PostHosts

PostHosts is a decentralized hosting and publishing platform designed to store and serve user-generated posts across a distributed network of volunteer and commercial hosting nodes. It aims to improve resilience, censorship resistance, and control over published content by separating content from the hosting infrastructure. Posts are stored in a content-addressable form and identified by cryptographic hashes, enabling versioning and verifiability.

The network is federated: individual nodes host content, participate in replication, and validate posts against a lightweight protocol. A distributed registry maps domains and paths to content addresses, while metadata provides author, timestamp, and version information. Access to posts can be public or restricted through optional encryption and access controls. The data model emphasizes immutability for each published version, with new versions creating a linked list of updates.

Publishing involves signing a post with a private key, uploading to a node, and distributing references across the network. Clients retrieve posts by resolving domain paths and fetching content from multiple nodes; if a node is offline, others can satisfy the request from cached copies. The platform provides APIs and tooling for static site generation, content moderation, and integration with search indices.

Key features include content-addressable storage, version history, privacy options, moderation tools, and an extensible plugin system. It supports offline-first access, simple domain management, and interoperability with other decentralized systems via standard protocols.

PostHosts began as an open-source project in the early 2020s and has seen adoption among independent publishers, educational groups, and privacy-focused communities. Critics note its relatively new ecosystem and governance challenges common to federated platforms, while supporters cite resilience and user control as core benefits.