Share private files with blockstack?

Apps Storage (Gaia)
#1

There is a certain use case I’m trying to achieve using blockchain, and I wanted to know if blockstack could provide a good solution to this.

  1. UserA saves an encrypted file
  2. UserB requests access to UserA’s file (potentially in exchange for a payment)
  3. UserA permits UserB access to their file

Seeing how the file is encrypted with UserA’s private key, the only way to do this is to wait for UserA to become active, download the file, decrypt it, and sent it to UserB via a different channel.

Is there any way have the file be stored securely, but have UserB gain access to it immediately if some minimum payment is made? Does blockstack have a good solution for this?

2 Likes
#2

@Olshansky We have a couple of folks building this now on top of blockstack!

#3

@jackzampolin Can you point me to where I could find more info on the work in progress? I’d also be very curious to see how they go about doing so. Is there a way to avoid needing an escrow of some sort?

#4

There are a couple of things here.

  1. There is app called “coin-operated file viewer” that is being developed on top of Blockstack. It looks like you basically need this app. In the app, a user can send a payment to “unlock” viewing/downloading a file. @patrick can give you more info on that.

  2. The use case is possible with our storage system Gaia as well. Although, the current version doesn’t support it yet but it’s on our road-map. @jude can give you more information on how it’d work. We’d love to have you more involved in building out that use case. This is an open-source project and we can use any help we can get :slight_smile:

#5

@Olshansky yes this may be getting started with Slack user @alidcastano who began a github repo late last week: https://github.com/alidcastano/blockstack-simple-payments/issues/1 You two should connect.

This application absolutely needs to exist and I’m happy to do whatever it takes to make it happen. Ping me on Slack, I’m @patrick there as well.

1 Like
#6

@patrick @muneeb Thanks to both of you for the replies. I’ve been really busy with my other work recently, but the resources you pointed me to are exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll keep you posted on how things go!

#7

Hi Patrick, is the blockstack simple payments app still alive?
I’m trying to build something similar to this for my research lab teammates to use.
We don’t really want real payments but we might want to create a token and keep track of who’s files are more popular.

I looked at the graphite github https://github.com/Graphite-Docs/graphite
This app has a simple file sharing too, might be a good place to start.

Thanks!

#8

Hey Ray,

Would recommend building it, I think the person doing the project ran low on time and hadn’t gotten around to building it. Why don’t you want to add the payment element to it? Seems simple and adds incentivization to host in-demand files.

Patrick

#9

I’ve built this a version of this, check it out Anonymous, Secure FileDrop Proof of Concept using BlockStack