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P2P and Decentralisation

Peer-to-peer (P2P) is what interrelational pluralism looks like in engineering. Each subject’s experience is its own; communities form between subjects, by what they share — not under a central command. Peer-to-peer technology has the same shape: no centre that everything passes through, peers dealing with each other directly.

That is how real communities work: people share directly with those they know and trust, communities overlap and connect, and no one manages them from a centre. For the privacy of the individual, of our families and of local communities, that matters to me — it keeps diverse communities living together without falling prey to central control.

What I would like to build

Bare and Pear, from Holepunch, make peer-to-peer practical: applications discovered, distributed and updated directly between peers — no servers, no app stores. That is the ground I would build on. Progress on the engineering is slow for now; this is on my wish list.

The centralised internet is the substrate, not the enemy. Decentralised ecosystems can grow on top of what already exists. No revolution to replace, but emergence.

Blockchain plays an important public role in decentralisation. Two projects stand out for me: Midnight, for privacy, and Cardano, for the philosophical foundations it is built on and its move to community governance.

Decentralisation is a natural fit for reality the way we experience it. Building P2P is swimming with that current.