walletbeat

Prior to launch, /walletbeat is looking for decentralized hosting solutions for its frontend.

I am in the process of writing up requirements and describing how they map to the available technology choices.

In the meantime, some thoughts on why decentralized hosting matters for /walletbeat below. 🧵

Decentralized hosting, relative to traditional web hosting, usually comes with higher resilience, censorship resistance, and integrity verifiability.

But why would Walletbeat need that?
After all, walletbeat isn't security-critical. It doesn't require a wallet to be connected. It doesn't even store user data. It's a purely informational site. There is an argument that a site like Walletbeat shouldn't bother with decentralized hosting, because it doesn't have the resilience or security needs.

That is certainly what a web2 startup would conclude.
Walletbeat is not that.

Walletbeat's fundamental goal is to push the Ethereum ecosystem forward. Part of that ethos requires a commitment to crypto values, which decentralized hosting embodies.

Today, most Ethereum applications rely on web2 infrastructure and traditional hosting solutions to survive. This has infamously cost the industry over a billion dollars:

Contributor @ /walletbeat.

Censorship resistance requires privacy.

Clearly there is need to make progress on the adoption of decentralized hosting solutions within the crypto industry.

That sounds a lot like Walletbeat's mission statement, only about web hosting rather than wallets. The ethos behind this sentiment is the same. If Walletbeat — an entity with a commitment to crypto values and with the goal to push these values out to others — doesn't bother with this, 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼?

So while Walletbeat itself doesn't strictly need the properties provided by decentralized hosting solution on a technical aspect, relying on traditional hosting would send a clear message of hypocrisy and lack of commitment to crypto values. This message would weaken Walletbeat's actual message to the wallet ecosystem.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸.

"But users will use centralized gateways to access them anyway, so you don't get any of the nice properties you claim to want."

True in the present. But this is a chicken-and-egg problem. Browsers currently have no incentive to support decentralized hosting solutions, because so few websites uses them.

We have to start 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 to break this chicken-and-egg cycle. That might as well be /walletbeat, which has every reason to want this status quo to change.

Yes, this is harder to maintain than traditional hosting solution.
Yet it is worth the pain, because doing so is 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣-𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡.

Decentralized hosting, relative to traditional web hosting, usually comes with higher resilience, censorship resistance, and integrity verifiability.

But why would Walletbeat need that?
After all, walletbeat isn't security-critical. It doesn't require a wallet to be connected. It doesn't even store user data. It's a purely informational site. There is an argument that a site like Walletbeat shouldn't bother with decentralized hosting, because it doesn't have the resilience or security needs.

That is certainly what a web2 startup would conclude.
Walletbeat is not that.

Walletbeat's fundamental goal is to push the Ethereum ecosystem forward. Part of that ethos requires a commitment to crypto values, which decentralized hosting embodies.

Today, most Ethereum applications rely on web2 infrastructure and traditional hosting solutions to survive. This has infamously cost the industry over a billion dollars:
https://blog.ipfs.tech/2025-could-ipfs-prevent-bybit-hack/

BDFL of Quilibrium, Eng @ Farcaster, ex-Coinbase, always opinionated, never hydrated

/quilibrium

I shall reach out once I have more detailed requirements written down!

QStorage is an S3-compatible offering built on Quilibrium, with better pricing, 5GB free tier, and fast global CDN integration for public buckets. Happy to help you get started 🤝

𝘠𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳.

Well, welcome! Let's make Ethereum cypherpunk again.

Fully static site.

Some more thoughts here (still a draft):

Fully static site.

Some more thoughts here (still a draft): https://github.com/walletbeat/walletbeat/blob/governance-hosting-2025/governance/decisions/2025-walletbeat-hosting.md

I'm very interested in reading more about the requirements and your eventual decision-making process.

Are you using SSR or any backend functionality?