Comparison between Muse and Secure-Scuttlebutt

These are the last two event-driven database systems that I, Henry, worked on. Contrasting them might give us some insights about the choices we want to make for Mass Market.

System Comparisons

Muse	SSB
Server holds all User Logs	One Log per client/feed
Log is shared between all devices of a User	No multi-device => we want multi-clerk
Writes happen as RPCs to the Server	Writes always happen locally, which allows for true p2p between local clients
Local-first via “pending” writes	Works b/c no complex shared state between feeds; threads of posts are grow-only sets, in a sense

Let’s consider the Muse model for us: The Relays would hold the write primitive, which mutates the Listing finally.

Shops/clients would fetch the mutations/events from a Relay and apply them locally, to reconstruct the state and verify against on-chain commitment data.

Note

The Relays build the Log, Shop users write to them.

The important distinction here is that the state of a listing is the combination of all mutations applied, not the latest/longest chain.