A panel from a comic. We close in on a figure in a doorway. They have a round head, a face hemmed in by some kind of bonnet. They say "I'm lookin' for The Bottleneck".
https://worm-blossom.org/#y2026w10
This week, Aljoscha has been mingling. Sammy has been working on persistent stores and thinking about phrasing. We also got lots of help! And in the comic, a mysterious stranger is asking questions.
A panel from a comic. A large, oddly proportioned figure sits hunched over a bar. A TV showing green and grey static hangs in the corner.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w9
This week, Sammy and Aljoscha finally reach the limits of generics in Rust (and detail their defeat). In part 6 of 'Why is it called worm-blossom', Cinnamon looks critically at SSB. And in the comic, BLOSSOQUEST resumes!
An illustration of two playing cards, bearing Aljoscha and Sammy styled as face cards.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w8
This week! Part 5 of “why is worm-blossom called that” heads to the Pacific Ocean. Sammy feels like a frog. Aljoscha is heads down (but has provided a good tune nonetheless).
A tiny Sammy jumps across the keyboard of a giant computer.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w7
This week Aljoscha considered breaking the symmetry. Sammy has recovered but has to program computers. And in the comic, Sammy receives brutal feedback.
A screenshot of the 2026 week 6 update of worm-blossom.org. There is a comic, music, TWO (!) editorials by Sammy, and some links of the week. On the actual page there’s even more, I heard.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w6
This week, Sammy catches us all up on p2p-basel and FOSDEM, and there's a video of her talk. Aljoscha is under the weather, but provides music anyway!!! Bless him. And in this week's comic, we take a look at Sammy's conference outfits, but what's that noise???
Merci!!!
spectra.video/w/7hsRkrevhu...
"Centralised systems were made with the best of intentions, but were turned against us anyway. And peer-to-peer systems will be exactly the same.”
Here’s a recording of my #FOSDEM talk on willowprotocol.org. This talk was a real labour of love, hope you enjoy it!!!
A crudely drawn portrait of Sammy, who has been drawn to look as though a portion of fence is being balanced on her head (???)
worm-blossom.org#y2026w5
This week Aljoscha is given free reign over the update, and Sammy will probably regret it later.
A drawing in a kind of pictographic style. A red tall block which looks a bit like a server stands atop a mountain peak, with wires leading to stylised users at their computers surrounding it.
Centralised networks were weaponised. P2P systems will be exactly the same. How should we design the protocols of tomorrow?
This is the lens through which we’ll look at Willow (willowprotocol.org), a family of open source p2p protocols this coming Sunday at #FOSDEM.
fosdem.org/2026/schedul...
A screenshot of the 2026 week 4 update of worm-blossom.org. There is a comic, an announcement of worm-blossom’s open collective, and a “we’re listening to...” feature.
https://worm-blossom.org/#y2026w4
This week, Sammy and Aljoscha are on their way to Basel. Our Open Collective has been approved. And in the comic, a monitor asks for help, firmly.
A panel from this week’s comic. Sammy, pale green and bewildered, is silhouetted against a jaunty spiral as she descends into self doubt.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w3
This week, Sammy whittles on about the FOSDEM talk. Aljoscha talks slice verification internals in Bab, and unwinds by playing some Sonic Youth. In this week's comic, Sammy reconsiders her choice of metaphors.
we apologise for non-square album artwork depicted. it has been fixed and we will reflect upon our shortcomings
A screenshot of the week 2, 2026 update of worm-blossom.org. There are upcoming events at P2P Basel and FOSDEM, a comic with a curious speech bubble saying “PLEASE”, a “we’re listening to” feature with some album recommendations, and the beginning of an editorial by Aljoscha.
worm-blossom.org#y2026w2
This week, Aljoscha and Sammy talk about the mysteries of getting (un)stuck. We talk about what we've been listening to. And a voice cries out in the depths.
don’t encourage him
An illustration of a underground scene. In the distant background, we see two silhoutted figures, one looking towards the foreground. Close to us, we see a kind of monitor embedded in the rock, strange green waves on its screen. The caption below the illustration says "Did you hear something?"
worm-blossom.org#y2026w1
This week, something sputters into life deep underground. Sammy did very little indeed. There is no announcement. Aljoscha relaxed the only way he knows how (researching audio and video file formats).
An illustration of Aljoscha and Sam in mining gear, deep underground, surrounded by lava yet looking up towards the viewer with confidence.
worm-blossom.org#y2025w52
Not update worm-blossom.org over the holidays? Not a chance!
This week, Sammy reflects on the year that was, and Aljoscha plans for the year ahead. There is poetry about fuzz testing. And we announce the first of several Rust traits for (persistent) Willow storage.
Sam Gwilym will be talking about "Willow - A family of peer-to-peer storage protocols", at @fosdem.org '26 #Local-First & #CRDTs devroom!
Come listen to the 25 speakers on 1st Feb, from 9:00.
It is free! more details:
openlocalfirst.org/schedules/#2...
A panel from a comic, prefaced with “Deep inside Aljoscha’s Lair…”. We see Aljoscha sitting at his desk, his face glowing in the light of a computer. In the background are wires, pipes, screens, papers strewn over the floor. The text in this panel reads: "Fuzz tests... passing. Readme... complete. Publishing..."
worm-blossom.org#y2025w51
This week, a gift idea for the holidays. We release the Willow URI spec. Aljoscha talks about 'Cobweb', a new hypertext system. Sammy announces FOSDEM plans and reflects on announcements. And in Part 4 of "what's with the name?!", we travel back to the Netherlands in 2003.
A panel of a comic. Aljoscha asks Sammy “So how was the conference? Get any insightful feedback on our work?”. Sammy eats a sandwich.
worm-blossom.org#y2025w50
This week, Sammy recalls the important feedback she got at the conference. We release WebTT, a spec for tooltips on the web. Aljoscha talks about Bab storage, and Sammy reflects on splinternets.
Enjoy your Rust Unwrapped!!!
A screenshot of the week 49 update of worm-blossom.org. There is an advent calendar, a comic, and an announcement of a capability system being added to willow25.
worm-blossom.org#y2025w49
In this week's comic, Sammy wants something for all the folks who don't use Spotify. We've added a capability system to willow25. Aljoscha adds *playlists* to the site. And there are links, shout-outs, and help wanted!
A screenshot of the Week 48 update of worm-blossom.org. At the top, there is a new advent calendar. In the update itself are two panels of a hand-drawn comic, and an announcement for a new Meadowcap Rust crate.
worm-blossom.org
In this week's comic, Sammy is called from an unexpected location. We announce the Rust implementation of Meadowcap. Aljoscha explores mathematical equality. And we find the missing link between the Dreamcast and Swatch Internet Time.
A screenshot of the Willow Interactive Data Model. There are three columns, representing three peers: Alfie, Betty, and Gemma. They each have tabs representing the ‘namespaces’ they know about. Then there’s some UI for adding an ‘Entry’ to that namespace, with path, timestamp, and payload fields. Then there’s a list of each peer’s existing entries below that. Alfie and Betty have green entries in their lists representing entries which would be added by a sync operation.
willowprotocol.org/specs/data-m...
We’ve added an interactive demo of how Willow works to the Willow Data Model page. You get three toy peers to add entries to and sync between! More fun than boring old ‘reading’ by far.
A screenshot of the worm-blossom 2025 Week 47 update. There is a calendar showing some upcoming events, a scan of some flower sketches, and a “Rant form the Ivory Tower” with corresponding ivory tower illustration.
worm-blossom.org#y2025w47
This week, Sammy crafted an interactive demo of the Willow data model. Aljoscha vents in two rants, and has also figured out how to get a flanger-like effect into the music for the website. We release a Rust crate for variable-length integer encodings.
A screenshot of the 2025 Week 46 update of worm-blossom.org. There are two columns of content. On the left there is a portion of a comic. On the right there is an announcement about Ufotofu-based encoding and decoding.
worm-blossom.org#y2025w46
Now on Fridays! In this week's comic, Aljoscha and Sammy are called out. Encoding and decoding lands in Ufotofu. We go back to 1998 to further explore why the site is called worm-blossom. There are opinions about fancy CRDTs. Aljoscha talks encoding and fuzz testing.
A screenshot of the Ufotofu page. There is a symmetrical header, symmetrical code samples, and UFOs in the corners of the background.
worm-blossom.org/ufotofu/
Ufotofu is a Rust crate for working with streams and sinks which we developed for our Willow Rust work, based on “Strict Principles for Lazy Sequences” (aljoscha-meyer.de/assets/landi...). Also when the webpage scrolls it looks like a UFO is beaming stuff up.
A screenshot of the worm-blossom update for week 55 of 2025. The header is symmetrical! The music is symmetrical! There is a comic, an announcement, and app mockups drawn on grid paper.
https://worm-blossom.org/#y2025w45
This week we release ufotofu, a perfectly symmetrical Rust library for streams and sinks. There's a cross-section of where most of the time in a worm-blossom project goes. Aljoscha looks back on years of p2p projects rolling their own streaming abstractions.
A screenshot showing a portion of worm-blossom.org’s entry for Week 44 of 2025. An article titled “what’s with the name?!” is partially shown. It reads: “why is this website called ‘worm-blossom’? In this series we will explain why in a concise manner. PART 1: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION” A sketch of a man shrugging in ignorance is displayed next to it.
https://worm-blossom.org/#y2025w44
This week we begin our multi-part series on why worm-blossom is called that. There's also a new willow25 crate release with groupings. Aljoscha has a new order theory crate. And Sammy has been away and drew a bit of Wales.
An illustration bearing a Willow emblem in the centre, and many dotted lines fanning out from it to different characters using their devices, talking to each other, fixing things.
willowprotocol.org, the home for our set of p2p storage protocols, has been updated! There’s a new Rust section. Confidential Sync prevents man-in-the-middle attacks. The Drop format encodes Willow data efficiently into a single binary. Dozens of new illustrations. And much more!
