Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web

unfortunately people dont use them. The best replacement would be is if someone made a popular home router that permantently runs an IPFS node or sth.

That's what this is about.

Current web tech is inherently centralizing. Say you want to create an experience like Instagram or Twitter, delivered via HTTP. You have to pay for bandwidth, CDNs, storage, app servers, DB servers, etc etc. At scale, it's millions a month. So only corporations can do it, and with a few exceptions (eg Craigslist, Stack Exchange) they end up monetizing and "growth hacking" in user hostile ways.

The big open question is: can we create an experience as compelling as Instagram or Twitter over the P2P web?

It's a hard technical challenge, and today the answer is no. But if we get there, then internet mass media can be delivered via open source projects over open protocols, with a bunch of competing clients to chose from. No central organization controls and monetizes the thing.

Like BitTorrent, but for applications more complex and interactive than just file sharing.

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If you're interested, here are imo the most compelling projects in this space:

- Dat

- Beaker

- Augur

- OpenBazaar

- Patchwork / Secure Scuttlebutt

They are working on overlapping subsets of the same fundamental challenges, eg:

- How does a node choose what to download? The BitTorrent answer is "only things the user explicitly asked for". The blockchain answer is "the entire global dataset since the start of time". For something like a decentralized Twitter, both of those are unsatisfactory, you need something in between.

- How do you log in? Current systems either have no persistent identity at all (eg BitTorrent) or they just generate a local keypair, and it's your job to back it up and never lose it (eg SSB, Dat, all blockchain protocols). Both are unacceptable for wide-audience social media. Ppl lose their devices, get new devices, forget their password, etc all the time. They expect and rely on password reset, etc.

So there's a lot of hard tech and UX problems left unsolved, but also a lot of recent projects making solid progress

For blogging use case, I have a few questions:

1. A (current?) limitation I've noticed with Beaker is that you can only edit a site implementation (for a specific address) on a single machine. What would you do if you had multiple computers / locations that would want to make updates (JS or User Content)

2. What about errors. Don't they persist in the address's history? What if there's something undesirable that got added by accident

3. What about mobile? How could someone visit/browse on mobile without a non-distributed proxy http address

It strikes me that, if we are ever to expand the Internet into space on a universal scale (a la Vint Cerf and "delay tolerant networking", as an example), the inherent physics problems involved with distances and connectivity in space would probably make decentralization an absolute requirement. I mean, it seems it would not be uncommon for there to be a "local net" and a "universal peer-to-peer or mesh network net".

We're obviously a long way off from colonizing space and needing the Internet to spread, but we still have the physics problems here on Earth.

I'm not convinced that centralization in its current iteration (cloud operators controlling huge infrastructures) is the best long run. As we saw with the recent Azure outage in South Central US, even the huge infrastructure can have problems too.

Secure decentralization has seemed like a panacea for a long time - for all things that resemble a public utility. Even things like the power grid.

If public blockchains prevail then everything is already public and traceable to a single individual. Search wouldn't even be necessary. As long as financial gateways are tied into decentralized web, AML/KYC will prevent total anonymity so there is always room for forensic services.