Information retrieved from u/anonw0rmer:


Whackd could be using Swarm to store the killswitch docs at

>bzzr://32628732bee753951e353c65ec0cd1e13a7a4fedb98782c639b6d88b9a516999

I'm trying to figure out how swarm works atm

"Now we’ve explained how Swarm functions as a distributed chunk store (fix-sized preimage archive), you may wonder, where do chunks come from and why do I care?

On the API layer Swarm provides a chunker. The chunker takes any kind of readable source, such as a file or a video camera capture device, and chops it into fix-sized chunks. These so-called data chunks or leaf chunks are hashed and then synced with peers. The hashes of the data chunks are then packaged into chunks themselves (called intermediate chunks) and the process is repeated. Currently 128 hashes make up a new chunk. As a result the data is represented by a merkle tree, and it is the root hash of the tree that acts as the address you use to retrieve the uploaded file.

When you retrieve this ‘file’, you look up the root hash and download its preimage. If the preimage is an intermediate chunk, it is interpreted as a series of hashes to address chunks on a lower level. Eventually the process reaches the data level and the content can be served. An important property of a merklised chunk tree is that it provides integrity protection (what you seek is what you get) even on partial reads. For example, this means that you can skip back and forth in a large movie file and still be certain that the data has not been tampered with. advantages of using smaller units (4kb chunk size) include parallelization of content fetching and less wasted traffic in case of network failures."