Interested in decentralization today? Learn what worked in the 2000s for p2p file sharing:
Decentralization is a legal tactic used alongside activism
Decentralizing the wrong things is a waste of time
Decentralizing everything is suicide by bad UX
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What should we decentralize? Look for hacks you can formalize: • Link-only mp3 sites → Napster skirting hosting • User hosted Napster servers → eDonkey architecture • Coin tumblers → privacy coins • "No logs" VPNs → Tor • Anonymous domain purchasing → hidden servicespic.twitter.com/iDvz6eTreL
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Tech vs. law starts w/ decentralized protocols, but is continued by activists, businesses, and OSS • Pirate Bay was stronger w/ Sweden's copyright law • Their servers are "raid-proof" • Pirate Bay proxy sites help w/ ISP bans • Protocols evolve via OSS communitiespic.twitter.com/ikgiPCZ03U
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Recipe for a successful decentralized protocol: • Enable a valuable, legally suppressed use case • Company's products avoid sensitive use case. Let 3rd parties do that • Tech should be useful outside sensitive use case BitTorrent checked these boxes.
@AugurProject might too!pic.twitter.com/P9oPe9djOF
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Decentralize to stay alive, users don't want more.https://twitter.com/backus/status/1020111697896341504 …
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Open sourcing your decentralized protocol can provide legal insulation. There were dozens of OSS BitTorrent clients, what good does killing the company do?https://twitter.com/backus/status/1019655188485791744 …
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Decentralization is part of a larger legal playbook. More doesn't always help: BitTorrent was less decentralized than Kazaa but more legally resilient. Their use of OSS, marketing, PR, and implicit reliance on 3rd parties (The Pirate Bay) mattered morehttps://twitter.com/backus/status/1016428419674882048 …
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BitTorrent won the legal war by being thorough: • Website talked about hosting not downloading •
@bramcohen only talked about legal uses. Claimed no profit motive • Prominent free speech defense on website • Redundancy via OSS clients • Outsourced liability to Pirate Baypic.twitter.com/iHEznYJ4Ba
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Decentralized protocols don't absolve the company of responsibility, it just shifts to the client: • Limewire had a copyright filter, disabled by default. Court reaction: "What? Make it mandatory!" • Kazaa had a NSFW filter. Court reaction: "So you could filter copyright too!"
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Passing the buck to activists buys room to decentralize. While Hollywood fought Pirate Bay, the BitTorrent community added • Multitracker support (takedown resilience) • DHTs (decentralized torrent metadata storage) • PEX (peer discovery w/o trackers) Helping The Pirate Bay!pic.twitter.com/zB98rEZTzv
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Some look at the file sharing movement and say "BitTorrent didn't win, Netflix+Spotify did!" Decentralization exploits legal boundaries, exposing rent seeking in anti-competitive industries. BitTorrent created the conditions that allowed Netflix and Spotify to exist We all won!
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The political framing for decentralization is "censorship resistance." The market framing is "anti-competitive market resistance." P2P file sharing corrected anti-consumer markets for music and movies. Imagine what we can unlock with Bitcoin and Ethereum!
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The chronology of the "most popular file sharing app" is roughly: Napster Limewire Kazaa eDonkey BitTorrent Reflecting "minimum viable decentralization" over time. Limewire was early, Kazaa more usable. BitTorrent's UX was bad, but won legal long gamehttps://medium.com/@jbackus/minimum-viable-decentralization-d813dcf653fc …
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When decentralizing, half measures bite you in the ass:
Aimster obscured searches and user IPs from its protocol
BitTorrent disowned search and left IPs in the clear
Courts argued Aimster's conduct was "willful blindness." BitTorrent's choices made its position strongerpic.twitter.com/wAsLArkhWT
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Boiling down decentralization movements, we build technology to resist governments installing filters:
Copyright (BitTorrent)
Anti-money laundering (Bitcoin)
Content/communication (Tor)
Legal battles and tech evolution continues until its too hard to install a filterShow this thread -
Once legal pushback enters a decentralized product space, evolutionary pressures start filtering: • Weaker willed torrent search engines closed • BitTorrent's protocol evolved • The Pirate Bay doubles down Expect same when the US government takes on real crypto companies!
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Decentralized technologies mixes legal and objectionable streams together: • Can't separate darknet market traffic from anti-censorship on Tor • BitTorrent protocol is unaware of content You can't throw out the bath water without throwing out the baby, by design.
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In a decentralized product market, recklessness buys early growth. Many companies grew by marketing to pirates. I call BitTorrent an "ugly duckling." It didn't seem like a winner until late in the game. Here's how to spot ugly duck investments:https://medium.com/@jbackus/invest-in-the-ugly-duckling-decentralization-product-market-fit-and-the-law-bea856a6bbad …
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What parts of our tech should we decentralize? How do we know when we're done? I think a lot of people in crypto are struggling with these questions. I think history provides an answer. Find your "minimum viable decentralization"https://medium.com/@jbackus/minimum-viable-decentralization-d813dcf653fc …
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This thread focused on decentralization as a legal tactic to be used sparingly, pulling from the history of p2p file sharing. This isn't my only deep dive into p2p history and crypto! Check out my thread on market dynamics, governance, and monetization:https://twitter.com/backus/status/1004471335488122880 …
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If you enjoyed this thread, my blog post "Resistant protocols: How decentralization evolves" goes into more depth: https://medium.com/@jbackus/resistant-protocols-how-decentralization-evolves-2f9538832ada …
If you don't follow me yet, I tweet regularly about crypto, decentralization, and p2p. Plenty more to come, stay tuned!Show this thread
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Incentive issues (most shared NOTHING, tons of fake files + viruses)
Lots of attempted market mechanisms (from game theory to tokens) to fix incentives
Forking vs governance
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