Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

cdixon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#31

Post by amelius »

babelchips wrote: post #20
senko wrote: post #9

What I find curious in that web3 scenario is this: 1. Today's internet is decentralized because people can't run their own web, smtp, nntp, xmpp, servers, WP blogs. Which is true, we can't expect people to run this the same way we can't expect every car owner to have a mechanic shop. 2. The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. Ba…

Others can run the nodes. The point is the network of nodes are distributed and no node is more important than any other. They are all just peers.

You mean like e-mail? Sadly, most people use gmail now and there are whitelists so you don't get to write your own email server.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#32

Post by brightstep »

The author says "democracy isn't perfect but it's better than the alternative," then overlooks the obvious corollary with regard to "GAFA" and other powerful corporations: we should have democratic control over our economy. Crypto and web3 are an attempt to solve a political problem with a technological tool; a cop-out to avoid a political fight. We're not going to make a better, more just or more democratic world by putting everything on a blockchain.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#33

Post by babelchips »

Zababa wrote: post #24
babelchips wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others can run the nodes. The point is the network of nodes are distributed and no node is more important than any other. They are all just peers.

You can make the same arguments but with servers instead of nodes. That's how things are today. But the web isn't decentralized.

No, today we have servers with some form of leader or centralised point of failure.

With a properly decentralised network any node can be taken down without taking down the entire network.

Not all public DLTs are born equal however. Leaderless networks which are not vulnerable to DDOS attacks are the dream.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#34

Post by dusted »

"During the first era of the internet — from the 1980s through the early 2000s — internet services were built on open protocols that were controlled by the internet community." <-- is this no longer the case? Did something happen to HTTP and HTTPS or the underlying IP protocol suite ? Isn't everyone still free to purchase a domain name and plug a computer to their network and serve a website?

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#35

Post by charcircuit »

summm wrote: post #7
Geee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If payments / incentives are required, then Bitcoin can be used. For example, there's decentralized Sphinx Chat which runs on the Bitcoin lightning network: https://sphinx.chat I haven't seen any of the 'cryptojunk' tokens implement an actual service like the Sphinx chat, which is quite telling in my opinion.

No. It cannot. Bitcoin cannot be used, because the rate of transactions is much to low for such an application. Currently its only use is gambling and burning the planet.

He said on the lightning network.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#36

Post by skeeter2020 »

This seems like a really long-winded, single perspective (and perhaps even revisionist) way of justifying one possible use-case, in which the author has an oblivious conflict of interest. Maybe he's got some ideas of what a possible future could look like, but it's hard to square this with it conveniently running through the technologies where he's invested, and there's no explanation of how the NFT exchange he was earlier trumpeting is critical to this future. I've read his posts for years and they've evolved into Andreessen Horowitz-style PR masquerading as deep & critical thought pieces.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#37

Post by fsflover »

senko wrote: post #9

What I find curious in that web3 scenario is this: 1. Today's internet is decentralized because people can't run their own web, smtp, nntp, xmpp, servers, WP blogs. Which is true, we can't expect people to run this the same way we can't expect every car owner to have a mechanic shop. 2. The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc. Ba…

> The proposals for "web3", to the best of my understanding, require people to run their own blockchain nodes, manage wallets, etc.

AFAIK, the proposal is to use federation, i.e., only those who can/want run servers, whereas normal users use those federated servers.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#38

Post by fsflover »

Ygg2 wrote: post #30
m_eiman wrote: post #3

Decentralization is good, but there's no need to bring cryptojunk into the discussion since that's far from decentralized. IMHO. Bring back the use of open protocols, add IPv6 support throughout and add a sprinkling of peer-to-peer.

Why is everyone talking about decentralized. Current internet is decentralized. People seem to be clamoring for distributed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58727b5a9de4bb...

The Internet is decentralized, but its main services (social networks, video hosting) aren't.

Re: Why Decentralization Matters (2018)

#40

Post by fsflover »

gitfan86 wrote: post #11
Olreich wrote: post #6

The points about centralized power make sense, but why http, smtp, and social media became centralized in the first place wasn’t grappled with at all. Running your own servers is attractive for some, but they aren’t the majority and never will be unless it requires something as simple as buying a $35 box and plugging it in at home with no additional setup. Social media is hard to accomplish without a centralized disc…

Wikipedia was mentioned in the article and it provides a great example of a product that was built in a decentralized way. Ironically, the author doesn't appreciate that Wikipedia's success had nothing to do with Web3 or crypto. The success of large companies isn't because of a lack of technology, it is due to human nature and economies of scale and network effects. Anti-trust is the way you fix this. Break youtube o…

But the page locking is a result of a democratic decision, not a single admin.
Post reply on HN