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backus's profile
John Backus
John Backus
John Backus
@backus

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John Backus

@backus

Seeking alternative compression. Hopefully wrong on average. Shameless. Started @getcognito and @bloom

San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2012

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    1. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      3rd party companies building on top of your protocol help you find product market fit. Normal startups iterate sequentially; fat protocols can iterate in parallel 🐻 BearShare built features that Limewire users wanted like video preview 🐴 eMule improved on bad UI of eDonkeypic.twitter.com/G0CjFBK3NG

      1 reply 2 retweets 29 likes
      Show this thread
    2. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      Decentralized fat protocols out live the companies that create them • Nullsoft launched Gnutella protocol but Limewire/BearShare built the apps we all know. Forks like FrostWire live on eternally • OSS eMule built on eDonkey's networks after they died and even improved on it

      1 reply 2 retweets 25 likes
      Show this thread
    3. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      While fat protocols compete, 3rd party apps can unify and create a better experience. Popular file sharing app "Shareaza" searched EVERYTHING by implementing Limewire, Kazaa, eDonkey, and BitTorrent. Open source giFT project provided generalized backend for thispic.twitter.com/ub0hoW0oNF

      1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
      Show this thread
    4. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      Third party apps provide continuity for users by switching protocols if it makes sense. When FrostWire (fork of Limewire) realized BitTorrent was the winning protocol, they added support. Now it is JUST a BitTorrent client. Users don't care about protocols!pic.twitter.com/QlZArmOw99

      2 replies 2 retweets 38 likes
      Show this thread
    5. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      If fat protocols are sufficiently general then thin applications can find product market fit by specializing. PopcornTime (backed by BitTorrent) is a great example where it specializes both by content (movies) and mode of consumption (streaming only)pic.twitter.com/AELPAspUc6

      2 replies 3 retweets 34 likes
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    6. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      Decentralized protocols evolve under collaboration+consensus and fork under contention • Gnutella evolved from 0.4 → 0.6 via community consensus. Took years • eDonkey kept Overnet protocol proprietary. eMule community says fine & builds "Kad network" (fork by clone). Kad wonpic.twitter.com/PB3SvYvSJ9

      1 reply 3 retweets 22 likes
      Show this thread
    7. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      When we say a protocol forks, we're really talking about communities forking. Tons of developers worked on Gnutella 0.6 (protocol for Limewire, BearShare, etc). When a random dev proclaimed he designed "Gnutella 2.0" on his own w/o peer review, people were PISSED. Boycott!pic.twitter.com/rWBEYLDXG8

      2 replies 1 retweet 16 likes
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    8. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      No token? Enjoy your tragedy of the commons! File sharing protocols had the problems you'd expect when a market fails at resource allocation. 😠 70% of Limewire users didn't share ANYTHING. Even more shared nothing of value 🗑️ Kazaa struggled with fake files and virusespic.twitter.com/0I5rhs1MKv

      2 replies 1 retweet 34 likes
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    9. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      People will build businesses on exploiting your protocol's bad game theoretics if you let them! A strong Kazaa "participation level" meant faster downloads. Clients self-reported participation level. The K++ client spoofed max participation so users got better download speeds.

      1 reply 2 retweets 24 likes
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    10. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      John Backus Retweeted John Backus

      Well designed game theory can make a protocol better though. Big reason why BitTorrent is so fast!https://twitter.com/backus/status/999519259628732416 …

      John Backus added,

      John Backus @backus
      BitTorrent does a surprising amount of game theory under the hood! pic.twitter.com/Mz1EoGu2Yq
      1 reply 9 retweets 44 likes
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      John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

      Decentralized protocol market mechanisms people experimented with: • Targeted game theory (http://bittorrent.org/bittorrentecon.pdf …) • In kind resource accounting (tracking just upload vs. download) • In-network token you can't cash out • Generalized and liquidatable tokens

      3:36 PM - 6 Jun 2018
      • 6 Retweets
      • 14 Likes
      • Cryptoconomy ⚡ Jacob Gadikian David Lewis®️ whipmegrandma WeSaulteYouCap Robert Kovalskee Jorge Steffen NiMA Asghari [0.4.2] Dan Hedl
      1 reply 6 retweets 14 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          MojoNation tried building IPFS+BitTorrent w/ a token in 2000. Quote from thread w/ @NickSzabo4 and @zooko: > The smartest thing [@bramcohen] did when stripping down MojoNation to create BitTorrent was conforming the digital resource mechanism to the actual behavior of the users

          1 reply 6 retweets 33 likes
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        3. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          Quote is from MojoNation founder Jim McCoy by the way. Source: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/06/nanobarter.html?showComment=1181708460000#c2518193502558600657 … @NickSzabo4 later jokes about the commenter being "anonymous" while using "we" to refer to MojoNation team. Later identifies as Jim McCoy. 🤷‍♂️ Whole thread is a valuable read

          2 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
          Show this thread
        4. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          MojoNation was a visionary project. In @zooko's post mortem, he mentions some assumptions about usage that didn't pan out, causing problems. IMO, Jim's comment doesn't reject tokens. Instead, he is acknowledging that the token added too much complexity to an already grand visionpic.twitter.com/NAltFWWXjQ

          2 replies 4 retweets 24 likes
          Show this thread
        5. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          Takeaway: Tokenize after you figured out user behavior. MojoNation incorrectly assumed users would leave their PC connected to network all day. People critique some decentralized projects as bolting a token on to an otherwise understood product. This is an interesting reframing

          1 reply 8 retweets 43 likes
          Show this thread
        6. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          The teams behind successful decentralized file sharing protocols also created the first client. Tons of people end up competing to be the best app on top of a protocol, but the protocol creators need to lead the way for others. Gnutella was a very important flash in the pan.pic.twitter.com/z5Y8wG3Uxj

          1 reply 3 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        7. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          Imagine tokenized BitTorrent where clients negotiate token/GB rate for a transfer • Seeding after dl can buy faster future downloads • Incentive to seed long term and contribute bandwidth • Token bounties for desirable content would incentivize sharing content people want

          6 replies 2 retweets 22 likes
          Show this thread
        8. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          There is so much more that I think would follow from tokenized file sharing. I'm planning on writing "What if BitTorrent had a token?" soon 😃

          4 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
          Show this thread
        9. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          We should split product/market fit in two when talking about decentralized protocols: • Protocol/market fit: is the protocol powerful+general enough to let apps give users a good experience? • App/consumer fit: does the app optimize how the end user wants to use the protocol?

          1 reply 3 retweets 24 likes
          Show this thread
        10. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          The fat protocol layer fundamentally restricts what thin apps can provide. Multiple companies building on the app layer experiment with different product visions in parallel. Their learnings can be fed back into protocol improvements.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
          Show this thread
        11. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          The split between fat protocols and thin apps starts as a weakness and becomes a strength. Until a compelling enough app is built, it is a three legged race to coordinate protocol and app changes. After this MVP is found, you see rapid experimentation and competition

          1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        12. John Backus‏ @backus Jun 6

          ☝ If you enjoyed this thread, my blog post on the topic goes into way more depth: https://medium.com/@jbackus/fat-protocols-arent-new-42d2c538db41 … I'll share more on p2p parallels for tokenization, decentralization, scaling, and legality in the future. Stay tuned!

          0 replies 11 retweets 63 likes
          Show this thread
        13. End of conversation

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