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Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

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Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#121

Post by Blikkentrekker »

casmclas wrote: post #55
thesausageking wrote: post #12

The author's definition of what makes a "decentralized application" is too strong and I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship. You can bu…

> I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. I don't think this is a fair characterisation of the article. She argues that email is an example of something that is failing as a decentralised application: Google's power over email is too strong. This is very different from claiming that it isn't an example of…

Then the argument can better be characterized as “The final result of a free market is an eventual monopoly.”

It is not about centralization but about one player winning and beating the competition in that case.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#122

Post by pavlov »

samatman wrote: post #115

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentralization. The vast majority of the population is living in Facebook/WhatsApp/Discord/Visa&Mastercard land, sure. But I'm a heavy Matrix user, it works great. I torrent all the time: it works great. I'm also on urbit, and it works great. I don't use Mastodon persona…

> "The big elephant is the cybercoins, and it's just a weird time to declare them a failure. It's like no one remembers 2017, this has practically been a carbon copy"

Exactly. This has been a re-run of 2017, and that is plenty enough reason to declare them a failure.

What happened to all the 2017 projects that raised billions during the last hype cycle based on breathless promises of decentralized wonderlands? They delivered absolutely nothing that anyone is using in the real world. "DeFi" is bullshit leverage products for speculators. NFTs are cryptokitties but somehow more stupid.

The whole scene is just a Ponzi Construction Kit for the gullible and greedy.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#123

Post by HDMI_Cable »

samatman wrote: post #115

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentralization. The vast majority of the population is living in Facebook/WhatsApp/Discord/Visa&Mastercard land, sure. But I'm a heavy Matrix user, it works great. I torrent all the time: it works great. I'm also on urbit, and it works great. I don't use Mastodon persona…

> The one I'm really betting on is Matrix, though. They have reliable income from the French and German governments, and plenty of motive to make a really good platform. I fully expect them to be as slick and featureful as Slack and Discord within a couple of years, and start to eat those company's lunch.

I don't think it even needs to be that. Most people (in the west) are tired of all of these apps, and their data collection, they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding (maybe focusing on the Matrix bridges), then people would jump on board immediately.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#124

Post by HDMI_Cable »

0xCMP wrote: post #80
casmclas wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. I don't think this is a fair characterisation of the article. She argues that email is an example of something that is failing as a decentralised application: Google's power over email is too strong. This is very different from claiming that it isn't an example of…

Agreed and I will add that a huge reason Google is used by so many was very effective spam filtering. A huge reason why hosting your own email is hard? Getting filtered by Google because of the massive amount of spam they are blocking. Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could nev…

Spam seems pretty "solved" (if one can call it that) problem nowadays though. Most people who run their own servers simply put SpamAssassin and a couple of other tweaks; not much fuss is needed anymore.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#125

Post by godelski »

thesausageking wrote: post #12

The author's definition of what makes a "decentralized application" is too strong and I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship. You can bu…

> To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship.

I'm confused, because it seems like you agree with the author. She says

>> My statement that email can be used without involving Google is technically true, but anyone they blacklist will quickly realise that they’re largely locked out of the global email network.

She is stating that the problem with email isn't that it is an open network, but that it is effectively centralized by a few big players. It might as well be a centralized service. The protocol may be open but if you aren't using a major centralized service you're going to experience a lot more difficulty, including potentially being black listed by these big players. Just getting accidentally classified as spam on one of them and you will locked out. Not to mention dealing with all the spam if you roll your own.

> If you become unhappy with them, it's easy to move.

I think this is an absurd statement and you know it or you are lying to yourself. Sure, forwarding exists but that's not exactly moving. If you've ever tried moving email addresses you'd know how difficult this is. It's significantly harder than moving phone numbers, which also isn't that easy. Just think of every account that you now need to modify. Sure, you don't need to port every account, but there's more than you probably think.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#126

Post by samatman »

c54 wrote: post #120
samatman wrote: post #115

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentralization. The vast majority of the population is living in Facebook/WhatsApp/Discord/Visa&Mastercard land, sure. But I'm a heavy Matrix user, it works great. I torrent all the time: it works great. I'm also on urbit, and it works great. I don't use Mastodon persona…

Oh cool -- what do you use urbit for? Internet chat? I bought a star ages back but haven't done anything with it, I curiously read their update emails but remain tickled/skeptical by the oddball Hoon semantics and design language. Don't get me wrong, all with a layer of hopeful bemusement at the spectacle of it. I'm very curious as to your thoughts.

Right now the main urbit application is Landscape, which is written by Tlon. Anyone can start a group, invite-only or public, and inside a group you can have as many channels as you want, which come in three flavors: chat, 'collection' which is basically a linkdump, and a notebook, which is blogging, with or without comments. Landscape also offer direct messages, and a cute little weather app and sunrise/sunset clock.

It... works. It feels like running Matrix, or any other chat application, so it's easy to forget that everyone you interact with is a peer. Everyone is the admin of their own group, if they have one, and if they don't, they can start one by clicking a button.

Tlon is doing hosting now, or if someone is capable of setting up a droplet or whatever it's pretty straightforward to do yourself. Right now the hard part is getting a planet, because of the gas fees, but there's some kind of rollup solution coming along to make that cheaper. A comet remains free, and always will be; probably not the right answer if you want to run a group, but to get your feet wet, it works just fine.

There's some neat stuff coming down the pipeline, but right now urbit is stable, performs well enough, and it's cozy and calm. No one really advertises their groups, but if you find some urbit people on Twitter (which is easy) they can point you in some good directions to get started.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#127

Post by frosted-flakes »

m3kw9 wrote: post #114
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #8

This is a really myopic view on uses of crypto and the BitTorrent protocol. There's so much more going on than criminal applications. BitTorrent is used in a lot of settings for data distribution and for software distribution. Saying it's just for pirating reveals the author's laziness. Several of these use-cases are listed in the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent As for crypto, I recommend peo…

If BitTorrent is so great why isn’t it used more today for file transfers vs hosted storage? Also it is mostly used for piracy because authorities cannot shut down a decentralized system.

Doesn't the Windows update system use some form of torrents for faster downloads?

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#128

Post by godelski »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #123
samatman wrote: post #115

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentralization. The vast majority of the population is living in Facebook/WhatsApp/Discord/Visa&Mastercard land, sure. But I'm a heavy Matrix user, it works great. I torrent all the time: it works great. I'm also on urbit, and it works great. I don't use Mastodon persona…

> The one I'm really betting on is Matrix, though. They have reliable income from the French and German governments, and plenty of motive to make a really good platform. I fully expect them to be as slick and featureful as Slack and Discord within a couple of years, and start to eat those company's lunch. I don't think it even needs to be that. Most people (in the west) are tired of all of these apps, and their data…

> they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding, then people would jump on board immediately.

Granted it's been a year since I last tried Matrix/Element, but back then it didn't "just work" despite many on HN claiming it did. My experience was far worse than Signal, which honestly I haven't had many problems with and many here claim it doesn't "just work."[0] I hit plenty of bugs in WA too. I think the difference is that I notice the centralized apps fix their bugs faster and that speed is proportional to the size of the parent company. Thing is if it is resolved quickly people just forget the bugs exist (and we also remember bugs more for apps which we haven't been using for long). There's a strong cult like mentality for Matrix, on HN, and I just don't get it (I don't get the cult mentality of Signal either, but HN is fairly anti-Signal so I'm not sure that needs to be addressed but we can). I love the idea of decentralization, but I just haven't seen it pan out and it still looks like it has a long way to go. I hope you all are right, but I'm not going to hold my breath and I don't think "just better marketing" is what's needed. There's a lot more.

[0] Disclaimer, I am still a Signal user because I want to support encryption and privacy and I don't see Matrix there yet and moving ecosystems is difficult. I'll take whatever encrypted and private service I can get friends to use that also doesn't require any tech literacy (this is an extreme must because most of my friends and family don't know a monitor from a desktop).

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#129

Post by mastax »

3np wrote: post #72
tssva wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their definition seems less strong and different than portrayed in your comment. Below is the definition from the article. "To clarify what I mean by decentralised: applications whose main purpose is fulfilled as part of a network, where that network is not reliant on any preordained nodes. Decentralised applications are also known as “federated”. There is also a more specific term “distributed”, also known as “peer…

I somehow glanced over this, thanks for pointing it out. This definition suggests that "federated" is strictly equal to "decentralized", which is coincidentally not strictly in conflict with what I wrote (though a very unorthodox definition of federated, as it doesn't imply any federation). Even so, IRC has no business in this list per the authors definition.

> Even so, IRC has no business in this list per the authors definition.

The "network" part is arguable, but IRC does not require any pre-ordained nodes, which matches the author's definition.

It's a small part of full decentralization, but an important one. Being able to point your Facebook Messenger client at a different server would be a big step.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#130

Post by antihipocrat »

smitty1e wrote: post #102
antihipocrat wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 80 per cent also includes the large rent seeking corporations. It is in their interest to stifle innovation as well, or if not, then be in a privileged position to aquire it once it has been de-risked.

Indeed.

After posting I realized you had effectively said the same thing. To your point about government acting as a referee to ensure the free market is operating effectively, I don't see that happening unless the electorate demands an end to all activities that could lead to regulatory capture. I'm not sure if this is ever possible..
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