PressProtocol
Publishing that survives takedowns: IPFS, Tor and signatures behind a single link.
Live
- Shipped the first version of pressprotocol.com during the RealFi hackathon in October 2025 — didn't get selected, kept building anyway
- Applied to Octant's public-goods funding round — not selected
- Zero gas fees for readers and sub-200ms global gateway resolution
# What it is
PressProtocol is an open protocol for censorship-resistant content distribution that couples IPFS content addressing with Tor anonymity networks and Ed25519 cryptographic identity. If IPFS gateways are blocked by network firewalls, content automatically fails over to Tor onion services.
# Why it exists
Centralized publishing platforms have architectural single points of failure: DNS takedowns, hosting deplatforming, and gateway censorship. Blockchain-based publishing introduces high gas fees and poor reader UX.
# How it works
Content is signed with Ed25519 and pinned to IPFS (Pinata/Helia), with discovery metadata replicated across the DHT. A Fastify + PostgreSQL read layer serves the network, and a Plasmo browser extension intercepts pressprotocol:// URIs and races three transports in parallel — IPFS gateway (~120ms), direct IPFS p2p, and Tor onion services — verifying signatures client-side before rendering. Every piece of content stays reachable through at least three independent paths.
# Decisions worth explaining
- 01
Parallel multi-transport resolution with automatic failover
Single-gateway publishing dies at the first block or takedown; racing IPFS, p2p, and Tor keeps reads sub-200ms on the fastest path and unstoppable on the slowest.
- 02
Ed25519 publisher signatures over on-chain identity
On-chain identity adds gas fees and reader friction; signed manifests give immutable provenance with zero-cost verification.
- 03
WordPress plugin + REST API instead of wallet-first UX
Mainstream journalists will not manage seed phrases; meeting them inside existing CMS workflows is the only realistic adoption path.
# Details
- Multi-transport content resolution with automatic failover (IPFS -> Tor -> Clearnet HTTP)
- Ed25519 cryptographic signatures establishing immutable publisher provenance
- WordPress plugin + REST API enabling zero-blockchain friction for mainstream journalists
- Sub-200ms read latency via distributed gateways with DHT content propagation
# Built with
TypeScript · IPFS · Tor · Fastify · Prisma · Next.js · Ed25519