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The only thing that is currently logically centralised is the pki server. And that is only to guarantee unique usernames during sign-up, and its data is mirrore
by ianopolous 7y ago
The only thing that is currently logically centralised is the pki server. And that is only to guarantee unique usernames during sign-up, and its data is mirrored on other nodes.
You can self host, and then your own node is responsible for storing your data (which could be a machine in your house, or eventually maybe even your phone).
- dieblur 7y agoWhy use a centralized server to guarantee unique usernames instead of using a public key as a username?, potentially with a friendly alias?
- ianopolous 7y agoIt's a UX tradeoff. People are used to services having unique usernames for everyone which they can use to look friends up. No one wants to say oh just add me on X I'm Qmeufhj32f84hfnejcn438f. Or Add me on X I'm one of the 100 people with real name Bob. Long term it doesn't need to be physically centralized and would make a good candidate for a blockchain with consensus. It's already an append only merkle-tree which is mirrored in other nodes for privacy of public key look ups. The other effect it has is it allows us to have a global filesystem with all the semantics people are used to from filesystems with human readable paths of the form /$username/$path_in_users_space