Impervious, the group that released a bundle of APIs last fall built on top of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, announced that they will be publicly releasing the Impervious Browser on April 7th, during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. According to their newsletter published January 30, 2022, “following an enthusiastic reception of the Impervious APIs, we fused all of our Peer-to-Peer (‘P2P’) capabilities together into one easily consumable super application - the Impervious Browser.”

In August 2021, Impervious released APIs that served as a programmatic layer sitting atop the Lightning Network - in other words, a “Layer 3.” An API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to “talk” to one another. In this case, the Impervious API could be used by developers to integrate the Lightning Network into apps without having to learn the technicalities of Lighting. 

Source: Impervious API documentation

The Impervious Browser will include secure messaging, audio, and video calling, decentralized and local storage, real-time collaborative workspaces, newsletters, subscriptions and direct content monetization, Decentralized Identity (DIDs) control and management, and Decentralized Communication (DIDComm).

The Browser will allow for cryptographically secure, ephemeral (disappearing) and persistent communication between peers, as well as decentralized, real-time P2P communication between browsers and DIDs. It will also include secure P2P file transfer directly via WebRTC or encrypted third-party relay. Similarly, the Browser offers secure audio and video calls, which take place over P2P WebRTC data channels without third-party intermediaries.

With the Browser, files can be encrypted and stored locally in both the browser and a designated encrypted system database. Files can also be published to an anonymous, publicly accessible, decentralized data store (IPFS), which is managed automatically and fully integrated into the underlying Impervious Daemon. The Browser will also offer real-time, P2P collaborative workspaces for document creation, editing, and publishing (“Google Docs, without Google”), with familiar features like read/write accessibility control. 

The Browser offers the ability to host and serve newsletters, blogs, and subscriptions without intermediaries. According to their newsletter, users will be able to “store content locally, publish to IPFS (or an endpoint of your choice), generate universally accessible endpoints via InterPlanetary File System (IPNS), make content discoverable via Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), and receive payments for subscriptions over the Lightning Network.”

The Browser will allow for “true cryptographic ownership of a decentralized user identity,” which can be shared privately amongst peers or published via ION (a globally accessible, decentralized identifier network that runs on top of the Bitcoin blockchain). While published identities can be discovered and fetched by other peers, they cannot be deleted or modified by anyone other than its owner. Further, published identities do not have to contain personal information, allowing for anonymous interchangeable identities. The Browser will also offer decentralized DIDComm, which will allow users to manage and control several communication points of contact within their DID, including the ability to make communication points of contact publicly discoverable or exclusively accessible to trusted peers.

You can see full technical documentation of Impervious API here.

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