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Discussion on: Building a decentralized web is hard. Who's in?

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baso53 profile image
Sebastijan Grabar

I can't even comprehend how a peer-to-peer network would be implemented, how we would make a transition from a current state and many other mind-melting things come to my mind.

It is, however, a very compelling idea. I imagine that the web would then behave kind of like the economy. Internet itself would be a real web, not just the world-wide-web. What that brings on the table, is the inherent instability when one or more nodes come into problems, which, if the circumstances are right, could potentially bring down a big part of the system.

What are your opinions about this?

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notscottmoore profile image
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Fully agree, I think there are a lot of parts to get right before we can build a robust peer-to-peer web, but it's super cool to me that people are trying.

In terms of ensuring the stability of the network / ability to trust nodes, the BlockchainTM solution to this is to essentially incentivize people to run them / check that things are alright. In projects like Tor though, nodes are maintained by a stalwart group of volunteers who believe in the mission. I think the fact that Bitcoin / Ethereum and Tor have both persisted shows that at least in some scenarios both of these models can work, but there's definitely additional work to be done.