So yes, it’s a bad pun. But it’s taking me a little bit to —once again — get back into the swing of things.
Between meetings, phone calls, a pair of symposiums, an urgent need for three identical “medieval plague doctor” Halloween costumes, and rounding up our advisory board with some amazing people on both sides of the ocean (we will begin introducing everyone shortly), the things have become even more than usually hectic.
Now, I am back, and fresh from our meeting with our newest strategic partner, Ties.Network. And thus very much with decentralization in mind — which happens to be the very idea behind Ties, a decentralized database on the web — similar to our initial contender for hosted files, IPFS.
Why did Ties win out? And in fact, why in the world do we even need to use a decentralize database over the usual array of multiple data storage systems?
The first question is simpler.
While very well established and in fact a terrific example of a peer-to-peer storage protocol — what IPFS is currently lacking is simple means of a deep search within its platform. Ties on the other hand is specifically designed to function with dApps (decentralized apps) such as what WishKnish is growing up to become and permits native search and ease of linking to specific files out of a vast network of distributed hypermedia.
What IPFS has however, at least, over the current Ties iteration is a way to incentivize users into hosting a file specific to one company / rights holder over another. While a great idea on the surface and very much in keeping with our ethos — it is something that could also mean that some folks then may end up with their content out of the running, and thus at the whim of the node-holders for their very livelihoods. Very much a trade-off here, and something we will be working closely with Ties on, I am sure, to find out if something similar may be realized in a more equitable and risk-free fashion.
Which brings me to the idea of decentralization — and what does one eat it with. More to the point, why eat it at all?
For that, it is worth looking to regimes where the very fabric of people’s lives is being held to scrutiny and the freedom of business and speech are not at all something the residents can afford to take for granted. Considering our grand plans run toward being a global means of people and enterprises making their voices heard and products seen on a global scale, it is an issue we cannot ignore.
As such, a way for our storefronts (ps. we’re considering calling them “niches” from now on, so, please feel free to chime in on the possible name change!) to continue on despite anything happening to WishKnish headquarters, to their own servers, to the political climate in any individual country or protectorate, or even to a simple (and increasingly common) bane of many a site, a DDoS attack, was something of paramount importance to our team.
And the only way to make sure the storefronts, blogs, and communities remain functioning and impervious to such interferences was to decentralize the heck out of everything — and make sure that the only thing that really stays central in this case is a lightweight wrapper that packages the internal business logic administered by the blockchain together with hypermedia files hosted on the distributed database. This would go even as far as removing the need for public hosting or DNS addressing, in case obtaining those becomes a headache for any of our users.
Which, come to think of it, was me more or less describing our blueprint for WishKnish.
As always… thoughts, concerns, boos, and suggestions are deeply appreciated!
And now… off to birthday-dinner shopping I go (yes, I’m going to be 39 this weekend, so maybe we should add a “grim death” costume to the list while I’m at it). Oh well….
