ssb-vs-scuttlebutt-vs-scuttlebot-vs-sbot.md

Secure-scuttlebutt vs scuttlebutt vs scuttlebot vs sbot?

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An explanation of terms, repos and project history

• scuttlebutt: a gossip protocol that synchronises messages via a vector clock of per-node timestamps or sequences. Dominic got this name from an amazon paper "Efficient Reconciliation and Flow Control for Anti-Entropy Protocols". This is the original scuttlebutt module which should now be known as "insecure scuttlebutt". This repo is generally no longer used by the ssb community.

• ssb-db: this is the database part of ssb. Previously this term referred to the protocol/database as a whole.

• ssb-server: this repo adds networking behaviour to the database (secure-scuttlebutt).

• sbot: short for scuttlebot, previously the CLI command name to control ssb-server. Now also named ssb-server.

Old Names

The following components of the Scuttlebutt reference implementation have been renamed:

• secure-scuttlebutt --> ssb-db
• scuttlebot --> ssb-server