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Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#11

Post by detaro »

_m8fo wrote: post #3

Isn't the web already inherently decentralized (of course we all know there are forces trying to create their own walled gardens)? In the end, you just have to make something better that requires decentralization, and then it will win. In this way, the "survival of the fittest" for memes holds. What's a problem that only a decentralized web can solve? - Privacy? (Most) People don't care. Irrelevant. - Security? (Most…

I thought the article pretty clearly framed the problem they try to solve as "benefits of connectivity for places and situations that don't have direct or regular connectivity to the internet (and thus no reliable access to centralized services)".

Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#13

Post by seoseokho »

maxton wrote: post #7

I think the headline here is misleading. What they are offering is a prize to decentralize the internet - the actual network to which people connect in order to use the web. Judging from the other comments here, I don't think a lot of people have actually read the article. IPFS and blockchain are technologies that are built on top of the internet - they assume a network connection already exists.

yeah, I think the competition is looking for tech like the one opengarden had, something of a mesh network where people are connected thru bluetooth and wifi (direct), etc.

Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#15

Post by tomfitz »

CJDNS is a self-organising IP address allocation and routing layer. A node's public key acts as its IPv6 address, and routing uses a DHT of those nodes.

This style of network has the property that you can take two independent CJDNS networks, link them together, and all nodes are mutually addressable/routable. This is in contrast to The Internet, whose addressing is centralised on IANA.

cjdns is moderately active, though most links between nodes are via an overlay on top of the public Internet. The goal is to have physical/wireless links between geographically close nodes.

Use https://peers.fc00.io/ to find a cjdns node geographically close to you.

Decentralized protocols such as ipfs/scuttlebutt work particularly well on cjdns, as a file shared on ipfs in one network, will automagically become available on another network, once those networks are linked.

cjdns: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#18

Post by femto »

US based only? A pity.

People had a pretty good go at this in the early 2000s, when WiFi arrived on the scene. Most of those networks died and the ones that remain never took over the world [1]. The sticking points in the efforts that I was involved in were:

1) Hassle in obtaining and setting up the hardware (particularly permanent antennas).

2) Lack of density, meaning it was hard to find others to connect to.

3) Address allocation and routing never really worked out, due to the need for central coordination.

I've been thinking about it ever since... Lots of ideas, but no 100% practical solution (yet).

It'll be interesting to see what happens this time, after 15 years of further development.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_net...

Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#19

Post by Animats »

It can be done. It has been done, many times, from 1980s amateur packet radio to 2000s WiFi meshes. It's not inherently difficult. The hard problem is doing it with enough bandwidth to support cat videos. Netflix, and bloated web pages.

Suppose you had a distributed emergency IP radio network available that could provide 56Kb as long as at least one solar powered node per square kilometer was working. It would deliver VoIP and SMS, plus slow data connections. It would have HF links for long-haul connections even if telco services were unavailable. Who would use it?

FEMA tried distributing HF radios to first responder agencies, as a backup in case everything else went down. They can't even get most agencies to turn them on and talk for a monthly test.[1]

[1] https://www.dhs.gov/shares

Re: Mozilla and NSF offer $2M prize to decentralize the web

#20

Post by jerrysievert »

jdormit wrote: post #12

The developers behind Scuttlebutt [0] should apply for this! It pretty much perfectly meets Mozilla's criteria. [0] https://github.com/dominictarr/scuttlebutt

I am fortunate to consider Dominic a friend (he's slept on my couch, and I have shared beers with him in multiple cities), but I don't think that's quite enough to decentralize to meet the criteria.

I think that the real solution requires caching, lookups, and multiple types of access through fingerprinted (sorry, can't say "secure") forwarding and proxying. It's a big task, but I do think that a small example could be built within the next year.

Heck, even LoRa, with the right software behind it could be a contender, if married to the correct technology.

Hm. That gets me thinking.

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