SSL3.IO

Creating a blockchain app is an adventure, but in fact, is far easier than creating a standard Web2 application with a server, a web server, a language / interpreter, a database, and all the happy part of updating, controlling ...

No, blockchain is far easier. And here is why:

• You don't need a server, or a hoster
• You don't need to update anything
• It costs almost nothing
• Nothing can erase your smart contract (program) once it's one the blockchain

So, just after having the idea of SSL3.IO, i drafted a simple smart contract on solidity, with just a few numbers of methods:

• link a domain to a wallet/address
• link an IPFS cid to a wallet/address
• add a "payment" method to extend the gateway
• add a minimum of security

And that's it. Once deployed on the polygon testnet with Remix, i directly tried my smart contract methods, and it was working as expected.

The next part was to create the gateway, and think about the architecture of all of this. Some things came in my mind:

• I still need to use DNS to verify that a wallet/address has the right to manage the configuration of a website
• i need to check the data on the blockchain
• i need to generate the certificate for every new domains/websites

As i developed Fortpress, i decided to reuse it to create the gateway of SSL3.IO. The first gateway was a single piece of 50 lines of code, managing the request entering, and checking if a _ssl3 dns entry was existing. If yes, the gateway was then getting from the blockchain the data linked to this address, to route to the correct IPFS content.

And voilà. SSL3.IO is alive. As a POC, i hosted the SSL3.IO website on it's own gateway.

I needed a platform to be able to host and serve a website, but without servers or containers. I needed a Web3 platform.

Looking for it, I found that IPFS could help me storing the data, for free, while some Web3 gateways (like the Cloudflare one) could make the bridge between the Web2 (a web browser), and my Web3 website hosted on IPFS.

Problem: i had to enter my credit card details in cloudflare to use their full gateway. Else, a http only gateway was working, using a DNS entry to manage the routing of my website.

I realized 3 things:

• a Web3 service using Web2 payments methods was not a real Web3 service
• using DNS for the routing was really boring (dnslink protocol of IPFS), because of the delay of DNS propagation, that could take up to 24 hours to show your new website
• a website can't exist without an SSL/HTTPS certificate today

Solution: to create a full SSL/HTTPS Web3 gateway, using cryptocurrencies as payment, and using the blockchain to store and get the data, instead of the dnslink standard.

The last step was to find a name. It was the easiest one: i took the name of the HTTPS certificate protocol, SSL, and i added a 3, for Web3. SSL3.IO was born.