logicsrc/docs/openswarm.md

OpenSwarm

Status: 0.1 draft. No reference implementation yet; see "What already exists" below.

Slug: openswarm

The swarm here is a BitTorrent swarm: peers sharing pieces of a file. A swarm of agents, the sessions one agent starts to split a task, and the human fleet those sessions belong to, are a different specification: OpenFleet.

OpenSwarm is a LogicSRC OpenSpec family for paid, encrypted, peer-to-peer distribution of files and media. It is an add-on to BitTorrent, not a new transport. A swarm carries ciphertext, the tracker and the DHT learn nothing about the content, every peer that serves a verified piece gets paid for it, and the same swarm primitives carry files, audio, video, live streams and the catalogue that describes them.

It exists because BitTorrent solved distribution and never solved the two things that keep it from being a product: nobody is paid to seed, and nothing in it is private. Every Profullstack media property (bittorrented.com, tipoffwatch, genrewatch, p0dcasters) has rebuilt the same paid-access layer on top of central HTTP proxies because the swarm could not carry the payment.

Working name during design was "IPMedia". The family is called OpenSwarm because the swarm is the one object every member shares, because "media" undersells ipfile and ipdb, and because "IP media" reads as IPTV, which is a different product. The member protocols keep their ip names.

The family

Protocol	One line	Document
Core	Records, identifiers, keys, signatures, transports, discovery, events	spec.md
ipfile	Paid, encrypted file swarms as BitTorrent extension messages	ipfile.md
ippay	Passes and vouchers: how a leecher pays and a seeder is paid, over x402 and CoinPay	ippay.md
ipdb	A replicated, append-only catalogue of manifests and metadata, discoverable over the DHT	ipdb.md
ipaudio	Audio releases and tracks on ipfile swarms: renditions, seek tables, gapless, royalties	ipaudio.md
ipvideo	Video on demand on ipfile swarms: CMAF renditions, segment index, subtitles, thumbnails	ipvideo.md
iplive	Live streams: segment fan-out over peers, paid relays, backpressure	iplive.md
ipname	How a Moshpit name resolves to a publisher key and a catalogue	ipname.md
pay2seed	Client protocol for paid seeding: consent at upload, seed offers with escrowed budgets, the requester's market	pay2seed.md
paid2seed	Server protocol for paid seeding: leases, storage challenges and probes over the wire, GiB-month settlement, the seeder client	paid2seed.md
pay2stream	Client protocol for paid live streams: consent for channels, relay offers, tickets and listings, watching as a peer or on any HLS player	pay2stream.md
paid2stream	Server protocol for paid live streams: relay leases per hour, presence proofs, gateways serving standard HLS, M3U and EPG	paid2stream.md
OpenFile	The web door onto an ipfile swarm: /.well-known/openfile.json lists a publisher's files with fetch routes, verification, consent, price and holders	openfile.md
OpenDisk	The web door onto a paid2seed seeder: /.well-known/opendisk.json lists free GiB, price, policy, proof cadence and hub standing, so a disk is found instead of waited for	opendisk.md
OpenObject	A bucket you can mount: keyed objects as ipfile swarms placed on OpenDisk disks under pay2seed at a stated redundancy, an ipdb index, repair, an API and a mount	openobject.md
OpenSlice	A container whose compute is a host and whose disk is an OpenObject mount: /.well-known/openslice.json, the slice file, and a reservation that is a paid2seed lease applied to compute	openslice.md

Supporting documents:

• OpenRental: group ipfile swarms and OpenAgent profiles under one descriptor, with listing metadata and CoinPay rental offers; each swarm keeps its existing identity and settlement rules.
• c0mpute.com integration and use cases: c0mpute.md
• Proposed ip CLI: cli.md
• Conformance: conformance.md
• Security model: security.md
• FAQ: faq.md

How the pieces stack

  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  |  ipaudio      ipvideo      iplive         ipdb (catalogue)    |
  |  releases     titles       channels       feeds, entries      |
  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  |  pay2seed / paid2seed        |  pay2stream / paid2stream      |
  |  consent, offers, market     |  consent, relay offers, tickets |
  |  leases, challenges, payout  |  leases, presence, HLS gateways |
  +------------------------------+--------------------------------+
  |  ipfile: manifest, per-file key pair, encrypted pieces,       |
  |          key grants, credit window, vouchers per served piece |
  +-------------------------------+-------------------------------+
  |  ippay: passes and vouchers   |  ipname: Moshpit name -> key  |
  |  x402 purchase, CoinPay hub   |  and catalogue                |
  +-------------------------------+-------------------------------+
  |  BitTorrent wire (BEP 3) + extension protocol (BEP 10)        |
  |  DHT (BEP 5, 44, 46), trackers, WebRTC peers (WebTorrent),    |
  |  webseeds (BEP 19), optional Moshpit MTP/1 tunnel             |
  +---------------------------------------------------------------+

Reading it upward: a video title is a set of ipfile swarms plus an index. An ipfile swarm is an ordinary hybrid v1/v2 torrent whose payload is ciphertext. Payment and key delivery ride on BEP 10 extension messages that a vanilla client never sees. The catalogue that says what a swarm contains is itself replicated as ipfile swarms and pointed at from the DHT.

Reuse is the default posture

Every building block is specified once, with a stable interface, and reused:

• Chunking and hashing are BitTorrent v2 (BEP 52): 16 KiB blocks, SHA-256 merkle trees, power-of-two piece lengths. ipaudio, ipvideo and iplive do not define their own.
• Manifests are one record shape (core §3) with a type. A track, a title and a channel are records that reference ipfile manifests.
• Keys are one identity model (core §4). A publisher key is reused for every file that publisher adds; per-file keys are derived from it and can be recovered from it. A fresh unrelated pair is minted only on request.
• Swarm encryption is ipfile's AES-256-CTR over pieces, keyed per file. Audio and video renditions are encrypted the same way, by being files.
• Payment is ippay's pass and voucher pair. A relay serving live segments is paid with the same voucher a seeder gets for a piece.
• Relay is one role. A c0mpute node that relays iplive segments uses the same credit window and the same voucher as a seeder.

A member protocol that needs something the core lacks adds a record type or an extension message. It does not redefine a primitive.

How c0mpute.com nodes participate

A c0mpute node already advertises roles (storage, transcode, gateway, verifier) and takes work through a gossipsub auction. OpenSwarm adds workload types the node can bid on and a second income path that needs no auction at all:

Role	Work	Paid by
Storage	Pin an ipfile swarm for a period, seed it	Job price (pinning) plus vouchers per byte served
Relay	Fan out iplive segments to viewers	Vouchers per byte served
Transcode	Produce ipaudio / ipvideo renditions, publish them as ipfile swarms	Job price
Index	Replicate ipdb feeds, answer queries, serve a gateway	Job price plus x402 per query
Keeper	Hold a file's content key and grant it to paying peers	Share of each key grant

Details, thirteen worked use cases and the proposed CLI invocations are in c0mpute.md.

What it defines

One swarm shape. A hybrid BEP 52 torrent whose single payload file is AES-256-CTR ciphertext. The v1 infohash makes it reachable from WebTorrent in a browser, the v2 merkle tree makes every 16 KiB block verifiable, and the plaintext root in the signed manifest makes the decrypted result verifiable.

One key model. A publisher key pair (Ed25519). Adding a file mints a per-file pair derived from it: the public half is the file's identity and the BEP 46 key under which the latest manifest is published; the private half signs the manifest and authorises key grants and payout changes. A separate random content key encrypts the bytes and is wrapped to paying peers.

One payment loop. A leecher buys a pass (x402, USDC, CoinPay as the reference hub). A seeder serves pieces inside a bounded credit window. After verifying each piece the leecher signs a cumulative voucher. The seeder redeems the latest voucher at the hub, which splits it between seeder, publisher and hub. Nobody pays for bytes they did not verify, and nobody serves more than the window unpaid.

One catalogue. An ipdb feed is a signed, hash-linked log of records. Its head is a BEP 44 mutable item under the feed key, so any DHT node can find the latest catalogue of any publisher with one get.

One seed market, one stream market. A pay2seed offer is money escrowed at a hub for a swarm to be kept for a period, public or private, and it cannot be listed without a signed attestation of who put the data there and on what basis. On the paid2seed side, seeders take leases, prove they hold and serve the pieces every period, and are paid per GiB-month. pay2stream and paid2stream do the same for a live channel: a broadcaster attests it and buys relays by the hour, relays and gateways prove they are online and serving, and a gateway turns the swarm into standard HLS so any television plays it. The naming is the rule: pay2* is the client protocol, the side that pays over HTTPS; paid2* is the server protocol, the BitTorrent side that earns. It is how a torrent client becomes a legitimate file sharer: consent on the way in, proof on the way out, and a payout for staying.

What it does not define

A media player. Transcoding settings beyond what a manifest must declare. A token. A blockchain. Content moderation. A search ranking. DRM in the sense of controlling a device after the key is delivered; a paying peer holds the key and the spec says so.

What already exists

Piece	Where	Relationship
Browser WebTorrent player, hybrid Node seeder, wss trackers	profullstack/media-streamer (bittorrented.com)	Speaks the vanilla wire this family extends; needs the ipfile extension to pay
DHT crawl (bitmagnet) and /dht browse	profullstack/media-streamer, dht-infohash-crawler	Observes ipfile swarms as opaque infohashes; ipdb is how it would learn what they are
Pay-per-pass grants, HLS manifest sealing	media-streamer IPTV and seedbox rails	The central-proxy version of what ippay moves into the swarm
Headless seeder daemon with an add API and per-torrent seed time	torlink (torlnk serve)	The pay2seed seeder client, once it polls a market and answers challenges
x402 v2 offer, X-PAYMENT proof, verify and settle	profullstack/x402-gateway, CoinPay	ippay pass purchase reuses it unchanged
CloudEvents 1.0 + Standard Webhooks signing	profullstack/autoblog	Every OpenSwarm event uses the same envelope and headers
MTP/1 post-quantum transport, name pins	profullstack/moshpit-transport, moshpit-proxy	Optional tunnel for native peer links; ipname pin kind
blake3 chunk store, RS 10/14 erasure, ffmpeg transcode, live-stream DIP 0019	profullstack/c0mpute	The node that seeds, relays, transcodes and indexes

New in this family: the extension messages, the manifest and key model, the pass and voucher protocol, the catalogue log, and the media record types.

Quick start (proposed CLI)

# One publisher identity, reused for every file
ip init

# Add a file: derives the file key pair, encrypts, builds the hybrid torrent,
# signs the manifest, starts seeding
ip file add ./interview.flac --per-gib 0.01 --key-price 0.50

# Publish an audio release that references it
ip audio publish ./release.json

# Fetch as a paying peer (buys a pass, gets the key, verifies, decrypts)
ip file get ed25519:0d87e09c7fea3ad6ba6c2f3e027ea47f5b245452899910948470906704c5295d --out ./interview.flac

# Ask the catalogue
ip db query --type ipaudio.track --where 'record.artist == "Ada"' --limit 20

Relationship to the other LogicSRC specs

• OpenCreds (opencreds.md) stores the publisher seed as a key item. Losing that seed is the one unrecoverable event in this family, and OpenCreds is where it should live.
• OpenContext (opencontext.md) governs what an agent may read. An agent holding a pass for one swarm is entitled to that swarm's key and nothing else; the pass scope is the OpenContext decision.
• OpenOntology (openontology.md) names the entities an ipdb entry refers to. An ipaudio.track's artist is an ontology entity where one is in use.
• Credential Sharing (credential-sharing.md) moves a hub API key or a payout address between providers; OpenSwarm never stores either.