i actually don't really regret this

readme.md

@@ -1,6 +1,62 @@
 # ufh
 
-a global graph database with access control
+A global graph database with access control
+
+## archived
+
+This doesn't work. I am not an expert in distributed systems and didn't
+know what I was doing from the start.
+
+The entire system has deep flaws:
+
+- There's no semblance of time. This is fine for redaction/updates,
+  but if I want to have a range of time where a certain key is valid or
+  events are able to be sent, that's not possible. I'd either need every
+  event to also have prev events, or to somehow use single append-only
+  logs.
+- One key is one user, and they can't be stored on servers. If a key
+  is stolen, that entire account is compromised. If all copies of a key
+  is lost, that account is gone.
+
+### what to use instead
+
+- [ipfs](https://ipfs.tech/) has some flaws, but exists
+  and is the best system that exists currently.
+- [dat](https://www.datprotocol.com/) is another dead protocol, but I
+  still like the ideas there.
+- [matrix](https://matrix.org/) has many flaws (state resets yay),
+  but also exists and is the best system to currently exist.
+
+### learning experience
+
+Despite the fact that this is a failure, I still think I got suprisingly
+far. Here are the upsides:
+
+- A suprising amount of stuff actually works
+  - `x.file`, `x.tag.local`, `x.redact` events (protocol side)
+  - file derivations (server side)
+    - many files can be thumbnailed or have thumbnails extracted
+    - media info is extracted via ffmpeg
+    - pdf text and video subtitles are extracted and put in a fts index
+  - structured documents + latex-like markup language (client side)
+  - plus, a proper dht (protocol/network side), so this is actually
+    somewhat competitive with ipfs!?
+- I still think a lot of ideas here are have merit
+  - combining the data and blob layer - refs can reference blobs and
+    blobs can be events. this solves the problem of having an excellent
+    decentralized protocol, but no way of distributing files.
+  - modelling as a graph database, querying by relations. this is much
+    more powerful than it seems, and could be used to build a lot of
+    different applications.
+  - custom indexers. there are a lot of different use cases for protocols,
+    but some cases need special "views" into the data. being able to
+    install modules/"appservices" for sorting/aggregating events in
+    special ways would be nice.
+- I learned a lot, which is always nice, but still disappointing seeing
+  this work was pointless.
+
+Since the spec is unfinished and will probably never be finished since
+it's broken, feel free to ask me on matrix via dm or #ufh:celery.eu.org.
 
 ## how to run