Yes, of course they do. If you look at people’s browsing habits, you’ll notice that they’re becoming extremely conscious of their privacy. You know what that means? Yep, decentralized technology will take over. No data collection, no data leaks, and you remain fully anonymous. We already see that with people using decentralized messengers like Qamon and Wickr, and right now we even have decentralized NS, like ENS and Ever Name. I would even argue that without decentralization, there is no future for the internet.

Yes, but not in the crypto-form that's currently the hype. Crypto is inherently flawed as it uses wat too much redundant power and scales up with people's greed, making it less efficient. However, the internet itself is highly decentralized and i s ahuge succes, especially as it is extremely robust. You can take out part of it, but not the entire internet, and data always finds a route to its destination.

So yeah, decentralized definitely has a future, but not the monetary one.

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Decentralization is a mechanism for people to take back power over larger application networks, so over time it seems likely to be a bigger deal as people eventually get fed up enough with the private options. It stands the test of time better in theory as you don't need to have an account on 5 different platforms to see what all your friends are doing, you can have one instead, which is an appeal that will most likely catch on as tech and the internet continue to get more complex.

The key thing is the ability of the community to support it. When private businesses die, they mostly just stay dead and the remnants left behind are community driven efforts. When an instance on mastodon dies, mastodon continues on. As long as one mastodon instance is live, mastodon is live, and that's something private alternatives can't provide due to their reliance on income and control.

You mean encrypted layers over the normal internet? That is nothing other than a darkweb.

But it could be that users will retreat more and more into something like that. It will be called differently and treated differently, but then one will be network X, the other will be network Y.

I'd say so yeah, it's basically dot.com 2.0 right now with decentralised technologies. You have gazillion of blockchains, but also distributed data storages like IPFS / Arweave or Secure Multi Party Computation like Nillion. Along with Zero-Knowledge proof stack, it stands to reason you could redo many of the current services (not just payments) in a way which is anonymous and not owned/controlled by a single entity, whether corporate or institutional.

I usually get my hole rinsed on reddit for stating that I am involved in blockchain technology. Yes, right now it is undoubtedly 95% scams, speculations or economically illiterate but I believe that the underlying technology does have long term viability. At worst it will push for CBDC or government programmable money to be more widespread, which at least would be an improvement on what we have now.

I do like the example of Etherisc as a simple showcase of what could be possible. It is a decentralised insurance platform, where right now you can purchase insurance against flight cancellations. Should the flight be cancelled a decentralised network Chainlinkreports to Ethereum the flight number and smart contract pays you out. Unlike traditional insurance (provided there has been security system of all systems involved) there is no way for the smart contract not to pay you out. With companies they can go bankrupt, argue against some technicality or have their own funds frozen due to clerical error.

I would hope so. RSS is the primary way I currently interact with it, Reddit included.

All of these apps and sites that require individual logins with individual tabs with individual notification systems are a mess. I can just get a feed, load it up with my reader of choice, and manage it on my own terms.

There’s a trade off. Centralization consolidates power. Decentralization distributes it.

For example, you could have a digital ID/passport that includes your drivers license, medical and financial information etc. It would be convenient, but you’d lose your privacy and would be more vulnerable. All of your security would be bundled into a central point of failure.

This isn’t even touching the conspiracy theories.

Yes, but it will take time. Decentralization is a long-development technology much like AI has been. AI development started all the way back in the 50s and is only now becoming relevant to the average person (and it experienced many "winters").