7 ms·

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentraliza

All I can really say in response to this article is that I expect it to age poorly. 2021 is just a bad time to make confident pronouncements about decentralization. The vast majority of the population is living in Facebook/WhatsApp/Discord/Visa&Mastercard land, sure. But I'm a heavy Matrix user, it works great. I torrent all the time: it works great. I'm also on urbit, and it works great. I don't use Mastodon personally but I hear few complaints from people who do. Podcasts are fine, other applications of RSS are pretty crippled by bad defaults of only including a little bit of the blog post, but Substack at least doesn't do it that way, which has me using an RSS reader again. It's nice! The big elephant is the cybercoins, and it's just a weird time to declare them a failure. It's like no one remembers 2017, this has practically been a carbon copy, just with more institutional buy-in and bigger numbers. No one knows if cryptocurrency is going to fulfill the promise of becoming a global store of value, let alone if it will be Bitcoin or Ethereum or some dark horse: but it pretty much has to go from worth nothing to worth everything, and the middle stages of that are going to be weird. The one I'm really betting on is Matrix, though. They have reliable income from the French and German governments, and plenty of motive to make a really good platform. I fully expect them to be as slick and featureful as Slack and Discord within a couple of years, and start to eat those company's lunch. "Redecentralization" is harder than the first phase of building a green-field decentralized Internet, because there are entrenched powers with a head start. But there are some compelling advantages to decentralized technology, with means, motive, and opportunity, to build them out. Yeah. Don't think it will age well. Let's check back in around 2031 and see what actually happened.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
I hope you're right about Matrix. I use it for my developer conferences [0] but their main chat client [1] is still derided by my audience. Subpar UX is the barrier to overcome. Element has come far, but Slack and Discord have more solid product direction. [0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com https://www.handmade-seattle.com [1] https://element.io https://element.io
- feanaro 5y ago
  Are there any specific UX pain points that frequently get raised?
  - abnercoimbre 5y ago
    See my reply to the comment above. Sometimes I feel these UX issues or bugs linger for too long, even if they're acknowledged. Could be due to the complexity of open-source + decentralization but still :(
    - cvwright 5y ago
      Matrix is one team trying to build three apps. Android, iOS, and web are all distinct code bases. Plus all the server side stuff. They’ve taken on a huge amount of work.
      - abnercoimbre 5y ago
        Not "giving them up" anytime soon. I'll continue to use Matrix at the conference.
- StavrosK 5y ago
  I'd also be interested in hearing what UX gripes your audience has, and am surprised to hear you praise Slack, which has lately become the just-good-enough-to-not-be-bad slow and bloated default.
  - abnercoimbre 5y ago
    I wouldn't dare say Slack has buttery-smooth performance. The problem with Element is all the little "what the f#ck?" bugs that add up. An emblematic example is where the Android app sometimes glitches out and makes it seem a message you sent was sent by someone else. To be charitable I heard a fix is "on the way," but wow. The markdown editor can also be glitchy. When I use italics or the triple backticks for code it won't always render in your client. It still feels like a hit and miss (albeit far more rare these days.)
c54 5y ago
Oh cool -- what do you use urbit for? Internet chat? I bought a star ages back but haven't done anything with it, I curiously read their update emails but remain tickled/skeptical by the oddball Hoon semantics and design language. Don't get me wrong, all with a layer of hopeful bemusement at the spectacle of it. I'm very curious as to your thoughts.
- samatman 5y ago
  Right now the main urbit application is Landscape, which is written by Tlon. Anyone can start a group, invite-only or public, and inside a group you can have as many channels as you want, which come in three flavors: chat, 'collection' which is basically a linkdump, and a notebook, which is blogging, with or without comments. Landscape also offer direct messages, and a cute little weather app and sunrise/sunset clock. It... works. It feels like running Matrix, or any other chat application, so it's easy to forget that everyone you interact with is a peer. Everyone is the admin of their own group, if they have one, and if they don't, they can start one by clicking a button. Tlon is doing hosting now, or if someone is capable of setting up a droplet or whatever it's pretty straightforward to do yourself. Right now the hard part is getting a planet, because of the gas fees, but there's some kind of rollup solution coming along to make that cheaper. A comet remains free, and always will be; probably not the right answer if you want to run a group, but to get your feet wet, it works just fine. There's some neat stuff coming down the pipeline, but right now urbit is stable, performs well enough, and it's cozy and calm. No one really advertises their groups, but if you find some urbit people on Twitter (which is easy) they can point you in some good directions to get started.
pavlov 5y ago
> "The big elephant is the cybercoins, and it's just a weird time to declare them a failure. It's like no one remembers 2017, this has practically been a carbon copy" Exactly. This has been a re-run of 2017, and that is plenty enough reason to declare them a failure. What happened to all the 2017 projects that raised billions during the last hype cycle based on breathless promises of decentralized wonderlands? They delivered absolutely nothing that anyone is using in the real world. "DeFi" is bullshit leverage products for speculators. NFTs are cryptokitties but somehow more stupid. The whole scene is just a Ponzi Construction Kit for the gullible and greedy.
- G3rn0ti 5y ago
  > "DeFi" is bullshit leverage products for speculators No. With Compound, Aave and dydx you have DeFi-Dapps that allow you to borrow Dollars (I.e. stable coins pegged to the dollar) and earn interest between 2-15% APR (there are no savings accounts out there that will get you that rate, at least in Europe with negative interest rates). All apps are integrated in the Coinbase wallet. In contrast to speculation on rising Bitcoin or Ether this is a rather safe investment. It’s only still hampered by the Ethereum transaction fees which are currently really high (but not all of the time). Furthermore, there are decentralized exchange Dapps that seem to have been going on well so far even through the current dump. If I were you, I would invest a little bit of your savings in Ether and just wait what happens. It’s got a huge potential to disrupt the banking business and change finance forever.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    "apps that allow you to borrow Dollars (I.e. stable coins pegged to the dollar) and earn interest between 2-15% APR" The very definition of "bullshit leverage products for speculators". This is a rather safe investment in the same sense that subprime mortgage-backed securities were in 2007.
HDMI_Cable 5y ago
> The one I'm really betting on is Matrix, though. They have reliable income from the French and German governments, and plenty of motive to make a really good platform. I fully expect them to be as slick and featureful as Slack and Discord within a couple of years, and start to eat those company's lunch. I don't think it even needs to be that. Most people (in the west) are tired of all of these apps, and their data collection, they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding (maybe focusing on the Matrix bridges), then people would jump on board immediately.
- godelski 5y ago
  > they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding, then people would jump on board immediately. Granted it's been a year since I last tried Matrix/Element, but back then it didn't "just work" despite many on HN claiming it did. My experience was far worse than Signal, which honestly I haven't had many problems with and many here claim it doesn't "just work."[0] I hit plenty of bugs in WA too. I think the difference is that I notice the centralized apps fix their bugs faster and that speed is proportional to the size of the parent company. Thing is if it is resolved quickly people just forget the bugs exist (and we also remember bugs more for apps which we haven't been using for long). There's a strong cult like mentality for Matrix, on HN, and I just don't get it (I don't get the cult mentality of Signal either, but HN is fairly anti-Signal so I'm not sure that needs to be addressed but we can). I love the idea of decentralization, but I just haven't seen it pan out and it still looks like it has a long way to go. I hope you all are right, but I'm not going to hold my breath and I don't think "just better marketing" is what's needed. There's a lot more. [0] Disclaimer, I am still a Signal user because I want to support encryption and privacy and I don't see Matrix there yet and moving ecosystems is difficult. I'll take whatever encrypted and private service I can get friends to use that also doesn't require any tech literacy (this is an extreme must because most of my friends and family don't know a monitor from a desktop).
  - samatman 5y ago
    That was my experience eighteen months ago as well. Four months ago, when we put in the work server, it works great. Not perfectly, some bugs with key management across multiple devices, but smooth enough to be the grand central station of our all-remote company.
intarga 5y ago
Hey, author here. I hope it does age poorly. I tried to make it clear that I’m a prolific user of decentralised applications, and that I really want them to succeed. I just pointed out my feelings on why they usually don’t, in the hope we can do something about it.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I just pointed out my feelings on why they usually don’t I think this part of the article, instead of just being the last four paragraphs, should have been almost all of it. As it is, you make some very strong claims with no supporting argument whatsoever: "the solution has to be political" "The current system of profit motives, one might call it a market, was designed to optimise the process of extracting, refining, and transforming physical resources." "some like to idealise the aforementioned market as a free and unregulated system, the truth is that it optimises rather poorly under those circumstances, and needs heavy regulation to align profit motives in the direction of efficient processing and distribution of resources." And this in a footnote: "I’m not convinced we should [keep these profit motives at all]" All of this needs a lot of justification.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - miguelmurca 5y ago
    ... Does it? The author made it pretty clear throughout the article that (in their opinion; see the "Blockchain" section) the walled-gardening comes from having to trap in your users in order to make some money from your service. The conclusion that you need to change the (larger picture) motivations for the existence of these services in order not to fall into this behaviour seems logical to me. (And, of course, if you want to change social organisation/motivation, the solution has to be political.)
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Does it? Yes, because... > in their opinion
pnt12 5y ago
"But I'm..." A specific user from a niche geek website, a rounding error, an anecdote. I'm glad for those fighting against these walled garden overlords, but let's keep in mind we're talking about a side with thousands of people VS a side with billions of people. Numbers matter, and the fall of these giants is still far away. If anything, the battle is starting from recent anti-competition and privacy concerns in the public sphere, which is a good thing, but the public remains unaware of these niche distributed tools.
- jwblackwell 5y ago
  At first the internet was only used by weird geeks
  - oblio 5y ago
    And now it's used by everyone.
- atatatat 5y ago
  You are a technology influencer, according to the research of those large companies. We are the ones who give the network effect to those services.
  - oblio 5y ago
    And those same companies have entire departments, with huge budgets, to promote their stuff, draw people into them, discourage people from using those other services, buy out influencers, etc It's not a fair fight and it will never be. I wouldn't say it's completely lost, but it's not far.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Signal was an impossible uphill battle on inception. Nothing in tech is impossible — it's far too new.
      - 5y ago

abnercoimbre 5y ago

I hope you're right about Matrix. I use it for my developer conferences [0] but their main chat client [1] is still derided by my audience. Subpar UX is the barrier to overcome. Element has come far, but Slack and Discord have more solid product direction. [0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com https://www.handmade-seattle.com [1] https://element.io https://element.io

feanaro 5y ago
Are there any specific UX pain points that frequently get raised?
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  See my reply to the comment above. Sometimes I feel these UX issues or bugs linger for too long, even if they're acknowledged. Could be due to the complexity of open-source + decentralization but still :(
  - cvwright 5y ago
    Matrix is one team trying to build three apps. Android, iOS, and web are all distinct code bases. Plus all the server side stuff. They’ve taken on a huge amount of work.
    - abnercoimbre 5y ago
      Not "giving them up" anytime soon. I'll continue to use Matrix at the conference.
StavrosK 5y ago
I'd also be interested in hearing what UX gripes your audience has, and am surprised to hear you praise Slack, which has lately become the just-good-enough-to-not-be-bad slow and bloated default.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  I wouldn't dare say Slack has buttery-smooth performance. The problem with Element is all the little "what the f#ck?" bugs that add up. An emblematic example is where the Android app sometimes glitches out and makes it seem a message you sent was sent by someone else. To be charitable I heard a fix is "on the way," but wow. The markdown editor can also be glitchy. When I use italics or the triple backticks for code it won't always render in your client. It still feels like a hit and miss (albeit far more rare these days.)

c54 5y ago

Oh cool -- what do you use urbit for? Internet chat? I bought a star ages back but haven't done anything with it, I curiously read their update emails but remain tickled/skeptical by the oddball Hoon semantics and design language. Don't get me wrong, all with a layer of hopeful bemusement at the spectacle of it. I'm very curious as to your thoughts.

samatman 5y ago
Right now the main urbit application is Landscape, which is written by Tlon. Anyone can start a group, invite-only or public, and inside a group you can have as many channels as you want, which come in three flavors: chat, 'collection' which is basically a linkdump, and a notebook, which is blogging, with or without comments. Landscape also offer direct messages, and a cute little weather app and sunrise/sunset clock. It... works. It feels like running Matrix, or any other chat application, so it's easy to forget that everyone you interact with is a peer. Everyone is the admin of their own group, if they have one, and if they don't, they can start one by clicking a button. Tlon is doing hosting now, or if someone is capable of setting up a droplet or whatever it's pretty straightforward to do yourself. Right now the hard part is getting a planet, because of the gas fees, but there's some kind of rollup solution coming along to make that cheaper. A comet remains free, and always will be; probably not the right answer if you want to run a group, but to get your feet wet, it works just fine. There's some neat stuff coming down the pipeline, but right now urbit is stable, performs well enough, and it's cozy and calm. No one really advertises their groups, but if you find some urbit people on Twitter (which is easy) they can point you in some good directions to get started.

pavlov 5y ago

> "The big elephant is the cybercoins, and it's just a weird time to declare them a failure. It's like no one remembers 2017, this has practically been a carbon copy" Exactly. This has been a re-run of 2017, and that is plenty enough reason to declare them a failure. What happened to all the 2017 projects that raised billions during the last hype cycle based on breathless promises of decentralized wonderlands? They delivered absolutely nothing that anyone is using in the real world. "DeFi" is bullshit leverage products for speculators. NFTs are cryptokitties but somehow more stupid. The whole scene is just a Ponzi Construction Kit for the gullible and greedy.

G3rn0ti 5y ago
> "DeFi" is bullshit leverage products for speculators No. With Compound, Aave and dydx you have DeFi-Dapps that allow you to borrow Dollars (I.e. stable coins pegged to the dollar) and earn interest between 2-15% APR (there are no savings accounts out there that will get you that rate, at least in Europe with negative interest rates). All apps are integrated in the Coinbase wallet. In contrast to speculation on rising Bitcoin or Ether this is a rather safe investment. It’s only still hampered by the Ethereum transaction fees which are currently really high (but not all of the time). Furthermore, there are decentralized exchange Dapps that seem to have been going on well so far even through the current dump. If I were you, I would invest a little bit of your savings in Ether and just wait what happens. It’s got a huge potential to disrupt the banking business and change finance forever.
- pavlov 5y ago
  "apps that allow you to borrow Dollars (I.e. stable coins pegged to the dollar) and earn interest between 2-15% APR" The very definition of "bullshit leverage products for speculators". This is a rather safe investment in the same sense that subprime mortgage-backed securities were in 2007.

HDMI_Cable 5y ago

> The one I'm really betting on is Matrix, though. They have reliable income from the French and German governments, and plenty of motive to make a really good platform. I fully expect them to be as slick and featureful as Slack and Discord within a couple of years, and start to eat those company's lunch. I don't think it even needs to be that. Most people (in the west) are tired of all of these apps, and their data collection, they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding (maybe focusing on the Matrix bridges), then people would jump on board immediately.

godelski 5y ago
> they just don't have an application that just works. If Element had better branding, then people would jump on board immediately. Granted it's been a year since I last tried Matrix/Element, but back then it didn't "just work" despite many on HN claiming it did. My experience was far worse than Signal, which honestly I haven't had many problems with and many here claim it doesn't "just work."[0] I hit plenty of bugs in WA too. I think the difference is that I notice the centralized apps fix their bugs faster and that speed is proportional to the size of the parent company. Thing is if it is resolved quickly people just forget the bugs exist (and we also remember bugs more for apps which we haven't been using for long). There's a strong cult like mentality for Matrix, on HN, and I just don't get it (I don't get the cult mentality of Signal either, but HN is fairly anti-Signal so I'm not sure that needs to be addressed but we can). I love the idea of decentralization, but I just haven't seen it pan out and it still looks like it has a long way to go. I hope you all are right, but I'm not going to hold my breath and I don't think "just better marketing" is what's needed. There's a lot more. [0] Disclaimer, I am still a Signal user because I want to support encryption and privacy and I don't see Matrix there yet and moving ecosystems is difficult. I'll take whatever encrypted and private service I can get friends to use that also doesn't require any tech literacy (this is an extreme must because most of my friends and family don't know a monitor from a desktop).
- samatman 5y ago
  That was my experience eighteen months ago as well. Four months ago, when we put in the work server, it works great. Not perfectly, some bugs with key management across multiple devices, but smooth enough to be the grand central station of our all-remote company.

intarga 5y ago

Hey, author here. I hope it does age poorly. I tried to make it clear that I’m a prolific user of decentralised applications, and that I really want them to succeed. I just pointed out my feelings on why they usually don’t, in the hope we can do something about it.

pdonis 5y ago
> I just pointed out my feelings on why they usually don’t I think this part of the article, instead of just being the last four paragraphs, should have been almost all of it. As it is, you make some very strong claims with no supporting argument whatsoever: "the solution has to be political" "The current system of profit motives, one might call it a market, was designed to optimise the process of extracting, refining, and transforming physical resources." "some like to idealise the aforementioned market as a free and unregulated system, the truth is that it optimises rather poorly under those circumstances, and needs heavy regulation to align profit motives in the direction of efficient processing and distribution of resources." And this in a footnote: "I’m not convinced we should [keep these profit motives at all]" All of this needs a lot of justification.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- miguelmurca 5y ago
  ... Does it? The author made it pretty clear throughout the article that (in their opinion; see the "Blockchain" section) the walled-gardening comes from having to trap in your users in order to make some money from your service. The conclusion that you need to change the (larger picture) motivations for the existence of these services in order not to fall into this behaviour seems logical to me. (And, of course, if you want to change social organisation/motivation, the solution has to be political.)
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Does it? Yes, because... > in their opinion

pnt12 5y ago

"But I'm..." A specific user from a niche geek website, a rounding error, an anecdote. I'm glad for those fighting against these walled garden overlords, but let's keep in mind we're talking about a side with thousands of people VS a side with billions of people. Numbers matter, and the fall of these giants is still far away. If anything, the battle is starting from recent anti-competition and privacy concerns in the public sphere, which is a good thing, but the public remains unaware of these niche distributed tools.

jwblackwell 5y ago
At first the internet was only used by weird geeks
- oblio 5y ago
  And now it's used by everyone.
atatatat 5y ago
You are a technology influencer, according to the research of those large companies. We are the ones who give the network effect to those services.
- oblio 5y ago
  And those same companies have entire departments, with huge budgets, to promote their stuff, draw people into them, discourage people from using those other services, buy out influencers, etc It's not a fair fight and it will never be. I wouldn't say it's completely lost, but it's not far.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Signal was an impossible uphill battle on inception. Nothing in tech is impossible — it's far too new.
    - 5y ago