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Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

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Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#131

Post by godelski »

leifg wrote: post #77

Great article! I have been meaning to write an article like this and the author raises a lot of points that I would make. But my assessment of why we don't have more centralization is pretty simple: "Consumers don't care" The concept in the real world is simple: "If I want something I go to store x and buy it". Translating that concept in the digital world is super easy with centralization: - Want to watch a video: g…

I guess the question is how to make profit on the backend. I'm not sure this is fairly obvious. I mean YouTubers can still do their sponsorships, but what about the people that run nodes? Use whatever interface you want, but how does the infrastructure hosts make money? I think this is something bitcoin (partially) solved by mining but there's still a non-obvious solution here.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#132

Post by smasher164 »

To centralize is to share rules and information. Without shared information, humans cannot work with and communicate with one other. The goal of decentralization should be to fix the power imbalance embedded in our current central structures, whether it's Google with email or Github with git.

People should instead be incentivized to centralize in their own local communities, i.e. their family, friends, coworkers, local businesses, community centers, etc... Accomplishing this will likely require effort on multiple fronts, from increased regulation over the tech sector, to creating products that empower communities to run these services themselves.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#133

Post by jspaetzel »

Mc91 wrote: post #74

This doesn't really go back in time much. What about Usenet? And why did it die? Last mile was always in the hands of oligopolies, if not monopolies. In New York, Andrew Cuomo (currently governor) strong-armed the last mile carriers into blocking Usenet for "think of the children" reasons. So how was the peer to peer Usenet killed off? Monopoly big business and big government. These things don't exist in a vacuum - b…

Tech decentralizing from San Francisco isn't proven yet, it's still novel and like other implementations of decentralized systems could fail. It'll take years to see how it plays out and by then it might just re-centralize.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#134

Post by samatman »

godelski wrote: post #128
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That was my experience eighteen months ago as well.

Four months ago, when we put in the work server, it works great. Not perfectly, some bugs with key management across multiple devices, but smooth enough to be the grand central station of our all-remote company.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#135

Post by lynx234 »

"Eventually you end up with the worst of both: a centralised system wrapping a phony pretense of blockchain. All of the energy waste, and none of the decentralisation"

The author presents themselves as familiar with blockchain applications, but I believe the statement above has two incorrect assumptions.

For one, if a developer aims to reduce energy use, they can deploy on a PoS chain.

Also, not every decentralized application has a "phony pretense of decentralisation". Sure there are some applications like that, but decentralized exchanges for instance, could not work anywhere else other than on a blockchain.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#136

Post by macqm »

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…

I think Windows 10 Delivery Optimization tech is a great example of (nearly) decentralized tech:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#137

Post by Taek »

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…

Using the terminology most commonly found in the crypto space, email is not decentralized but rather federated. This is because participation in the email ecosystem requires permission from other participants in the email ecosystem. If only 5% of the ecosystem is willing to forward your emails, most of your emails aren't going to make it to their destination.

Conversely, in the blockchain space anyone can participate in the blockchain. If a miner refuses to mine your transactions, that's profit that another miner can pick up. And if worst comes to worst, you can set up your own mining infrastructure and mine that transaction yourself - if the system is working correctly, you never need permission from someone else at all to participate. (there are some assumptions here, and if you choose to reject those assumptions as valid you can reasonably claim that blockchains aren't decentralized either)

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#138

Post by Taek »

BurningFrog wrote: post #50
bawolff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the problem with 99% of articles about decentralized/federated/etc systems. Nobody can agree on what properties they want and everyone ends up talking past each other.

Someone needs to establish a terminology!

often times when debating another professional we'll start things off by laying out exactly how we're using each term, and for the extent of the debate we'll agree on some specific definitions, or sometimes even make up temporary nonsense words so that the debate can be productive.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#139

Post by Taek »

mastax wrote: post #129
3np wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not decentralized, that's just open source.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#140

Post by young_unixer »

nefitty wrote: post #42
young_unixer wrote: post #15

All of the mentioned things work just fine. In life, nothing is perfect. For example, I can't use a CPU based on an open ISA as my daily driver. Does that mean that CPUs "don't work"? Of course not. The fact that something is used for illegal purposes means that it doesn't work? Does LSD "not work"? The fact that something is hard to set up or maintain mean that it doesn't work? Does Linux not work? Do airplanes not…

I agree with your sentiment. The style you chose to express it makes it hard to read. It seems unnecessarily defensive, sort of like someone poking me in the chest to make a point about something that I don’t feel emotional about.

This defensive tone is one of the few ways I have found to make myself understood clearly without overthinking my prose.

When I write in more "narrative" tone, it's hard for me to make sure that my grammar is right, and that I'm making myself understood.

In fact, I always try to write my comments in narrative form first, but many times the grammar comes out awkward, so I scrap that and write in a more dialogical form.

If you have any recommendations on how to improve this, they're welcome.

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