It’s not really about Keet, it’s just a proof of what can be done with where these tools are now.

And as for the things you mentioned, hash PoW wasn’t new, chaining signatures wasn’t new, distributed networks weren’t new, but #Bitcoin was a profound innovation that used them.

In a similar context, the pear stack uses a bunch of technologies that the team has been working on for a long time. Mafintosh is at the head of this and he is the one who’s been working on Hypercore from the beginning. But this is the first time they are all in an approachable form. Pear Runtime is basically a Nodejs replacement that lets you build apps easily on top where P2P, encrypted networking is just built in and works. I’ve been working with a bunch of people who are realizing how easy it now is to build things that would’ve been a nightmare before. 

People tend to forget that simply access and complexity of working with underlying tools makes an enormous difference in whether they ever catch momentum. Sure plenty of this stuff has been possible before, so the question is why didn’t it happen yet? Why hasn’t someone else put all the pieces together? It just takes time and resources and dedication that few have. Luckily Mafintosh has kept at it for damn near a decade.

What this is, in short, is BitTorrent 2.0. It move BitTorrent from a clunky, static tool for downloading files, into a dynamic and fast network for sharing or serving literally anything. All you need is a key to serve anything or connect to anyone. It has already completely changed how I use all of my self hosted stuff, and as the tools I’m using become more mature, this will absolutely be my most used method for talking between devices (actually it already is)

I’ve also been working on my own application to solve a problem that has driven me absolutely mad over the years. Hope to have an alpha very soon.