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Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone

Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone with strong economic incentives to get it working. Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream. When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content and when we start having youtubers leaving Google to broadcast their content from their own branded Peertube, then I'd say it has hit mainstream. > A lot of crypto spaces/experiments have a lot of money moving through them. But the ratio of money to users/disruption seems to be really low. That comes with the territory in any hot market, and crypto is no exception to Sturgeon's Law. The main point that I would argue though is that is not just about the "money", but rather if these new systems can be sustainable and if they can create new alternatives to the status quo. The best example that I can think of is Brave and BAT. The BAT "economy" is still ridiculously small, but on a bet about the longevity of Brave vs Mozilla, my money is (literally) on Brave. Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core. You will have soon lots of people making coordinated efforts to get more people off Google and into an alternative where they can benefit.

danShumway 5y ago
> Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone with strong economic incentives to get it working. And it turns out that system (for all of its problems) is working better than blockchain for shipping actual decentralized software that ordinary people can use. > Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream. And again, "far from being mainstream" is still miles ahead of any blockchain social network. > When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content We do have this, Trump's recent venture into the social media space was built off of a Mastodon fork. It wasn't built off of blockchain. > Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core. Brave is literally built on top of Chromium, it's literally Google's tech stack with some extra stuff pasted on top. It makes sense why not needing to take money from Google would matter, but in practice, Firefox still ends up having better privacy controls and more power to oppose certain web standards purely because it has a different engine than Chrome. It turns out that in practice, architectural independence matters more. This is another good example of the finances ending up mattering less than people think they do. Mozilla has money, that's how it's able to fund projects like Servo/WASM/Stylo, projects that Brave (for all its financial independence) doesn't have the developer resources or the architectural independence needed to helm. And the trajectory of those projects is worth its own conversation, but I don't think dependence on Google's money is the reason Mozilla had to eventually drop Servo, and I don't think that Brave is in a position to pick a project like that up. ---- You don't really have to convince me about an idea, you don't have to argue theory to me. The theory of financial independence is fine, I don't have a problem with that, I just don't see the theory playing out in practice. The blockchain doesn't need a theory for why it matters, all the blockchain needs to do is to launch projects that are better than the alternatives. So far it hasn't, which is a really low bar to clear. You're attacking Mastodon, how embarrassing is it then that there isn't a blockchain-based Twitter alternative that's bigger than Mastodon? If you're right, and if a blockchain social network springs up that out-competes the other projects on the metrics that actually matter (not just money), then I'll start taking the space more seriously. But so far it just hasn't happened; and a lot of the promising projects that are closest-related to blockchain (even the really promising projects like IPFS, or the poster-child for this stuff, Handshake) have ultimately ended up being a lot more disappointing than the projects that have taken root in other spaces.
- rglullis 5y ago
  You seem to be more focused on blockchain-as-tech-implementation, when my point is that blockchain is important for coordination. Sure, it makes zero sense to have a social network on a blockchain. No one really wants to have their social graph on an immutable public ledger that costs a lot of resources to keep around. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a project where crypto is used as a way to finance a Mastodon (or Pleroma, or whatever) powered constellation of servers.

danShumway 5y ago

> Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone with strong economic incentives to get it working. And it turns out that system (for all of its problems) is working better than blockchain for shipping actual decentralized software that ordinary people can use. > Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream. And again, "far from being mainstream" is still miles ahead of any blockchain social network. > When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content We do have this, Trump's recent venture into the social media space was built off of a Mastodon fork. It wasn't built off of blockchain. > Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core. Brave is literally built on top of Chromium, it's literally Google's tech stack with some extra stuff pasted on top. It makes sense why not needing to take money from Google would matter, but in practice, Firefox still ends up having better privacy controls and more power to oppose certain web standards purely because it has a different engine than Chrome. It turns out that in practice, architectural independence matters more. This is another good example of the finances ending up mattering less than people think they do. Mozilla has money, that's how it's able to fund projects like Servo/WASM/Stylo, projects that Brave (for all its financial independence) doesn't have the developer resources or the architectural independence needed to helm. And the trajectory of those projects is worth its own conversation, but I don't think dependence on Google's money is the reason Mozilla had to eventually drop Servo, and I don't think that Brave is in a position to pick a project like that up. ---- You don't really have to convince me about an idea, you don't have to argue theory to me. The theory of financial independence is fine, I don't have a problem with that, I just don't see the theory playing out in practice. The blockchain doesn't need a theory for why it matters, all the blockchain needs to do is to launch projects that are better than the alternatives. So far it hasn't, which is a really low bar to clear. You're attacking Mastodon, how embarrassing is it then that there isn't a blockchain-based Twitter alternative that's bigger than Mastodon? If you're right, and if a blockchain social network springs up that out-competes the other projects on the metrics that actually matter (not just money), then I'll start taking the space more seriously. But so far it just hasn't happened; and a lot of the promising projects that are closest-related to blockchain (even the really promising projects like IPFS, or the poster-child for this stuff, Handshake) have ultimately ended up being a lot more disappointing than the projects that have taken root in other spaces.

rglullis 5y ago
You seem to be more focused on blockchain-as-tech-implementation, when my point is that blockchain is important for coordination. Sure, it makes zero sense to have a social network on a blockchain. No one really wants to have their social graph on an immutable public ledger that costs a lot of resources to keep around. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a project where crypto is used as a way to finance a Mastodon (or Pleroma, or whatever) powered constellation of servers.