Within minutes of posting #129402, I was asked by @DarthCoin why I didn't just try Impervious out for myself. He was right. I had been curious about it since Bitcoin 2022, so here are my first impressions:
I downloaded the Linux version and installed it on my laptop running Ubuntu 22.10. Installation was easy, and I was soon up and running.
When you open the application, Impervious looks like a conventional browser with a clean, uncluttered appearance. This surprised me, since I know it was cobbled together and contains many standalone components.

The Browser

I first checked out the browser. The default search engine is Google, with Amazon, Bing, Duck Duck Go and Wikipedia as other options.
The browser is built on Firefox, so extensions are available through Mozilla. In fact, all of the settings options are identical to those found in Firefox.
Unfortunately, like Firefox, it is big and clunky, and eats up more of my old laptop’s RAM than Brave.

Messaging and Decentralized Identity (DID)

I next wandered down to the settings tab on the left side of the page, and clicked “Identity” . I was given the option to create my nickname and select my avatar, and this page contained my long form decentralized identity key.
I wanted to learn more about Decentralized Identity, or DID, and this article did a pretty good job of explaining it.
This was all very interesting, and the page was designed well. Unfortunately, it occurred to me that I simply don’t text or DM too many people, and my family and friends are all normies who would find it weird if I asked them for their decentralized identity. I personally have no use for this feature, but I can imagine it being used in organizational settings.

Video Meetings

It was at this point that it dawned on me that the Impervious Browser is heavily geared towards collaborative settings, such as businesses and other formal or informal groups. The Meetings tab obviously emulates Zoom, but incorporates the DID identity protocol. This is a good thing in theory, but in practice I’m sure it becomes a little unwieldy. We all are willing to trade security for convenience in certain circumstances. At least I know I am.
Impervious video meetings wouldn’t have saved Jeffrey Toobin, since all the DID protections in the world won’t stop juicy human gossip, unlike Lightning node gossip.
Again, I don’t use video chat except with my wife if we’re apart, and there’s no way I’m going to convince her to set up her DID first.

Live Docs

Live Docs is another great idea for an organization or business. It is similar to collaborative Google docs or Microsoft office. This application strikes me as very useful, as most organizations can use added security regarding documents. Maybe those in high office could benefit from Impervious in helping to keep "Highly Classified" documents secure.

Contacts

The next module I checked out was “Contacts.” The first thing I noticed was that it’s not a traditional contact database with values for addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. Once again the entry is built around the DID, and a contact cannot even be saved without one. Basically, there are inputs for a person’s name, a section to upload an avatar, and the block to enter the DID. That’s it. From this record, you can message or video chat the person, and you can share the record. Oddly enough, they prominently display a button to connect on twitter through an API contact integration, which seems to defeat the whole purpose to some extent.

Wallet

I just connected Alby through a Firefox extension, so I can’t really judge how the lightning wallet works. I do know you are required to connect to a node.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe the Impervious Browser offers a lot more than what most people need right now. It also uses up a lot of my ram, and I don’t have much to spare. That being said, I am impressed with the ambition of the project, I understand there is nostr integration in the future, and Impervious might be ahead of its time. I’m going to keep playing around with it and see what the future brings.
Great review! I need to check out Impervious
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me too!
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Thanks very much.
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You're welcome!
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Mozilla snubbed the DIDs thing, so it's great that someone has made the effort to implement them, even, on top of their platform.
I'm not bothered by a little higher memory usage, but I do need my browser to support Tor. I can offload that, as I do now, to running a Tor socks proxy in my system, and indeed it even is used for Git repo cloning/committing and Go module proxy access for building apps.
I'm sure that things will get better over time, certainly it will help when you can enable DIDs in Brave also. Having a built-in LN wallet capability is a definite plus factor for us Bitcoin maxis.
I am not real keen on Mozilla's HTML engine though. But it is a little faster than the Chrome webview engine.
I'm probably going to try it now, since they had the sense to strike the content ownership conditions in their ToS.
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A load of useless proofs of concept without an audience. That’s why it’s a failure.
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(And yes, I tried to use the browser. Downloaded it on day 1 of availability).
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Good review! Thanks. I have the same impression about this Impervious. Is more "corporate focused" use, but then come the part with connecting to a node. That means all users must have a LN node at home / office, only for their DID.
And that is not so easy today. Yes we have private LN nodes and stuff, but not at large scale to be used for this. Maybe when Blixt will launch the desktop Linux version would be more handy to spin up quickly a LN node with it and link it with Impervious.
Will see.
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They should integrate nostr
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lets go!
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Great work!
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Did you ever run out of RAM?
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I have an old laptop with 4GB of ram. I use a basic Linux system monitor to check usage. In reality I have 3.7GB. Opening Inpervious, maybe watching a YouTube video on the browser, it has gone as high as 3.5GB. At that point the screen becomes unresponsive, the mouse freezes, etc. Keep in mind this isn't a completely accurate assessment, since I am running other background programs. All else being equal, Brave uses less RAM on my system. In fairness to Impervious, regular Firefox uses about the same and has much less functionality.
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my family and friends are all normies who would find it weird if I asked them for their decentralized identity
ha ha ha ha
so true
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