curious and wondered if it was possible to have a website running on that domain. I decided to do some research and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could indeed have a website on the .eth domain.
I learned that the Ethereum community has a standard called EIP 1577, which allows users to set a content source for a domain. Unlike traditional DNS, where A records are used to specify the server responsible for serving the content, EIP 1577 supports the use of decentralized storage technologies like IPFS and Swarm.
I had played with IPFS before and I knew that it is a peer-to-peer way to publish content on the internet. To use IPFS, you first need to download and install a program on your computer. This program allows you to add and publish files to the IPFS peer-to-peer network. Instead of uploading files to the cloud, the program adds the files to its local repository and assigns a unique content ID to each file. When someone needs to download a file, they can request the content ID and the IPFS client will locate it from the network.
But I realized that the process of publishing a website on IPFS can be quite complex and difficult, as it involves using a Terminal and typing out commands. I thought to myself, what if I could create a native macOS app that would make this process easier? The app could have a three-column UI like the Mail app, which would be great for following and reading multiple websites. It could also have a two-column Markdown editor for writing and previewing side by side, with an easy way to attach video and audio.
The app could also generate and host static websites using a local IPFS node, allowing users to use their Mac as a server. Websites hosted with IPFS can be set as the content source for ENS domains. Since IPFS and ENS are not controlled by any single entity, the user's content is controlled by their private keys. This offers a fully decentralized way to publish content on the internet.