Recorded June 17, 2026, live from a conference floor.

A wide-ranging conversation about the Freedom Browser — a browser for the decentralized web — covering peer-to-peer content protocols, the problem of trusting RPC providers for ENS resolution, light clients, agentic protocol re-implementation, an integrated Web3 wallet, and HTTP 402 micropayments.

Guests & hosts

• Meinhard — Freedom Browser
• Florian — Freedom Browser (gave the on-stage talk that morning)
• Dirk — co-host, and creator of Myotis, a trustless Ethereum light-client SDK
• Ksenya - co-host

What's covered

[01:26] Intro. Episode 11, two guests, one topic: the Freedom Browser.

[03:22] What is the Freedom Browser? An access portal that looks and feels like Chrome, Safari or Brave, but speaks extra protocols. It resolves ENS names (e.g. vitalik.eth), reads the content hash they point to, and fetches the content directly over peer-to-peer networks through a local node that auto-starts in the background — "like your browser acquired superpowers" without the pain of running nodes yourself.

[04:09] Supported protocols. Started with IPFS and Swarm, later added Radicle.

[04:33] What is Radicle? Git as a peer-to-peer protocol — effectively a decentralized GitHub. Freedom ships both a Radicle node and an interface that renders the data structures it receives, so you browse something that looks like GitHub but is fully client-side.

[05:13] Pinning vs. seeding. How content persistence differs across IPFS (pinning), Swarm (paid postage), and Radicle (a node "seeds" a repo and serves it whenever online). Notes on discovery reliability and Radicle's growing peer count.

[07:25] The ENS problem. ENS resolution is the least decentralized part of the browser — talking to the registry's smart contracts normally needs a full Ethereum node or a trusted RPC endpoint.

[08:00] RPC poisoning & phishing. How public/compromised JSON-RPC endpoints have been hijacked (including via DNS) to feed clients malicious data and redirect users to phishing sites — sometimes poisoning only specific records. Reference to a recent bridge-related hack where an internal RPC service was compromised.

[10:35] Why verifiable data matters. With Merkle/state proofs, that whole attack surface disappears — a verifying client would simply reject the bad data.

[11:25] Mitigations & their limits. Running a quorum of RPCs (e.g. 2-of-3, 3-of-5) before showing a site, plus caching — better, but slower, and still reliant on intermediaries.

[12:57] Permissionlessness & public RPCs. Free public RPC servers exist but come with no service guarantees: you need a list of ~10 and round-robin logic, you get rate-limited, and there's no economic alignment between providers and users. Mentions of Infura, Alchemy, and dRPC. "Altruism is great, but it doesn't scale."

[16:15] Myotis — a different approach. Dirk's project: a light client that uses sync committees to verify data and the SNAP protocol to pull state from execution-layer clients, then exposes it as a local RPC service. Runs well on a laptop and reasonably on a phone, supports Ethereum and Gnosis Chain, and resolves both standard ENS and CCIP-Read names — with everything verified. (Someone had once claimed a light client couldn't resolve ENS. It can.)

[18:43] CROPS & the speed/decentralization tradeoff. The "C" is censorship resistance — and leaning on a single gateway undercuts it. Roughly 80% of users may pick the instant, trustless-but-switchable-off gateway; the rest wait a little longer for the fully peer-to-peer path via Myotis.

[19:55] Fanning out SNAP requests. Splitting heavy queries across peers, verifying in parallel, and using multicall3 for batched balance lookups (the trick MetaMask uses).

[20:43] The incentive critique. SNAP has no incentive layer — if everyone ran light clients, execution nodes might stop serving state for free. Dirk's three goals: find projects that need Myotis, secure funding, and push the Ethereum Foundation to make this data reliably available if it's serious about its mandate.

[22:30] Beacon-chain quirks. SNAP bootstrapping, missing bootstrap/update calls on some beacon clients, discovery v5 limitations, and blacklisting nodes that don't serve what's needed.

[24:15] Protocol vs. implementation. Whether Myotis is a spec or a single codebase; rewriting BLS signature verification in Rust for speed; the long-term goal of an Android wallet (view history, build and send transactions); and maintenance around hard forks.

[27:42] Back to Freedom's nodes. Why Bee (Swarm) and Kubo (IPFS) are too heavy for phones — discovered at a Budapest hackathon where running both "fried the phone."

[30:10] Rolling their own light clients. Using coding agents to build fresh Rust light clients for Swarm and IPFS, mobile-optimized and production-ready "as of this week." The next Freedom release replaces Bee with their own smaller implementation; the IPFS light node is nicknamed Lumo.

[32:24] Agentic re-implementation. Re-implementing Swarm surfaced years of edge cases (the Swarm creator has worked on it for a decade). LLMs are well suited to translating a protocol between languages and to optimization tasks — they made the IPFS path roughly five times faster — at the risk of occasionally "cutting corners" on the protocol.

[38:18] IPFS, opportunistically. Freedom's IPFS node keeps no persistent peer connections — it grabs content and shuts the connections down. Resource-friendly on mobile, if a little parasitic. Built using a coding agent's long-running "goal" mode as a hill-climbing lab environment (~100 hours of self-improvement).

[40:17] Freedom as a developer platform. Exposing the protocols to web pages via a reserved navigator.freedom / dweb namespace (dweb fetch, push, upload, download, even node control) — each gated behind an explicit permission prompt. A static page can effectively be a dapp.

[44:39] window.swarm. A live, shipped API modeled on EIP-1193 (window.ethereum): a site can ask to publish content to Swarm under your identity, and you approve it like a wallet connection.

[46:14] The integrated wallet. Send/receive assets, add/remove EVM chains, connect to dapps via EIP-1193 (eth_call, getBalance, signing, transactions). One seed phrase derives every identity — Swarm, Radicle, IPFS, and wallet — with a choice of app-scoped, Bee-wallet, or main-Ethereum identity per site.

[49:35] Why Gnosis Chain by default. It's cheap and well-stocked with assets — and Swarm's storage payments (stamps/postage), gas, and the BZZ utility token / xDAI gas token all settle on Gnosis Chain.

[50:46] HTTP 402. Freedom may be the first browser to actually use the long-dormant HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status. A callback to SatoshiPay ~10 years ago — but where that needed heavy JavaScript shimming, this now works through pure HTML, with the browser attaching a payment proof in the request header. Enables things the old approach couldn't, like pay-per-byte range requests for video.

[53:14] x402 & agents. The x402 standard (pushed by Base/Coinbase) lets agents pay for content over HTTP — but Freedom's implementation is aimed at humans, with an "autopay baseline" that feels like subscribing to the whole internet while paying creators frictionlessly under a self-set monthly cap.

[56:22] Do micropayments actually work? The classic objection (mental transaction cost) gets pushback: people do collect bottles and chase discounts. Publishers tend to resist micropayments (subscriptions are stickier), while users like paying for a single article. Micropayments already power gaming, streamer tips, and social platforms.

[58:39] Circles integration. A working-but-unshipped feature lets you pay for Swarm publishing with the daily UBI you earn on Circles (CRC). Imagine a metered internet where your reputation-based basic income covers much of your consumption — and Circles' trust graph doubles as a reputation layer.

[04:01] Original vision & wrap-up. A nod to Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive's dream of one-download software that makes you both a reader and a node of the decentralized web. Plans for a possible Episode 2 at DWeb Camp (mid-July).

Projects & references

• Myotis — trustless Ethereum light-client SDK — github.com/biafra23/myotis
• ENS (Ethereum Name Service) — ens.domains · CCIP-Read docs
• IPFS — ipfs.tech · client: Kubo
• Swarm — ethswarm.org · client: Bee
• Radicle — radicle.xyz
• Gnosis Chain — gnosischain.com
• EIP-1193 (Ethereum Provider JS API) — eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1193
• Multicall3 — multicall3.com
• HTTP 402 Payment Required — MDN reference
• x402 payment standard — x402.org
• Circles (UBI) — aboutcircles.com
• Internet Archive — archive.org
• DWeb Camp — dwebcamp.org
• RPC providers mentioned: Infura · Alchemy · dRPC

Shoutout & thanks to Recording Station & ZK AV Club people for recording equipment & other visible & invisible infrastructure at Dappcon.

In this episode our guest Pacu talks about the state of light clients in zcash, defi firehoses, and putting ancient zcashd to rest in favour of more modular architecture written in Rust.

Although we didn't have time to discuss how the magical cryptography happens in light clients, we did have a chance to gently touch the surface of ... attack surface topic & found out where to discuss this kind of stuff in more depth.

Links:

• Pacu

  • Twitter: https://x.com/thecodebuffet
  • Github: https://github.com/pacu

• Zcash R&D Discord (not the same as Zcash main discord) https://discord.com/invite/xpzPR53xtU (obtained Nov25) on https://forum.zcashcommunity.com If the link expired ask on forum again

• Lightwalletd https://zcash.readthedocs.io/en/latest/rtd_pages/lightclient_support.html

• Light protocol https://github.com/zcash/lightwallet-protocol

Shoutout & thanks to Recording Station & ZK AV Club people for recording equipment & other visible & invisible infrastructure at Devconnect. Also to Ligi for the tape & other various awesomeness

• Oktahedron reboot

• Vitalik Buterin on being an advisor for future ICOs:

  1. This is me socially precommitting that I will not be an advisor for future ICO projects.

  — Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) June 13, 2017

Augusto from Raiden Network core team, explains Raiden Network: extension to Ethereum which scales-out asset transfer capacity.

Hosted by Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya

Links:

• Repository https://github.com/raiden-network
• Lefteris' short presentation at Ethdev from November 2016 https://youtu.be/JuVP4iDVkoQ?list=PLAM7G4LLrb7wPiT2G75tj2JQr8qg6P5hi
• Heiko's presentation from devcon1 (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h791zjvF3uQ

In this episode Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya discuss zcash with Zooko. Unfortunately, Zooko’s voice was not recorded properly. We are sorry and will prevent this in the future.

Zcash dev wiki https://github.com/zcash/zcash/wiki/specification, a repo https://github.com/zcash/zcash and a user guide https://github.com/zcash/zcash/wiki/1.0-User-Guide

To get your head around zero knowledge proofs and zcash even better we also recommend two episodes recorded by our fellow podcasters Meher & Brian from a different podcast Epicenter: Ep116 with professor Eli Ben-Sasson and Ep122 with Zooko

Here is the paper that we mention “How to explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to your children”

Towards the middle of the podcast we talk about a practical way of making a nice and useful zcash node, which we intend to make IRL and will shortly publish some basic specs for it.

For the latest updates, you can check Oktahedron on Twitter and feel free to ping any questions to Dirk Jäckel & Ksenya.

This episode was recorded 2016-12-29 in Hamburg. We had a short chat with Ryan Taylor (@AdjyLeak), zooko (@zooko) and Meredith L Patterson (@maradydd) at 33c3.

In this short episode Zooko tells us a cute story of practical love letters hidden in blockchain transactions, Meredith highlights the importance of compilers in the world and Ryan mentions Alexandria library. It’s a bit of a teaser for the 2017, as some of it we will be covering in detail in 2017 on Oktahedron.

Recorded at Sendecentrum at Chaos Communication Congress with the guests: AdjyLeak, Meredith L Patterson, Zooko and that TBA guest with a nice podcasting voice, who spoke very little. Hosted by Dirk Jaeckel & Ksenya of Oktahedron.

Thanx to Tim Pritlove for recommending Sendecentrum, instead of dragging all our audio equipment all the way to the Congress from Berlin, thanx to Chistopher who was so patient & helpful, and other guys at Sendecentrum . And a great big thanx to our wonderful sound guy in particular.

This episode is about Secure Scuttlebutt – a database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols. Brought to you by @dirkjaekel @j32804 and our guest @dominictarr

• Scuttlebutt in slang usage means rumor or gossip, deriving from the nautical term for the cask used to serve water (or, later, a water fountain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt

• A gossip protocol is a style of computer-to-computer communication protocol inspired by the form of gossip seen in social networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol

• History of Scuttlebutt with Dominic Tarr https://www.gwenbell.com/dt-interview/

• Dominic Tarr http://dominictarr.com/ Twitter @dominictarr

• Secure Scuttlebutt consortium https://github.com/ssbc

• Peer-to-peer audio publishing and streaming application. Like SoundCloud but decentralized. A mashup of ssb, webtorrent and electron http://ferment.audio

• Decentralised git git-ssb https://github.com/clehner/git-ssb

Guest: Viktor Trón (@zeligf)

LINKS:

• Swarm guide - nicely organised Swarm documentation
• Swarm landing page & public gateway
• Ethereum Name System – ENS
• Decentralised Git using Ethereum and P2P content addressable networks (Swarm, IPFS, SSB)
• Short talk introducing Swarm at DAppHack, Berlin Nov 26th 2016

In this episode we are joined by Jack Pettersson. We discuss computational models and how they relate to blockchains. Do we want Turing-completeness, or is a weaker model more suitable? Would a dumber (not a Turing complete) language would make smart contracts smarter (easily verifiable)? We talk about total functional languages and alternatives to accounts-based model. Should we look at the blockchain as a pure data store, possibly equipped with primitives such as map/reduce or similar? Links:

• Meredith Pattersson talks about The Weird Machine https://archive.org/details/The_Science_of_Insecurity_
• Tau Chain http://tauchain.org/
• Idris: a general purpose pure functional programming language with dependent types http://www.idris-lang.org/
• Safer smart contracts through type-driven development byt ROBERT EDSTRÖM, JACK PETTERSSON [http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf]](http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/234939/234939.pdf)
• Jack Pettersson and Robert Edström (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) present on a dependantly typed functional language for smart contracts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2uwUdzVD9I

Oktahedron – Legal Issues in the Blockchain Universe

In this episode, @heckerhut, @dirkjaeckel, and @j32804 discuss legal aspects of blockchains.
None of this can be considered legal advice. As an anonymous friend of mine put it:

"Blockchain is a hot new cool thing for borderline legal shenanigans."
Is it?

Topics Discussed

Some time has passed since The DAO was hacked. We need to mention it again because it raised many legal questions. What has happened since?

We also discuss:

• Crowdsales
• Smart contracts gone wrong (not The DAO one)
• Other podcasts touching on law and regulations (see links below)
• Making predictions without considering the risks involved

Selected Links

White Hat Hacker & ETC

• White hat hacker team told off for moving salvaged ETC
• More about the white hat group

Legal & Regulatory Discussions

• Dominic Williams on tokens and securities law
• Sian Jones regulatory update on Epicenter Bitcoin
• ESMA Discussion Paper – Not fun to read, but important in the regulatory space
• Big ETC-ETH debate
• Florian Glatz defining a legal framework for DAOs on Epicenter

Smart Contracts Gone Wrong

• GovernMental contract – 1100 ETH jackpot payout stuck

Reads on Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

Selected by our guest Florian Glatz:

• Bitcoin as an unmanned company – "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics"
• Florian’s prediction from 2 years ago
• A Legal Analysis of the DAO Exploit and Possible Investor Rights
• DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporations) revisited by Daniel Larimer
• DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide by Vitalik Buterin (2014)
• Bootstrapping A Decentralized Autonomous Corporation by Vitalik Buterin:
  • Part I
  • Part II
  • Part III

Show Notes from a Previous Unpublished (Perhaps Censored?) Recording

• Coindesk article: "How to sue The DAO Hacker" (before The DAO attack)
• Coindesk article: "How to sue a DAO" (pre-The DAO attack)

General Legal Issues Related to Blockchains

• "Beyond Bitcoin: Issues in Regulating Blockchain Transactions" – Long but basic, explaining how blockchain differs from traditional systems

Safer Smart Contract Languages

We mentioned that Turing-complete languages might not be the safest choice for smart contracts, as they are inherently undecidable, making it impossible to predict their behavior before execution.

• Towards safer languages for smart contracts – Jack Pettersson & Robert Edström (DEVCON1)
• Using dependent and polymorphic types for safer smart contract development (Master Thesis)

Other Interesting Links

• Concept of a-legality explored by Hans Lindahl in philosophy of law: Hans Lindahl
• Plantoid – A robotic plant connected to the blockchain:
  • Plantoid Project
  • Implementation by Primavera de Filippi

EU Parliament & Blockchain Regulations

The EU Parliament has published reports on virtual currencies. They are usually behind the curve—while people discuss DAOs, they are still getting their heads around Bitcoin. Hopefully, they will catch up fast.

• EU Parliament report on Virtual Currencies
• Attend public hearings at EU institutions on regulations

Oktahedron Podcast

Oktahedron is a podcast by Ksenya @j32804 and Dirk Jäckel @dirkjaeckel.
We do not endorse any opinions presented here. This is just a selection of decent posts.

Overview

Very detailed overview of The DAO Attack, the exploit, soft fork & hard fork scenarios, including an awesome diagram representing the architecture of the attack.
The Big TheDAO Heist FAQ

As it usually is with mainstream-ish media, this article has some degree of approximation. We post it here just to see what the media says.
Motherboard article on Ethereum and The DAO

The Fork Dilemma

We were unsure what to think ourselves, whether to support or oppose the idea of either a soft or a hard fork. First feeling was to oppose the hard fork, as it undermines the idea of the immutability of the blockchain. But after researching the topic more, we could consider it as a good solution.

Statement in support of soft fork and rather heated discussion on whether it will compromise the whole idea of the immutable blockchain:
Personal statement regarding the fork

Gavin’s response to The DAO attack—both verbal and practical—by releasing a version of the Parity client which can support the fork.
Attack on TheDAO: What will be your response?

A short post in support of the fork.
A Lesson in Humility

P2P Foundation post with a slightly different perspective. Very positive, a bit hippie. Blockchains are still better than banks.
EthereumDAO Hack Proves Better Banks

Insightful post from the Parity team—no sides really taken, just what can be done. Short and sweet. I might not always agree with posts coming from the Parity team, but they usually have good reasoning.
Our DAO Response

Legal Aspects

Some points on legal aspects that we decided not to cover ourselves.
Very long, but interesting video covering The DAO:
The DAO Video

Useful article on the complexity of using blockchain to encode complex public contracts (written by a lawyer and a blockchain expert).
Failing Fast vs. Failing Unnecessarily

The DAO Attacker

A number of “messages from the DAO Attacker” have been popping up here and there on the internet. None of them are proven to be coming from a person or a team of people who orchestrated the attack.

• [To The DAO and The Ethereum Community: F*** You](http://trilema.com/201

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Example Resource
• Helpful Article

Transcript

[Intro music]

Host: Welcome to the very first episode of My Awesome Podcast! Today we're going to talk about...

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