[jakelazaroff]

Author here! I think if you're just concerned with efficiency (speed/low overhead/etc) centralized solutions will always beat decentralized ones. The key advantage you can get with CRDTs — and, more generally, decentralized applications — is stability. By which I mean: Figma and Google Docs are great, but they can go out of business or delete your account or up their prices, and everything you've poured your time and energy into making just vanishes.

It's not just this way for collaboration software. Servers make everything more brittle. A few years ago, I tried to restore every website I've ever made. Static files were easy, things that relied on old versions of server-side languages were harder and anything stored on a server or in a database was just gone. That sucks. I want us to be able to keep our memories forever, not lose them because we stopped paying a hosting bill.

[thoughtlede]

Evolution of technology makes things unstable, not specifically servers. A decentralized application is not more stable than a centralized one. It depends on what's prioritized about the product. For example, you can still use SMTP servers developed several decades ago to send email to others.

Also, it is hard to buy the argument that docs based on Google Docs will live less longer than docs served by some CRDT-based collaborative application. It is easy to argue the opposite. My Google doc history shows docs I have even forgotten ever existed, and Google docs play nice with Microsoft Word - making it interoperable with the largest ecosystem around structured documents. Again, this is about product features and prioritization, not underlying building blocks.

CRDTs hold a very special place in my heart. But I also believe they don't offer a differentiated solution - on the user facing side.

[jakelazaroff]

Decentralized applications aren’t inherently more stable than applications that rely on central servers. But the ceiling is higher. Infrastructure is coupling, and coupling makes things brittle.

Yes, if everything goes right, a centralized service will probably do a better job of keeping your files around than you will. But I have way more stories where something went wrong and I lost them.