My personal definition of decentralization is peer to peer without a server in the middle, like a telephone call. Nobody seems to like that definition because it’s extremely non-commercial.

1. To me this means IP address to IP address communication. But but but IPv4 NAT address: for this there are TURN servers which look pretty expensive. A TURN service provides application layer routing, like a proxy, to route data to a respective node on a private network.

2. I don't want to pay for TURN or deal with the extra layer, so I just write off nodes limited to a NAT IPv4 address on a separate subnet.

3. You need to account for session/relationship management. For this I am using a tiered model whereby nodes are assigned a group identity that allows for increases to access inversely proportional to autonomy.

4. You need some manner of trust validation. This is the piece social media doesn't know how to solve without some sort of centralized ledger. I am just using certificates and putting this liability directly onto the users to properly execute a text challenge response.

5. In a peer-to-peer decentralized model both ends run a listener for incoming connections on a fixed port. That sounds amazingly close to the definition of a server, but each connection is otherwise a client-to-client tunnel with a random client port on both ends. That means one end creates a client connection and points to a remote user running a listener. That listener spawns a connection to a client port and performs the checks to verify connection establishment, validation, anything else. After that initial processing on the listener you are left with a connection. If the connection is bidirectional both ends must listen for incoming data equivalently and must manage sessions and relationships equivalently.

Finally, you need to rethink how your prioritize software. Commercially software obtains value from that which you own, which is either a copyright on an application or data in a database. In a decentralized world data is that which you are willing to access or transmit and nothing more. The value is purely functional to your application and nothing for you to secure behind a subscription.

That said the value of a decentralized application comes down to three things:

* automation - whether the application eliminates manual effort

* transmission - whether the application can connect over a network in a way that resembles immediate local device access, such as real time bidirectional communication

* utility - does the application do something amazing, which is more than putting data on a screen. You have to think bigger than a webpage or a spreadsheet.

Once you solve for transmission and OS challenges end to end encryption is as simple as turning on your application.