Zbay

Zbay is an experimental app for Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux that builds a decentralized community chat (like Slack or Discord) using Tor, IPFS, OrbitDB, and Zcash.

For more on the values behind the project, read this essay.

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Getting started

Getting started hacking on Zcash is easy. Be sure to have Node and Rust installed. Then...

npm install

Next, copy the Tor binary for your platform to a file called tor in the tor directory in the repo. On macOS, for example, you'd run this command:

cp /Applications/Tor\ Browser.app/Contents/MacOS/Tor/tor.real ./tor/tor

Then use npm run start to start Zbay. That's it!

Building an installer

Zbay supports most popular operating systems. If you want to build a version for these platforms use one of our scripts:

macOS npm run dist

Windows npm run distwin

Ubuntu npm run distUbuntu

The built installers can then be found in the dist folder.

Removing data

To remove all your data from a machine, be sure to delete the Zbay and Zcash folders. Here's where to find them:

On Linux ~/.config/

On macOS ~/Library/Application Support/

On Windows %HOMEPATH%\\AppData\\Roaming\\

Backing up and restoring data

To make a backup, simply copy both the Zbay and Zcash folders from the location above to somewhere safe.

To restore a backup, move your backed-up Zbay and Zcash folders to the location above.

Contact

Questions? Find us in the #zbay channel, in Zbay, or email h@zbay.llc.