Dioxide

Dioxide

In response to the vulnerability of company outages, we have designed a new website called Dioxide. This website functions as a server system specifically designed to keep people connected. By utilizing a sophisticated decentralized network, Dioxide allows individual devices to communicate directly with one another, bypassing traditional centralized architectures and ensuring that communication remains possible even during a total blackout of major company services.

Our group came up with this idea because we have all had experiences where we were unable to communicate with others due to a company shutting down, and we realized the potential dangers of relying solely on these companies. We developed this solution to prevent issues that arise from a lack of communication during such outages.

Dioxide achieves this by allowing users to host their own servers, with messages propagating across all of them. Even if one user is aware of ten servers, while another user knows of only a single server, they can still communicate. This is because the first user’s message is sent to all ten servers, so if the second user has access to any of these, they are able to join the conversation. This structure enables a decentralized architecture.

This is important because people should not be entirely reliant on large technology companies and should maintain some level of self-sufficiency. Otherwise, if a major company goes down, it could significantly disrupt people’s lives. Additionally, Dioxide includes anonymity, allowing all users to communicate privately. Lastly, there are channels so users can focus conversations with specific people, groups, or communities.

Some challenges we faced included developing the idea for Dioxide. Many ideas were scrapped because they were either not creative enough or had already been implemented. It was not until after several hours of brainstorming that we developed an idea we believed was strong. Additionally, we encountered difficulties during the programming phase. We chose the wrong tech stack twice and had to rewrite the project each time, which made the process stressful and raised concerns about running out of time.

From these experiences, we learned the importance of choosing the correct tech stack and fully designing our project before beginning development. We are proud that we were able to complete and code such an advanced project. While we do not currently have future plans for Dioxide, it could serve as a valuable tool if major companies shut down and limit our ability to communicate.

Built With

• pocketbase
• svelte