DAT does not require Beaker Browser to use.
Beaker Browser is a cool experiment based on DAT
Dat is a nonprofit-backed data sharing protocol for applications of the future.
^ from the Dat Project
Dat is a dataset synchronization protocol that does
not assume a dataset is static or that the entire dataset
will be downloaded.
The protocol is agnostic to the underlying transport
e.g. you could implement Dat over carrier pigeon.
^ From the whitepaper PDF
Key properties of the Dat design:
- Content Integrity
- Decentralized Mirroring
- Network Privacy
- Incremental Versioning - Datasets can
be efficiently synced, even in real time, to other peers. - Random Access - Huge file hierarchies can be efficiently traversed remotely.
DAT is a protocol, like HTTP is a protocol, meaning a dat link can start with dat://
It does offer a HTTP implementation to support the dat:// link discovery process, but does not require it.
Dat Links
Dat links are Ed25519 (Bernstein et al. 2012) public
keys which have a length of 32 bytes (64 characters
when Hex encoded). You can represent your Dat link
in the following ways and Dat clients will be able to
understand them:
- The standalone public key:
8e1c7189b1b2dbb5c4ec2693787884771201da9…- Using the dat:// protocol:
dat://8e1c7189b1b2dbb5c4ec2693787884771…- As part of an HTTP URL:
https://datproject.org/8e1c7189b1b2dbb5…
^ From the whitepaper PDF