Topic: Decentralize Bitcointalk (Read 703 times)

WEF agrees with you:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/india-will-overtake-the-us-economy-by-2030/

Maybe that's part of the agenda... maybe.

Laughable why?

Who's going to laugh when China invades Taiwan?

Who's going to laugh when TSMC stops working, West will no longer be able to find high-end microchips and due to scarcity an iPhone suddenly costs $10000?

Don't you think there's a slight possibility that this will trigger hyperinflation that will absolutely melt every single fiat currency? (perfect opportunity to introduce CBDC as a "New Deal")

Before you dismiss this scenario, keep in mind nobody expected Russia to invade Ukraine. Nobody expected the EU to suffer 1.5 trillion € losses.

Scripta manent, feel free to screenshot me for future reference and I sincerely hope you're right and I'm wrong.

The dollar as we know if is already losing dominance at a significant rate, and it is already inflating. Will the dollar be gone in 2027? Maybe not completely...though nations may just use currencies built by their nation or nations that they support more than the US. The blockchain and subsequent technology allows nations to set themselves free from the USD, whether it be with a newly created currency (like what we see with BRICS and the Digital Yuan) or an existing one (like El Salvador adopting Bitcoin).

Will the dollar be gone by 2027? Unlikely.
Will the state of the dollar be better or worse between now and 2027?
In my opinion, the state of it will be near abysmal, and definitely better than where it is at the moment...the supply will be exponentially higher, the world will be or have found alternative currencies for trade, and the people will probably doing what they can to stay out of fiat outside of the absolute need to use it wherever applicable.


Decentralized websites can and will only be sanctioned if there is illegal activity happening on them, though that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be stopped if they are truly decentralized. Look into and take the case of TornadoCash as an example...and bear in mind that it is a crypto-based 'mixing' application, where addresses can be put on blacklists and there can be risks associated to blockchain labels when using it post-sanction...this isn't the same when we talk about a decentralized forum use-case.

People just say whatever they feel like without thinking things through. The "de-dollaration" talk is one very exaggerated talk,  but I guess that's what propaganda is. OP really believes the dollar would be dead in 2027, that's in 4 years. Laughable.
That's by the way, what makes OP so sure that a decentralized website cannot face restrictions from the government.
Bitcoin is decentralized but faces heavy restrictions in many countries.

They talk about Bitcoin ETF getting confirmed and now you talk about bitcoin getting banned, so funny and strange

You guys have no idea what you want. Do any of you think that fully decentralized forum will be the best option and attract many people? Let's be frank, create decentralized forum yourself and try to deal with things that include uploading of illegal material, increased number of scammers, spammers, increased number of threats and so on. I believe that many people talk about decentralized bitcointalk because they want mixer signature campaigns to come back but if bitcointalk gets decentralized and loses many customers or face other problems, there will be no high paying mixer signature campaigns too.

Let's be frank again, do you guys feel that you are censored and can't post whatever you want? Does anyone ban you for different opinion? Will you get banned if you promote Ripple over Bitcoin or something like that? This forum is as free as possible. At least I have never felt limited here, so, please explain to me, why do you feel limited?

It will take some time to write something up that is not just viable, but difficult to oppose or refute its viability as well. If I worked full or part time on the project, it'd may not take as long as it will, however my time barely permits me to do much outside of my commitments as is. I will do my best in any case as I know that it is possible.

I'm aware of freenet and other solutions however they are outdated solutions. We have web3 now, and with web3, there are endless technological advancements that came with it that can enable decentralization of some features and elements that previously would have been difficult to decentralize, or weren't viable to decentralize. I look forward to sharing the case study with you and others, thank you for prompting the idea....though do bear with me on time as like I said, this is not something that will take a few minures, it will take quite a few hours of focus (to say the least) to put something solid and actionable together.

Huh?

I'm pretty sure this has already been the topic of at least one thread before, and the bottom line is that it doesn't matter what you say or I say or if the majority of members think this forum ought to be centralized--we don't own it, period.  Nor is it as if you've got so much invested in bitcointalk that it would affect you a great deal if it were somehow decentralized.  You're still a Jr. Member after registering in 2019.

Oh that new forum software....I've been hearing about that since I became a member (I think).  I would be interested to see how a decentralized discussion forum worked, having never seen one before, but that being said I don't think OP made anything close to a coherent argument as to why bitcointalk should head in that direction.

I am genuinely interested to see how that case study turns out and find out more.  (Im not being sarcastic)

Just wanted to mention too that some truly decentralized forums already exist - Freenet's been around for over a decade or so, for example.  But it is still sucks big time to actually use.  and hardly anyone actually bothers with it anyway.  People just dont want taking responsibility for moderating stuff themselves.  And you need a ton more bandwidth and drive space compared to regular old client-server setups.  So Id definitely be curious to check out your ideas for a more user-friendly, lightweight version that doesnt dump so much on the end user.

There is a big difference between knowing the technical intricacies of a technology (thus knowing whether something is possible or not) and actually developing it. For example, one might know how a Bitcoin node works and what it is capable of down to each of its functions, but that doesn't mean that they can build each of these functions into an application if they were to try. However, you are right, once I do go ahead and build the case study then the next step may as well be to push for the development of the software itself. Unfortunately, unlike Bitcointalk, I do not have an ample amount of bitcoins to fund this. Nor do I have enough time at my disposal to allocate to the project part time.

Also, since the project is likely to be open source, I would doubt that there'd be "good money" involved, unless a business model was built in as well...though that is another element on top of the goal to build a more decentralized forum application. Nonetheless we'll see what happens when the case study is done down the line.

Then, set up the demo forum, decentralized and with access to the general public, via the .com/.org domain. And present it to the public.

I believe that, if Bitcointalk does not migrate to this service, you will be able to sell it with some ease and make good money.

What are we measuring when we talk about weight? When we say "light" I am speaking about the end-user's experience. It will take more resources to power a decentralized network, however that burden does not have to be on the end user, nor does it need to be on the codebase that powers the discussed decentralized forum. In addition to that, if we strictly stay on the topic of Bitcointalk, then there should technically be resources available to cater for costs and to build solutions around complexities, that's what the new forum fund was for. Though, this is another topic.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume my knowledge on decentralized networks Stalker22...as cryptosize said...


...which I had presumed before my last post. I will be back with viable solutions as of the current period, once I have enough time to make my own case study which I will post in the new forum software forum, and reference here for you both. What it will prove is that a forum software that is scalable, light in codebase and light for the end-user to use, is possible.

This will not be an overnight writeup, I also have little free time to allocate to new things generally, so allow the natural time it will take for me to complete this and bear in mind that I'm doing it for not much more than to prove a point, and because Stalker22 has just insulted my intelligence in a way that requires an effort like this to disprove.

If feedback was listened to in the forum by administration and there was a chance that it was heard, listened to and potentially used to build upon the new forum software idea, I'd be much more motivated, though I am sure we can all agree that would be ignorant to assume.

I'll be back when it's done.

Decentralized systems undoubtedly carry more "weight" than centralized ones.  Replicating data across nodes, running consensus algorithms, coordinating distributed components - it all adds complexity. Perhaps we could develop nimbler decentralized protocols but we should not expect a decentralized system to ever match centralized efficiency. 

Ultimately, it is misleading to claim that decentralized systems can be "lighter," or even as lightweight as centralized, and the two approaches feature fundamentally different trade-offs.  We choose between them according to the requirements of each application.  For some, decentralization provides indispensable security properties, despite the costs and complexities.  For others, centralization's simplicity and speed take priority.  Blanket comparisons seldom account for those nuances, and BenCodie clearly does not know much about the technical aspects of decentralized networks, or it is possible that he is simply misinformed.

I want a decentralized forum more than you, but I'm not going to claim that a decentralized solution (whether it's for a forum or payments) is going to be lighter compared to centralized solutions. I'm afraid you don't understand the technicalities involved.

The burden of proof lies on you...

This seems a very interesting idea but can you be more specific? How would the posting and decrypting to read part of the forum work?

Actually, I'm not misunderstanding anything, I am the only one who is trying to stay on-topic by relating the conversation back to what is meant to be discussed:
Should Bitcointalk be decentralized.

I did not introduce payment systems into the conversation, cryptosize did, and the relevance to building a decentralized forum application vs. a decentralized payment protocol are two completely different conversations.

If you actually look at the root of the conversation, I was not the first to draw comparisons to Bitcoin, and it was wrong to do so in the first place. Decentralizing Bitcointalk is not the same as building a decentralized payment protocol. Payment protocols have no relevance to forum software, period.

I maintain that it is possible to build a lightweight forum software that is decentralized. I maintain that decentralizing the forum's software and governance has not enough correlation to building a similar architecture to that of Bitcoin, due to both serving completely different purposes, and therefore is off-topic conversation.

I also disagree that a decentralized network can not be lighter than that of a centralized one for the end user. We are in a new world of new possibilities as of 2023 and onward, as we are every year, and stating that decentralized networks can definitely not be lighter than that of a centralized network is an outdated opinion. No one is saying it's an easy feet, however if we take into account the amount of resources that Bitcointalk (should) have to achieve this feet, then it is definitely a possibility rather than it definitely not being possible.

Yeah, a decentralized network has to have many working nodes that can be anywhere in the world in order to perform the functions that they are designed to perform but in a distributed network there's a central node that controls the rest of the nodes and that's why it's way energy efficient than a decentralized network.

The main benefit of decentralized network is that if one node somehow fails working then others will do the job without any issues but the problem with such system is the energy consumption as it mainly consumes way more energy than a distributed network. If I'm not wrong then in a distributed network if main node stops working then other notes may not be able to perform its job.

I think you may be misunderstanding the point. He mentioned Bitcoin as an example of a sufficiently decentralized network compared to other payment networks. He is correct, though. A decentralized network can never be "lighter" than a centralized infrastructure. Why else do you think the entire internet is built on a simple client-server basis? The concept of decentralized networks wasnt invented yesterday, you know?  And you are probably confusing the concepts of a decentralized network with a distributed network, which can be "lighter" with proper load balancing.


[https://blockchainengineer.com/centralized-vs-decentralized-vs-distributed-network/]

Feel free to add reason referring to modern technologies if you really want to add weight to your opinion and if you want to continue this discussion, I will then use my knowledge to elaborate on my opinion. Otherwise, all you have done with that post is provide a biased "final say".

A centralized forum will always be more lightweight, just like centralized payment systems (ECB, PayPal etc.)

I am not talking about BTC, which was a decentralized protocol that had its initial infrastructure built in 2008-2009. There's no point talking about Bitcoin as a modern decentralized application and at that, it is not even a decentralized application, it is an entire blockchain, built on an infrastructure that is not relevant to what we are talking about, being a forum application with more decentralization than what is current.

So to answer your question, no, I do not believe that BTC is lighter than other solutions because I am already aware that there are many more solutions that are much more efficient.

Payments was never a topic here. Using technology similar to that of Bitcoin to decentralize Bitcointalk was never a discussion here until you introduced it. Why people are thinking that we need to use technology similar to Bitcoin to power a decentralized version of this forum is beyond me, as the two are not even closely similar in their core use cases.

Here is a quick shower thought.  Maybe this has been asked before however.

Is there a possibility to build a simplistic Decentralized Forum on top of the Bitcoin Network?  Or something that can be included in Bitcoin Core / Electrum and work in conjunction with Bitcoin?