cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40568658

I recently came across three separate platforms:

Qortal: https://qortal.org/

ZeroNet: https://zeronet.io/

and

Plebbit: https://plebbit.com/

That all claim to be completely decentralized.

There’s even talk about how Plebbit is more decentralized than the Fediverse, because the Fediverse is based off of instances.

https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/s/0ynXzrD5H6

And I was curious, would such a setup work better for the Fediverse, or is it basically just a huge scam/waste of time and money?

  • Cochise@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
    10·
    13 hours ago

    No.

    To have a decentralised network, you need a lot of servers storing some data and a access algorithm thar searches for the pieces. There are a lot of hard problems:

    • you need various copies because each node can go offline any moment. This works for pirated DVDs, but not for social media posts.
    • you need to store a lot of the network in each node. The user needs to contribute to the network. Few people will donate GBs of storage and bandwidth to use a social network. You will get only a few enthusiasts.
    • search is a nightmare nobody have really solved.

    The architecture is good for storing and distributing many copies of a few very popular contents (and shines in torrent) but is bad for storing, searching for, and accessing many unpopular and mildly popular contents.