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Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

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Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#71

Post by mpva »

This person clearly has a biased view about bitcoin ( as evident by their talk about and distain of the market and its "scammers", although we all hate scammers), so much so that they mix blockchain and bitcoin up. Blockchain technology has not failed in its task, and as to bitcoin failing, well I guess we will see.

It reads like someone just lost a lot of money in they recent dip and is venting.

For the record, There are other projects in the space that use less energy than bitcoin, like iota: https://howtobuyiota.co.uk/articles/how-energy-efficient-iot... - I read this article a while ago and full disclaimer, yes I invested.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#72

Post by 3np »

tssva wrote: post #52
3np wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protocols like e-mail, Mastodon and Matrix where the server-to-server protocol is decentralized/peer-to-peer but clients interact with the network through designated servers are generally considered "federated" (which can be either considered as distinct from or a subset of "decentralized") So the author seems to take "decentralized" here to mean "fully decentralized and peer-to-peer", which is indeed an unconvention…

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.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#73

Post by travisgriggs »

Does it need to be centralized vs decentralized?

The human organism is (IMO) an awesome demonstration of both centralization and decentralization. As is the little blue speck we call our home biome.

What I might accept is that proponents of both arguments ("we need more centralization so we can provide a better service" vs "we need more decentralization so we have the freedom to evolve better services") ideally come to realize that there's a yen and a yang to the whole thing. That there's a lack of healthy balance/harmony between the two is a pretty easy argument to make now days.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#74

Post by Mc91 »

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 - big business and the government work together to kill off decentralization and work towards centralization. Cuomo is a Democrat, but someone like Mitch McConnell is no different.

> My statement that email can be used without involving Google

I run my own mail server, and have kept compliant with what they want in terms of SPF and whatnot. They have an influence, but if they made Gmail a complete walled garden it would be self-defeating at this point.

Linux ran for years via e-mail and patch - huge Linux companies were IPO'ing in the 1990s and Linus was still using e-mails and patches to keep the system together.

I also still communicate via IRC. I'm sure a decentralized Slack-like IRC could be done if anyone cared to do so.

Git is a good example - it's a thing that is decentralized newer than other things mentioned.

Decentralization works just fine for me. Guess what decentralized in 2019? IT being centered in San Francisco.

IBM (and the seven dwarves) dominated centralized computing until the MOS microcomputers started selling like hotcakes in the 1970s. I have an Android phone in my pocket, and have futzed around with LineageOS (although did not put it on my phone yet). Who knew in 1974 that people could walk around with phones/computers in their pocket that was many times more powerful that an IBM S/360, that the people would have the source code to and could modify at will? That's a decentralization you aren't even aware was a decentralization if you're too young to have heard of white shirted IBM technicians shuffling punch cards.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#76

Post by ______- »

It's interesting that this mentions the Signal fiasco and specifically the scamcoin that is MobileCoin. Is that the fate of all messaging apps? Once they get some traction, they sell out their users? I can see things like Matrix as a good alternative, but then what happens when that gains traction? MatrixCoin anyone? When does it end?

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#77

Post by leifg »

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: go to YouTube - Want to buy something: go on Amazon - Want to host large amounts of files, buy S3 space

Even podcast, a technology I love and have been using for is in danger of becoming more proprietary. If you look at promotional material podcasts you'll often find statements like "listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts" as if they are the providers of podcast. But Apple doesn't even host podcasts (yet)

We could have all of these things without centralization but just imagine the sales pitch for a RSS/BitTorrent backed video service with an open API and multiple competing frontends.

And in the example of YouTube centralizing everything (hosting, distribution and presentation) has great benefits for them (YouTube) so why would they not do it?

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#78

Post by nynx »

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…

This is the important part that gets missed. The decentralized service (or open service, etc) needs to be significantly better than the alternatives to get traction.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#79

Post by Dylan16807 »

granshaw wrote: post #27
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…

IMO what you’re describing is usually not considered “decentralized”, but rather “open protocols” or “open standards”

It's more than open standards. XMPP is open but doesn't mean google will federate with you.

Re: Why Decentralised Applications Don’t Work

#80

Post by 0xCMP »

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…

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 never do on their own server and those who could would be spending a lot of time training the blocker which those using Google never even needed to think of.

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