DWeb use cases

DWeb use cases

Notes

Title: Towards an Evaluation Framework of Decentralized Technologies for Nonprofits

Sub-title: What is decentralized technology and how can nonprofits decide whether or not to use a certain decentralized tech tool?

• Co-created understanding of “decentralized” tech to demystify it
  • Automated, Consensus
  • More democratic
  • Technical alternatives to centralized, corporate owned tech
  • Protocols, blockchains
  • Transparent datasets
  • Freedom from (profit-driven) “managers”
  • Freedom from control to increase transparency (over the info that the system releases /records)
  • No obligatory intermediaries
    • Share a photo and don’t have to go through a centralized platform (P2P)
    • No single point of failure
  • Open Source

• Problems with centralized internet (Examples)
  • Airbnb has data about hosts and the illegal displacement of tenants
  • Ride share platform with data about their workers
  • “They don’t want you to know what’s in the data”
  • Proprietary data sets that people should have access to to ensure equity and justice
  • Facebook /AWS service outages
  • Cloudfare (middleware): traffic management

• Co-create an evaluation framework
  • Theoretical vs. practical decentralization
  • Tech Stack
    • Governance and Ownership Layer
    • Application Layer
    • Middleware
    • Data Layer:
      • Decentralization of information structure
    • Network Layer
    • Physical Infrastructure Layer

• Criteria for evaluation:
  • Privacy
  • Anonymity
  • transparency
  • Safety - from whom/what?
  • Security
  • Interoperability: standards, protocols

• Strategy / High level barriers
  • We need to “re-materialize” the internet: teach people how the internet actually works. We are too conditioned to the ease of use of everything.
  • Also, at the same time, we need to make dweb (and movement tools in general) more usable
  • In practice, we’re always relying on others for our tech, so let’s ask ourselves WHO are we relying on? How do we decide who to rely on?
  • What are the tradeoffs of freedoms and control that make a specific technology a good choice for a specific use case?
  • What is the liability attack surface?

• Risks of decentralized technologies:
  • Piracy, different types of attacks

Examples of Using the evaluation framework:

• Mastodon:
  • Decentralization stack: (is the technology decentralized at this layer of the stack?)
  • Ownership - yes
  • Governance - no
  • Federated - yes
  • Distributed - no

• This specific combination makes Mastodon a decent choice for communities who need good moderation: you can exclude bad actors in a federated network

• Barriers:
  • not easy to use, had to teach people how to pick a server
  • Usability hierarchy
  • Tracking clicks
  • People don’t know what they’re giving away

Use Cases

Projects and jobs to be done:

• Bay Area Mesh - Wifi Access
• Velid

Mastodon - Social Media

Mapeo - Remote Community Mapping

Safaru System (Kenya) - Local Community Currency (Community Inclusion Currency)

Internet Archive - Community Archives / Library

Starling Lab

Tor Project - Private Browsing

• Tor Exit Nodes

Document Cloud - Google Docs

MORE NOTES

D-Web

Val Elefante

Definition:

Freedom from managers – freedom of control; to protect and enhance transparency

• Proprietary info (datasets) that is withheld from the public
• The D-Web can help store data in a decentralized way – they don’t want the consumer to know what is in the data
• No obligatory intermediaries – ex – you can send anything without a middle man – its P2P
• Autonomous self-hosting >> You own your own server
  • No single point of failure – the network is distributed – geographically and across individuals
  • There is a decentralized physical infrastructure (server) and the data is replicated and stored across multiple nodes, then there is an application layer
• It’s a movement of ppl working on their own networks of servers and protocol standards to store data
  • You must be technical to use the D-Web – is it accessible without locking someone our
• Cloudflare – increase use of your data by providing you with security
  • They use applications that are built on top of a decentralized network
    • Slack Alternatives, Instagram Alternatives, FB alternatives
    • Criteria – decentralized, repeatable, no single point of failure for your data
    • For ex, if AWS goes out – it will impact millions of ppl at scale
    • Information is also decentralized via transparency
  • Use-case
    • MESH Network: Ham-radio – Bay Area MESH, ppl can set up an antenna, point it at another antenna, they are connected, without the internet – It runs without any centralization / community-owned, open-source
      • Governance is on accountability – ppl keep each other in line
    • Mastodon – Social Media
    • Mapeo – remote community mapping –
    • Safaru system in Kenya – community inclusion digital currency - crypto
    • Internet Archive
    • Document Cloud – ppl can upload docs of any kind
    • Starling Lab
    • Tor Network – private browsing
    • Zoom alternative (like Jitsi)
    • The goal of the movement is working twd a more democratic, Automated and distributed consensus method
    • Strategy: re-materialize the internet and how it works
      • Non-technical ppl should be describing what the internet should be – like social sciences
    • Caution : that one individual made it

Mastadon – the individual owns the software – but it’s not distributed

distributed data is backed up on others’ computers

moderation – each server has it’s own moderation system – and a learning curve to participate

The bar to access needs to be low enough that the knowledge is accessible

Barriers: lack of education, usability, hierarchy, tracking clicks – people don’t know what they are giving away