Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself, your technology background and how your love for programming was born.

Suryaansh Singh: My name is Suryaansh Singh and I’m currently a student in computer science and engineering, and my field of studies is Artificial Intelligence. My love for programming goes way back to the 7th grade when I was introduced to Visual Basic Advanced. I found it fascinating that you can code and build applications from scratch and then it just went on from there.

Q. Let’s talk about Holesail and what inspired you to build it. Was there any particular problem you were trying to solve?

Suryaansh Singh: When I was first introduced to the Pear stack and holepunch in general I came across Hypertele, which is a really cool reverse proxy powered by HyperDHT. When I tested Hypertele, I realized how powerful and useful the pear stack is and there are so many problems it can solve. So, I took inspiration from it and started building over it and that’s how Holesail came into being.

Initially I was building an alternative “ngrok” because I found it really interesting that you could have the same application, the same features, the same ease of access as any other port forwarding or dynamic DNS software but completely peer-to-peer with no servers in the middle and no maintenance costs. But now over the last three months, Holesail has turned into a full fledged networking application with applications for iOS and Android and easy to use third party integrations, such as for Visual Studio Code.

Q. Why did you choose to build Holesail on Pear Runtime/Holepunch and how did you find the process in general?

Suryaansh Singh: I chose Pear Runtime because the documentation is properly laid out and the developer community is very active on Keet. So, whenever I came across any challenges, I simply pinged the community on Keet and they replied instantly so that was super helpful.

On top of that, the code is quite modular and optimized for both mobile and desktop. That is what I find the most interesting, that we can use JavaScript code for building peer-to-peer apps on desktop and on mobile. Unlike other peer-to-peer networks, there is no dependency on a third party for a STUN Server, so the system is fault tolerant and is truly peer-to-peer.

Q. What advice would you give to anyone who is interested in building peer-to-peer apps with Pear Runtime?

Suryaansh Singh:
My first advice to anyone who wants to build apps on Pear Runtime is to join the Pear Developers room on Keet because it’s a very active and helpful community.

My second advice is to simply get started with basic examples in the documentation, and read the readme files which will already get you pretty far in your development journey.

If you are looking for project ideas to learn and get started, The Pear stack can be used as a drop in replacement for a static IP, and you can port existing applications to use pear stack and talk over peer-to-peer.

Q. Thinking back to the beginning of your journey developing Holesail, was there anything you would’ve done differently or are you happy with the way things turned out?

Suryaansh Singh: I’m quite happy with the process and how the project is turning out, and I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Holesail is more than an app for me, it’s also a hands-on way for me to learn everything I can about Pear Runtime and building P2P apps.

Q. What is your long-term vision for Holesail? Are there any new features you are developing?

Suryaansh Singh:
I want to turn Holesail into an ecosystem of global applications and integrations. Holesail will run on every platform, extensions for all kinds of developer applications.

Holesail will replace Dynamic DNS and Port forwarding for self hosted services in the future.

There are thousands of Tesla mate servers, Frigate cameras, baby monitors etc.. out in the open because someone set them up, port forwarded and did not know that now anyone can find their IP, server and spy on their personal lives.

I want to replace Dynamic DNS and port forwarding with Holesail, so that people do not face situations like this and they can still access their network securely and remotely with no extra configuration.

Q. Besides Holesail, are there any other p2p projects you are currently working on?

Suryaansh Singh: I’m working on a second project called Hyperspace. It is the world’s first completely peer-to-peer GPU and AI apps marketplace, there are no centralized servers, no central authority or a single point of failure.

The GPU host is a peer, the client is a Peer and payment is done completely peer-to-peer using Bitcoin Lighting Invoices. It is very easy to configure and get started, but to give you an overview:

Say, If I want a GPU to generate a few images, I will open Hyperspace, search for an appropriate GPU and tell it that I want to rent it out for like 10 minutes. The other side will generate an invoice for sats worth 10 minutes and I will get a Lightning address or a link to pay on. Once the payment is done, Holesail will establish a peer-to-peer tunnel between the GPU server and my computer. Now I can use it to generate the Images.

Q. How do you see the future of decentralized apps? Are there any industries in particular that would benefit from adopting this technology?

Suryaansh Singh: There are many services where server-based systems simply don’t make sense. Take video calls for example; we are chatting directly right now, but my data will go to a remote server owned by a third party, then it will make it to you. This middle step is completely unnecessary and it makes the data vulnerable and adds additional overhead. In terms of industries, I think the AI industry could benefit the most from adopting P2P technologies. As it continues to grow, we will have lighter models that people can run from their computers and push the industry forward in interesting new directions.

Q. Do you have any closing remarks? Anything you would like to share about Holesail?

Suryaansh Singh: Yes, Holesail is completely open source. So if anyone wants to contribute and develop integrations for Holesail for third party applications, we welcome their contributions.