Freenet

Hyphanet (formerly Freenet) is a peer‑to‑peer, censorship‑resistant communication platform that exposes a distributed encrypted datastore as the foundation for web‑scale services such as forums, microblogging, media hosting and decentralized version control. At its core, the application runs a Java‑based daemon (Fred) that participates in an overlay network, routing encrypted requests across nodes without a central authority. Developers interact with the system primarily through Java APIs and a set of RESTful services that expose CRUD operations on the underlying datastore, as well as hooks for custom plugins.

Key Features

• Decentralized storage – Data is split into encrypted packets and replicated across the network, providing resilience against censorship and single points of failure.
• Plugin architecture – The platform ships with a lightweight plugin framework that allows developers to write Java modules which can register new content types, UI components or routing logic.
• Webhooks & APIs – External services can subscribe to content events via webhooks, while the internal API supports programmatic access to node status, peer lists and data queries.
• Opennet & friend‑to‑friend – Nodes can join the global network automatically or build isolated, privacy‑preserving mesh networks that are invisible to external observers.

Technical Stack

Core Capabilities

• Node Management API – Exposes lifecycle controls (start, stop, restart), status queries, and peer discovery metrics.
• Data API – CRUD operations on the DHT, including bulk import/export and versioned content handling.
• Plugin API – Lifecycle hooks (onInstall, onUninstall), event listeners for content creation, and UI component registration.
• Webhooks – POST callbacks on events such as new posts, file uploads or peer churn.
• Metrics & Monitoring – Prometheus‑compatible metrics endpoint, logs in structured JSON for easy ingestion.

Deployment & Infrastructure

Hyphanet is designed for self‑hosting on commodity hardware or virtual machines. Minimum requirements are modest (1 GB RAM, 2 CPU cores), but for production deployments a distributed cluster of nodes is recommended to achieve high availability and low latency. The project ships Docker images that encapsulate the Java runtime, node binary, and configuration files, making it trivial to orchestrate with Kubernetes or Docker Compose. Horizontal scaling is achieved by adding more nodes; the DHT automatically balances load, while the API layer can be exposed behind a reverse proxy for SSL termination.

Integration & Extensibility

The plugin system is the primary extension point. Developers can write pure Java modules that:

1. Register new content types (e.g., a custom Video node).
2. Hook into the routing layer to modify packet handling.
3. Expose additional REST endpoints or WebSocket streams.

The platform also offers webhooks for external services, enabling integration with CI/CD pipelines, monitoring dashboards, or third‑party messaging apps. Because the datastore is immutable and content addressed, developers can build content‑addressed APIs that guarantee data integrity across the network.

Developer Experience

• Configuration – Node settings are stored in a simple node.conf file; environment variables override defaults, facilitating CI/CD pipelines.
• Documentation – The project includes comprehensive Javadoc for all public APIs, a developer guide on plugin development, and an API reference.
• Community – An active mailing list, IRC channel (#freenet on Libera.Chat), and issue tracker provide rapid support. Contributions are encouraged via the standard Gradle build process.
• Testing – The test suite is integrated with GitHub Actions; continuous integration runs tests in parallel to catch regressions quickly.

Use Cases

Advantages

• Performance – Java’s JIT and the lightweight routing protocol give sub‑second latency for small payloads, while large files are streamed efficiently across multiple peers.
• Flexibility – The plugin API lets developers add bespoke functionality without touching core code, keeping upgrades painless.
• Licensing – The project is released under an open source license (GPLv3), with no vendor lock‑in or subscription fees.
• Security – End‑to‑end encryption, signed binaries