Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks

Users don’t just want a decentralized version of an existing social network. What users really want from a new social network is status or entertainment, along with the benefits that decentralization offers. Any new network must offer a compelling way to achieve both, or it will face an uphill battle to get off the ground.

We’ve spilled a lot of ink over decentralizing social networks, but most users are still on centralized ones. Why hasn’t this changed already? There are three challenging problems with decentralizing social networks that have slowed adoption: scaling networks, decentralizing the name registry, and building novel social primitives. But for the first... See more

Some believe that decentralization requires the entire social network to be on a blockchain. This is unnecessary and even undesirable. Social networks generate petabytes of data every year, which can be very expensive to store on-chain. Blockchains also make it difficult to delete data forever, which is a desirable feature for users. A network desi... See more

A decentralized social networking protocol could change this dynamic by ensuring open access to the network. Companies can still make money by offering services, as Gmail does with email and Github does with Git. But decentralizing access ensures that they can’t be monopolistic and ignore users. It creates a market-based approach where the best ide... See more

Networks have also had a contentious relationship with developers, who brought in millions of early users. Developers built alternate clients, invented UI paradigms, and even launched billion-dollar gaming companies. But as they grew, the networks realized that they didn’t need developers anymore. Most users were locked in and wouldn’t leave becaus... See more

Every year, centralized social networks place more restrictions on what users and developers can do. They seem to believe that limiting choices is the path to a healthy network, while the opposite is probably true. A decentralized social network can challenge this hypothesis by making two powerful promises that centralized networks cannot. They can... See more