it appears that the issues i've been having with git-ssb are related to the way blobs are replicated. there are performance issues with node-sbot, but the real problem is that blobs are only fetched on access, and if i am offline when a particular blob is fetched the clone will fail. in practice, this isn't an issue for very active teams that are constantly fetching each other's blobs as they work on the project. however, you *will* lose track of blobs if your velocity is too low.