p2pchatter

No, you clearly didn't read the annotated source that is linked both from the application and various comments here on this submission.

The chat messages are being sent directly to the other party.

Why is that? I think this app fits very good with IPFS. Same applies to Orbit.

What is the difference? You can host files on IPFS just as you can share files.

Would have been easy to fix, if this wasn't a demo.

Either you use IPNS which are pointers to other data on IPFS. Or you can use DNS to point to IPFS hashes. The results are the same, you end up with a address that can be updated.

For this example I didin't use it, as it's just a silly little example.

Not sure how that would work. You would have to make some transaction on the Ethereum network for other peers to discover you, correct? That kind of makes the barrier to entry a lot harder.

On desktop, it's possible to use mDNS et al, we need something similar for browsers.

Please tell me more how I could use Ethereum for discovery of other peers though, sounds interesting.

Already possible, check out the input in the bottom left. Not very obvious, but it's there already.

No, there is no global database. You just share hashes that you know about, so no matter how many hashes there is, IPFS will still be the same speed.

Seems to be a bug with js-ipfs or just a lot of DOM nodes... Not sure how to fix.