| > 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." |