Nostr Web Client

Lots of people are looking to build on a decentralized censorship-resistant platform that offers privacy, that is mesh, that is p2p, or uses blockchain, or is federated, or .

Nostr clearly is in this space. But this thread is more general.

Signal is in this space and Moxie Marlinspike argued (5 years ago) in favor of centralization here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdM-XTRyC9c

I'm not going to argue against all his points, many of them are clearly constructed and wrong and not worth my time. But that video is what inspired this post.

I want to talk about high level ideas in this space, and clear up what I believe are common misconceptions. Since I'm going to write about lots of separate things I'll make sub-posts for each point.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

What people want is, I believe, the following things:

Privacy: data protection, metadata protection, and IP privacy.

Censorship Resistance: decentralization purports to assist in this goal, but I don't think "decentralization" is the goal.. the goal is censorship resistance.

Control and Independence: people don't want to be locked-in to one provider that could in the future disappoint them.

The following hot ideas are not so hot in my book:

federation - if you are still locked in, this just changes the scale of centralized lock-in.

blockchain - an ugly solution to a problem that nobody has.

p2p - an artificial binding of clients to servers (I will explain in a sister thread).

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Discussion

the axiom 5mo ago

I think people want connections, influence, friends, money, information

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

you forgot sex

ynniv 5mo ago

This slide jumped out at me:

1. privacy

2. censorship resistance

3. availability

4. control

But privacy is a subset of control. Censorship resistance is a subset of availability. There are only two things here: control, and availability.

control * availability = agency

Therefore, the purpose of distributed systems is agency

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

nice.

He makes passing reference at people wanting control over data and metadata (point 4 in your list) but doesn't explain why, and counterpoints it with his best argument which is that centralized solutions can evolve faster.

Daniel Wigton 5mo ago

Lol, that is a funny statement. That is like a Royal line thinking they will evolve faster if they keep it in the family. I don't think we all know what evolve means.

Deleted Account 5mo ago

Leslie Lamport would fundamentally disagree with you regarding your 'not so hot' ideas.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

In what respect? I'm a fan of his work.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

Solutions to the Byzantine generals problem such as Paxos or Raft are more general than blockchain. And other solutions to distributed computing problems exist like conflict-free replicated data types. My problem with blockchain is that it is an infinitely-growing public ledger, and that while bitcoin needed it, not much else needs precisely that. Many things may benefit from something *like* blockchain, but not actually blockchain. And for a decade people have been running around with a beautiful hammer (blockchain) looking for nails to hit, and not finding any interesting nails (problems) so they started creating nails so that they would have a use for their beautiful hammer.

Take git for example. It is both distributed and it has a blockchain. But it's not a bitcoin-like blockchain requiring some network of nodes and Raft to operate. Most problems can be solved more like git and less like bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only real problem I can think of that actually needs what bitcoin did.

Deleted Account 5mo ago

Yes I would agree with that. Outside bitcoin and obviousness of a time chain very little else benefits from blockchain and it's bloat.

Deleted Account 5mo ago

He would argue the Bitcoin blockchain is the first and only open system solution to the Byzantine Generals problem. He would also probably go on to say its temporal structure enforces agreement on history. Neither of those outcomes are ugly.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

If you have a reference I'd appreciate it. I believe Paxos is the first solution invented way back in 1989 but published in 1998. And Raft is technically equivalent to Paxos. I'm sure he's proud that such a solution is now widespread in bitcoin, but bitcoin blockchain isn't the first and only solution.

But these are solutions to the problem of consensus among bad actors. Do we need consensus in social media applications? The only reasonable place we might want consensus is usernames, not that we need them, but that users seem to want to declare and own a globally unique one and you would need a consensus system to give users what they want. But I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze, and petnames avoid all the trouble.

If you are going to bother building a network of peers, a consensus algorithm, and an ever growing blockchain, you'd better be solving a problem that is worth all that trouble. Bitcoin clearly was. Usernames in a social media protocol don't seem to be worthy of such a heavyweight solution. I shouldn't have said "ugly", I should have said "heavyweight."

Deleted Account 5mo ago

Theoretical solutions count for nothing. Only open systems impacting reality. But obviously technically you are correct.

Deleted Account 5mo ago

And yes I agree with the overarching position that blockchain really only matters if you are solving for a fundamental truth of universal ongoing value.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 5mo ago

I should also say that open timestamps are well solved by blockchain. So that's 3 things: money, timestamps, and universally unique usernames.

Nuh 4mo ago

Neither Paxos or Raft count .. all these solutions assume a permissioned set of mostly trusted but maybe unreliable actors.

Bitcoin is in a different game; permissionless set of adversarial assholes.