publiush

> but on the other hand aren't there a lot of decentralized resources, made or to be made, that don't require crypto or blockchain at all?

Absolutely. In the project I linked to, I'm using DHT and torrent protocols to deliver decentralization.

That said, we run into an issue in a decentralized system called Zooko's trilemma [1] when it comes to naming. Names need to be human readable, secure and decentralized. Using public keys, this isn't made possible.

> Often in W3 discussions there seems to be a push to find a way to use crypto rather than an explanation of a resource, period. If a decentralized product includes blockchain or crypto, I'm immediately skeptical and expect a good explanation for why the product can't exist without it. Usually it seems like the product doesn't need it or could be built on some other option.

In the case here, I opted to use the handshake naming protocol. Handshake's use case makes sense as decentralized networks are subject to sybil attack [1], so a free for all naming system doesn't make sense. Handshake is one of the blockchain projects I admire specifically because the blockchain project solves a problem that has limited the success of decentralized systems until now, and the purpose of the coin is to limit the ability for an attacker to take over all the names.

> I'm all for decentralized and federated solutions, but they do tend to be slower and more resource-intensive. Blockchain most of all.

I think this depends on the functionality. In the case of the handshake blockchain, lookups are faster since data is local. On the other hand, you're absolutely right as DHT is very laggy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle

[2] "A Sybil attack is defined as a small number of entities counterfeiting multiple peer identities so as to compromise a disproportionate share of the system."

Web 3.0 utilizes crypto in order to build something more than just the cryptocurrencies built in the past. A blockchain is useful in a decentralized system where a shared ledger is required. There are several different types of projects that are branding themselves Web3 -- and I think they are all correct; Web3 is a totally new web built by the people and controlled by the people.

> encompensate technologies like edge computing which are decentralising ownership of compute and data back to devices.

I've been working on just that [1], and I think many other projects are as well. If you stop focusing on the 'value' of 'coins' in the market and, instead, narrow in on the merits of the underlying technology, I think you'll quickly find that all the building blocks are there to get to this decentralized ownership model we are all seeking so eagerly.

[1] https://github.com/publiusfederalist/federalist

I don't think that Facebook and Twitter are a bad thing at all. I think there is confusion as there is a massive power struggle and a lack of information on our side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI).

Also, I don't know what you mean by "average Joes." I don't think any person is less competent than another, and I would rather help to give access to information to the people, frankly, if I thought someone did have less information.

I'm a little confused by your position on people, and afraid of your position on freedom of information and equality.

> Maybe contribute to the network in exchange for a balance, that you can then exchange for domains after which it’s gone.

You've just described handshake - when you purchase a domain, the coins are burned in exchange for the domain.

You can pay seedbox services for hosting as well, but information the swarm cares about will continue to exist in the swarm. That being said, I think Sia/Skynet is a beautiful project and recommend everyone to check it out as well. I also saw a few other great projects listed in this thread which all sound fascinating.

For federalist:

git clone https://github.com/publiusfederalist/federalist

cd federalist

npm install

npm start

For publius, there are two options, I'll start with option 1, which is an immutable (no updates) model:

git clone https://github.com/publiusfederalist/publius

cd publius

npm install webtorrent supercop.js

./key

./publius &

Then you can either share that magnet link/browse that link, or take the further step to add it as a TXT record on the Handshake blockchain for a name.

If you would like to do it mutably, there is an additional step:

./seed &

Then, you can share the link created by this and create the TXT record with this one instead.

When you update your blog, you can edit the files in the web3root folder, and then simply restart publius and seed.

When we have a government without corruption, we probably won't need to be armed. That isn't the case today. Checks and balances work in a young government, but after hundreds of years, friendships, camaraderies, it's not difficult to have loosely coupled groups infiltrating all branches. Things eventually crumble as perfect systems are hard.

This is akin to the monarchies, where a king may have risen to power as a good leader, but a later king may not have been so kind.

These things aren't perfect, but having multiple systems to pick up where other systems fail provides us the ultimate leverage in the end.

Would you take airbags out of cars because they sometimes fail and always harm those who feel their impact and chemicals and everyone is "supposed to wear seat belts by law" anyway?

Thank you, and no criticism taken! I agree. The problem with projects that incorporate cryptocurrencies these days has been that the cryptocurrencies themselves have been the focus and sometimes these projects have been going out of their way to incorporate them, in addition to a lot of projected hopes of what a system could one day become, not the reality of the utility of the system itself, today.

There are projects who are using collateral freedom to block censorship like Wireleap (https://wireleap.com/blog/routing-layer/). This would help in the circumstance you describe.

This is an important debate that comes up all too often. I do think this is the proper forum for this, so I'm glad you brought this up and I would be happy to share my thoughts.

The more information people have had in the history of humanity, the more freedoms and liberties we have also had. We would likely still be living in monarchies if not for the spread of information -- North Korea is a prime example.

If information is good and people agree with it, they will consume it and the swarm will be well seeded and public consensus will have spoken. If information is bad and people disagree with it, they won't consume it and the swarm will be sparse at best, at which point, it will be easy for ISPs and others to block access to these swarms.

Torrents have been around for a long time, but terrorists haven't really utilized them much. On the other hand, anime really has to give its thanks to Bram haha.

Just because there are gun abusers, you wouldn't want to take away the 2nd amendment which keeps the government in check. The same goes for information or discourse and the 1st amendment. The day we censor ourselves is the day we throw away liberty.

Out of the box, there is no anonymity built into federalist. You can use Tor or VPN to for anonymity. As this develops from a POC for developers to an end user software application, I imagine federalist will have many of these things built in directly or support to hook in (eg Tor and SOCKS) natively.

My worry with Ethereum is that moving to proof of stake changes the project from a decentralized one to something a little less so.

That is correct without I2P, Tor or a VPN.

Using SMTP, publiusfederalist and then the email provider is tutanota (.com)!

Thank you!

It doesn't actually allow you to publish and read anonymously without Tor or a VPN, but I will definitely recommend using both of those on the README. I do want to be careful about what is and isn't claimed, as I believe the world has become a bit dissatisfied with overclaims from decentralization projects lately.

I don't think I've come to the same conclusion about freenode (https://news.itsfoss.com/freenode-controversy/), and IRC is only decentralized if there isn't just one network anyway. I also don't think this is the right forum for this anyhow! You're definitely free to setup the same channel (#scarywater) on another network, and I'd be happy to be present there as well!

Thank you so much!

Isn't Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake though?

This project has just begun and is still in its infancy. My hope is that the community will come together to take it to another level. Chromium updates are generally handled by the Electron team!

The website for GNUnet seems to be down/404, but it looks like ownership of names is controlled by a central authority (https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/gnunet/gnunet-namestore...).

If someone wants to make a new kind of torrent website with federalist that doesn't rely on centralized servers, they now can! It would be helpful for me when I download my Ubuntu ISOs. ;)

It's new, so I don't think there are many out there yet. I do hope that this changes the landscape of the ecosystem for 'decentralization.' It's not supposed to be about tokens or organizational marketing hype. First, it's about free speech and freedom of information. "De-platforming" is now extinct. Only then, can you even begin to discuss anything else.

I'm very thankful to WebTorrent, DMT, Handshake and Electron for making things possible.

BitTorrent works on I2P so I believe this should as well but I haven't tried.

Good catch!

It's temporarily using hdns.io as many people still do not have an hsd node installed. A later version will be shipped with a light weight SPV resolver, at which point, the last piece of the puzzle will be complete.

The Beaker browser looks interesting -- it looks a lot like DHT/DMT (https://hypercore-protocol.org/), but I speculate it's likely more specialized for the use case.

Handshake names are decentralized and on chain, so as long as you have access to read the chain, it would work over ad hoc networks as well (and offline/local).

There's a dilemma as the magnet links/hashes aren't easily shareable. One option is to create a DMT directory, but this would be centralized. Handshake is the most mature decentralized domain name project, and I opted for it. It uses coins to limit abuse, since anyone can flood a decentralized system. You don't need coins to browse and use federalist. That said, if there are any other immutable DNS systems that aren't centrally controlled that I could review, I'll definitely take a look!

That sounds interesting! I would love to hear more!

Thank you! I believe it's somewhat scalable, but one thing to note is that DHT itself is not as fast as using a tracker.

Seeds for the torrents can change and, although not recommended, in terms of bloating the Tor network, using Tor will also help. With the recent attack on exposing Tor users, it may not be a bad thing if everyone starts torrenting on the Tor network actually.

Everything, of course, can be blocked at some point, but the thing to remember is that there are other kinds of contracts that existed long before smart contracts - and these things are already leveraged in society.

The internet isn't going to disappear tomorrow, but I would agree there are longer term risks, so let's build today.

There's been a lot of talk about decentralization lately, and Cypherpunks write code. So I wrote code instead of a blog post.

Yes and no - DMT (https://github.com/lmatteis/dmt) is implemented into this so you can use a single hash in the DHT for the 'site', but that will be updated to point to a new torrent infohash on every update.

Thank you!

I do think there is a way - since the beautiful WebTorrent (https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent) can do so in browser. I'm keen to see something like this in a normal web browser (if possible as an extension even), hopefully developed by someone with better skills than me haha!