This idea is inspired by nixos-mailserver. It was so easy to spin up the mailserver after changing some DNS records and putting in some settings. I thought it might be a good idea to do the same for services that need public, decentralized infrastructure to support. Some ideas include
- Tor relay, or exit node
- Encrypted messaging nodes. It looks like SimpleX chat relies on SMP servers to relay communication
- Crypto miners (I know, I know, but you understand how it fits the “public contribution” usecase)
- Search engines like searxng (I currently use a public instance)
- Libredirect services, like proxy clients for social media
Maybe federated services, but those require more than just the software running on the public internet. Those require moderation and long term maintenance. Ideally, the services in this config would be ephemeral.
Does this sound like a good idea? Would you spin one of these up on a $10 VPS? I understand that this is the NixOS community, not necessarily the privacy community, but I figured thered be overlap.
What other services do you think would be applicable?
Checkout https://github.com/ibizaman/selfhostblocks
That looks like the same idea for a different set of tools. That’s a great reference, thank you!