EU Funding for Developer Tools for the Decentralized Web

Sounds awful (/s)

Cryptocurrency uses the blockchain as a fundamental building block. For good faith proponents of cryptocurrencies, the appeal is that they provide the potential to do low friction digital payments (e.g. "micropayments"), reduce the barrier to entry to participate in financial transactions and allow for a single, global unifying currency.

You may disagree that Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, has the potential to do this or whether it can actually do this, but that's the appeal.

Proof of Work (PoW) is probably necessary for a decentralized currency [0]. Proof of Stake (PoS) can be a valid cryptocurrency but fails in it's centralization criteria [1].

The Lightning network provides a layer-2 solution to payments, increasing transaction throughput and, thus, reducing PoW energy usage [2]. This might get into centralization territory but maybe this is a happy compromise between energy usage, throughput and centralization. In some sense, we have many "layer-2" like structures on the internet, with DNS caching, replication and load balancing etc.

> Most importantly, non regulation doesn't always mean good. Otherwise why we need law and government? Why not live in the wild west and let strong people kill weak people? Why not let big company play the monopoly?

As a counterpoint, regulation isn't always a good thing when it's been captured by hedge funds, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies or other special interests.

I'm having a hard time understanding if the line "Why not let big company play the monopoly?" was meant to be rhetorical in the affirmative or the negative. Are you suggesting that company monopolies are a good thing? Or are you suggesting that a decentralized currency unseating what is essentially the current banking monopoly is a bad thing?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDGliHwstM8&t=490s

[1] https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Proof-o...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network

I think a definition of "Decentralized web" should mean is in order.

The Internet/Arpa net was created to be decentralized from the beginning.

If a node, or more nodes went down, the rest of the network may be able to keep working.

If you, and me and all of our friends and all of their friends all ran out own web servers from our homes it would be decentralized to the extent that if a server disconnected all the others would keep working.

The information on that server may be gone for all time.

The prevalence of enormously centralized monopolies on the internet is not a result of its technical architecture, but rather narrow business interests and a terminal lack of regulation.

Now we are all using AOL v3. (Facebook, Twitter, Google etc).

It can get semantically confusing. Facebook is massively distributed in some ways. Datacenters in several locations, CDNs all over the place. It would take a hell of a lot (I think) to blow Facebook off the web. Or maybe some servers centrally will shut everything off it they are blown up.

IPFS is weird when taking about decentralized. Storage is not on one big server located somewhere. It is distributed among many. In theory if one goes down, the data is still available. but only if the server/nodes that make up the IFPS network are reliable and dependable.

If a lot of nodes are run from laptops that that are shutdown at the end of the day that would become a significant problem.

Since more and more and more data would need to be stored in IPFS the need for dependable storage servers will increase rapidly.

I would like a simpler approach more in line with the original architecture, lots and lots of independent small servers. The people who run them can mirror each other in some fashion to persist data. Like FTP used to be (and maybe still is), like NNTP used to be (and maybe still is)

It's becoming clear that decentralized blockchain isn't worth it for anything else than solving the trust issues in monetary and banking systems, which Bitcoin does.

Meanwhile, the altcoin "crypto industry" is becoming more and more like a casino and not even trying to solve anything. These people just chase profits, without even thinking of use cases any more. Decentralization isn't important any more; decentralization is old and the next buzzword is more valuable. There are the glorious leaders, the influencers, and the fans. Everyone is doing their part to perpetrate the scam for their own profit.

> isn't worth it for anything else than solving the trust issues in monetary and banking systems, which Bitcoin does.

No, it doesn't solve that.