
Principles of a Decentralized Web - nicolagreco
http://nicola.io/decentralized-principles/2015/
======
aaron-lebo
Am I missing a fundamental part of the article? There is almost no content
here.

This is less of a complaint about why this was upvoted as it is a question of
why.

~~~
8d9f122e
I think it's a response to this
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5bgFYiZ1/its-
time-for-the-permanent-web.html)

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treelovinhippie
The TCP/IP equivalent layer: [https://ethereum.org](https://ethereum.org)

The WWW/browser equivalent layer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgNjs_WaFSc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgNjs_WaFSc)

Done. *at least as an awesome starting point. The easier it is for developers
to build on the platform and the more network benefits/incentives that arise,
the more high utility Dapps will be deployed, the more likely
Chrome/Firefox/IE will integrate seamless DNS/pointers to the Ethereum
platform. The web will become decentralized by default and the average user
won't even notice.

And I mean "platform" in the sense here of a distributed blockchain or lower-
stack layer, not some corporate-owned data silo built on proprietary API
endpoints and protocols.

~~~
logn
I'm excited by Ethereum. It definitely is interesting to think about
distributed computation like that. However, doing it on a blockchain, along
with data storage might prove to be prohibitively expensive for various types
of apps. UBS is looking at Ethereum to do a bond market. I imagine that's an
appropriate use of the technology.

But with apps I personally want to make, I'm more interested in MaidSafe
Network. It's basically a distributed data storage network, fast enough that
it's good for communication/message passing in apps.

MaidSafe got me interested in making apps for it that are pure client-side JS,
with the intention of them being served from the distributed storage. While I
dislike running JS in the browser, I will support it when it means there's no
server. For now, my intention is to write apps using the Elm language.

Other interesting work continues to be done in Tahoe-LAFS, I2P, and Freenet.
There's also IPFS. I'm looking forward to the future of this tech!

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seagreen
Does the web here mean a network of hyperlinked documents, does it mean HTTP,
or does it mean "browser stuff"?

Personally, I think we should retire the idea of The Decentralized Web. It
doesn't help clear thinking. BitTorrent is one of the most successful
decentralization stories out there right now, but it's 0% part of "The
Decentralized Web".

~~~
narrowrail
I think most people on HN think of the web as ports 80/443, and bittorrent
doesn't operate on those ports. The internet is the superset, the web is the
subset.

~~~
seagreen
I totally agree -- and not just on HN -- everywhere. Now let's update that
title:

" The Principles of a Decentralized Port 80/443 Ecosystem "

Personally, I don't think it survives the update well:(

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allemagne
I think all three of these principles are important but miss an obvious one
that should come first. A decentralized web should have decentralization as
its central principle.

If we're talking about our ideal pie-in-the-sky protocol (where people have
total control over their data) then let's dream big. Web hosting should be
completely decentralized. DDOS attacks should become infeasible because there
are no dedicated servers to target and web services should already scale
directly in proportion to usage. Entities should receive incentives for
participating in the protocol, but have no feasible way of negatively
affecting others no matter how much relative computing power they control in
the network.

~~~
zkhalique
This. Decentralization needs to be the foremost feature of a decentralized
system. No single points of failure. Scaling up and down with demand.
Resilience and choice for everybody.

Money has been decentralized.

Social networking hasn't, yet.

Security hasn't, not really. Have you installed the latest SquirrelMail
patches yet? You probably use GMail so you don't have to worry about it.

~~~
rndmind
You should look into diaspora, an open-source decentralized social network.
IMO diaspora has formidable foundation and interesting content. Highly
recommend. However, as Eben Moglin said, the next facebook should never
happen.

~~~
zkhalique
The next facebook should be a decentralized, open source platform. Like
Wordpress was the "next LiveJournal".

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bobajeff
I don't think control of data, user or otherwise, is an inherent part of
decentralisation. If fact it may be the opposite.

So as a principle for a Decentralised Web its a contradiction. Maybe it works
as a part of a more broad set of principles (eg. a Healthy Web).

~~~
astazangasta
Can you expound? Why is user control if data the opposite? To me this seems in
keeping with the basic principles of decentralization of power, that I should
have autonomy over my own domain.

~~~
bobajeff
In a truely decentralized system it would be hard to control the flow of data.
It's simply not inherent in decentralisation.

Just because data isn't centralized doesn't __mean __users will have the
control.

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idlewords
An important feature of the decentralized web is that one Harvard/MIT person
doesn't get to design it.

~~~
draaglom
I'm not sure what your objection is. Why shouldn't one Harvard/MIT person
design it? I mean, somebody has to.

~~~
idlewords
Web centralization is a structural and economic problem that is not going to
be solved by the tech elite. We don't need new protocols; the ones we have
worked fine back when the web was decentralized.

~~~
staunch
Our idea with Portal
([https://portalplatform.net/](https://portalplatform.net/)) is to make it
possible for regular people to run the exact same kind of Linux servers that
many of us on HN run.

We're using stock Ubuntu cloud images w/CloudInit so everything that runs on
Portal will run anywhere Linux VMs run. Once there are some standards for
importing/exporting data we're going to make that a one-click operation. Users
can already download all of their data and completely wipe all remote copies.

The original promise of the internet was that we would all control our own
domain names. Instead we ended up @gmail.com facebook.com, and twitter.com. We
can fix this for less than $10/user/mo now.

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nosuchthing
Somewhat relevant, the Open Mustard Seed project;

    
    
      The Open Mustard Seed (OMS) project is an open-source framework
       for developing and deploying web apps in a secure, 
      user-centric personal cloud. The framework provides a 
      stack of core technologies that work together to provide 
      a high level of security and ease of use when sharing and 
      collecting personal and environmental data, controlling 
      web-enabled devices, and engaging with others to 
      aggregate information and view the results of applied 
      computation via protected services.
    

[https://docs.openmustardseed.org/](https://docs.openmustardseed.org/)

[https://github.com/IDCubed/oms-docs](https://github.com/IDCubed/oms-docs)

[http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Mustard_Seed](http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Mustard_Seed)

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staunch
HTTP, SMTP, and XMPP are already functionally decentralized. We still need
decentralized protocols for web search, tweeting, social networking, VoIP, and
a bunch of other things.

In a world where every person runs their own cloud server, all we really need
to do is install the same apps as each other. Apps can just invent their own
(open) protocols and other developers can make apps that interoperate.
Standards can emerge naturally over time.

