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Messengers need someone to host and maintain the servers. That requires a monetization model and requires someone to act as a central figure. That figure (like

by Sargos 8y ago

Messengers need someone to host and maintain the servers. That requires a monetization model and requires someone to act as a central figure. That figure (like Facebook) then has to either moderate the content or try to make a case of not being able to but still facilitating it. A messenger using the blockchain as its medium requires no staff to operate it and has nobody responsible for it. There is nobody to blame for whatever it's used for and nobody to dictate what it can and can't be used for. The group chats will simply exist and require no maintenance which is very desirable from an app point of view. Also a big positive is that you don't have to worry about the company running your messenger going out of business and then you lose the ability to use your app.

hiccuphippo 8y ago
There's already p2p messaging apps that do that without any blockchain nonsense. The blockchain would leave a permanent trace to which pseudonym posted what forever.
- Sargos 8y ago
  P2P messaging apps have a hard time with group messages because you have to have someone online to relay messages at all times. Group chats really have to have a shared storage medium to work.
  - codyb 8y ago
    What would the storage requirements be for a blockchain like that? It seems to me extravagant... and also would there be all the concensus algorithms? So I'd send a message and wait X amount of time for the network to achieve concensus that I had posted the message? I can see the value in the distributed part certainly but if the storage requirements are very large due to a large volume of messages (I'd imagine any solution which caught on could quickly outpace the number of transactions on something like the ethereum or btc network), wouldn't it necessarily just end up centralized? It's an interesting idea though.
  - munchbunny 8y ago
    There are plenty of non-blockchain approaches to persistence as well which also fall under either the "distributed" or "p2p" labels. The part I'm having a hard time with is that blockchain's specific strength relative to other distributed approaches is the ledger. That's not really the crux of the decentralized messaging problem. Unless you need the immutable ledger, other approaches solve identity, privacy, and persistence aspects of messaging just as well or better without the overhead that blockchain approaches introduce.
  - tya99 8y ago
    > P2P messaging apps have a hard time with group messages Well https://tox.chat https://tox.chat and https://ring.cx https://ring.cx (now Jami) can do just that as well as https://briarproject.org https://briarproject.org. So these do exist. Such a thing was also being proposed for Ricochet https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/issues/54 https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/issues/54
    - Sargos 8y ago
      That's neat. Thanks.

by Sargos 8y ago

hiccuphippo 8y ago

There's already p2p messaging apps that do that without any blockchain nonsense. The blockchain would leave a permanent trace to which pseudonym posted what forever.

Sargos 8y ago
P2P messaging apps have a hard time with group messages because you have to have someone online to relay messages at all times. Group chats really have to have a shared storage medium to work.
- codyb 8y ago
  What would the storage requirements be for a blockchain like that? It seems to me extravagant... and also would there be all the concensus algorithms? So I'd send a message and wait X amount of time for the network to achieve concensus that I had posted the message? I can see the value in the distributed part certainly but if the storage requirements are very large due to a large volume of messages (I'd imagine any solution which caught on could quickly outpace the number of transactions on something like the ethereum or btc network), wouldn't it necessarily just end up centralized? It's an interesting idea though.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  There are plenty of non-blockchain approaches to persistence as well which also fall under either the "distributed" or "p2p" labels. The part I'm having a hard time with is that blockchain's specific strength relative to other distributed approaches is the ledger. That's not really the crux of the decentralized messaging problem. Unless you need the immutable ledger, other approaches solve identity, privacy, and persistence aspects of messaging just as well or better without the overhead that blockchain approaches introduce.
- tya99 8y ago
  > P2P messaging apps have a hard time with group messages Well https://tox.chat https://tox.chat and https://ring.cx https://ring.cx (now Jami) can do just that as well as https://briarproject.org https://briarproject.org. So these do exist. Such a thing was also being proposed for Ricochet https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/issues/54 https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/issues/54
  - Sargos 8y ago
    That's neat. Thanks.