21: Hashtree, Nostr VPN, and Iris w/ Martti Malmi

April 4, 2026 · 1h 18m

About this episode

Martti Malmi and Gigi discuss innovative technologies like Hashtree and Nostr VPN while exploring themes of freedom-tech and encryption.

"We have this window of opportunity to steer the LLMs and the future of technology into a freedom-tech direction." Martti Malmi & Gigi take a walk in Madeira. Recorded during SEC-07 . Listen on sovereignengineering.io In this dialogue: Martti's GitHub annoyance spawned Hashtree : a content-addressed file system on top of Blossom that adds directories, file chunking, and encryption. Everything encrypted by default using content hash key encryption (inspired by Freenet ), so Blossom server operators have cryptographic deniability about what they host. git remote hashtree : set up a hashtree remote for any Git repo, push to your Blossom server. Martti uses it for all Iris development, with GitHub only as a backup mirror. The web interface at git.iris.to supports NIP-34 issues and pull requests. The WebRTC mesh layer complements Blossom: peers find each other via Nostr relays for the initial handshake, then communicate directly. Requests route through peers with hops-to-live (starts around 15, probabilistically varied for privacy). No domain names, TLS certs, or IP addresses needed. Iris Browser loads apps from Hashtree URLs, bypassing web hosting entirely. Same idea as the old…

People in this episode

Host: Gigi

Guest: Martti Malmi

Topics covered

freedom-tech
content-addressed file system
encryption
peer-to-peer communication
Nostr relays
Iris Browser
Nostr VPN

Keywords

Hashtree
Nostr VPN
Iris Browser
encryption
peer discovery
content addressing
WebRTC
Blossom
GitHub

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: GitHub, Blossom, Freenet, Iris, Nostr, Tailscale

Products: Nostr VPN

Places: Madeira