I am a big advocate of decentralization. This has to be one of the top priorities in terms of our focus on Steem. Moving all we can to a decentralized basis is one of the things that will serve this ecosystem very well.
This is taking on heightened importance with the announcement that Facebook, Signal, and Telegram are all looking to offer cryptocurrency. The ability to distinguish from the others is crucial. Being a fully decentralized operation is what gives Steem that.
Of course, this is a process but each step we take is of great help.
I would say at the top of the list is the efforts by Steemit Inc to reduce the costs associated with the master nodes. By altering how the data is structured, we see the amount of memory needed being reduced. The certainly helps out Steemit Inc with their financial situation. It also, however, makes it feasible for other applications and individuals to put up their own nodes. Depending upon Steemit is not a good thing. Having hundreds of nodes to choose from operated by different entities is a major step forwards.
We know how the Facebook network operates. It is all controlled by that company with no "community" input. There might be the illusion of feedback but the reality is that Facebook answers to Wall Street. Everything is done in an effort to maximize profits. This is a point that must be driven home to people.
On Steem, we operate in a different fashion. Competition, in the traditional sense, is not healthy. We are leaving the battle-scarred world. Instead, we look for a collaborative environment that comes with decentralized, open source systems. Ultimately, we all want the impact on STEEM to be positive.
IPFS stands for Interplanetary File System. It is a protocol that allows for peer-to-peer file sharing. This will assist in the efforts to decentralize what is stored on the Dtube network.
In contrast, anything posted on YouTube is hosted on their servers. This is what enables them to ban accounts AND take down content. Since it is on their server system, it is a click of a button and, poof, all is gone.
This is not the case with IPFS. Much like the Steem, Bitcoin, and EOS software, this is run on computers all over the world. Taking down one will not affect the network greatly. As for the content, it is on hosted on whatever computers decide to seed it. Over time, as more nodes are established, the content is spread out even further.
The contest that is being set up is to promote the idea of community nodes. One of the main reasons for this is to improve the efficiency of streaming the videos which is crucial to the long term success of an entity like Dtube. However, it also does start the process of further decentralizing away from all content being handled by Dtube.
Here is a full explanation of the content.
https://steemit.com/dtube/@vaultec/dtube-ipfs-full-community-node-contest
I prefer to look at the Steem ecosystem on an evolutionary scale. Nothing on here is static so getting riled up about something that is likely to change makes sense. Instead, I prefer to focus upon the overall direction that we need to take and match what is taking place against that.
The move towards decentralization will not happen overnight. For a number of different reasons, it is easier and, often necessary, to first set things up in a decentralized manner before moving away from that. As long as that is the direction things go, I am fine with it.
DTube can be one of the applications that serves as the foundation for the Steem ecosystem. We all know how big YouTube is and DTube can provide a legitimate option to that. The worse that company behaves, the better it is for us.
Implementing more of the IPFS system is only going to improve things.
I want to commend all who are involved in this project.
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