Blog comments are a huge problem right now.

Thanks to that static blog thing, we’ve almost decentralized blogs.

IPFS is coming along to fix some of the issues with centralization of content.

But commenting is still woefully centralized and/or cumbersome!

Why IPFS (on its own) can’t fix comments

At the recent Decentralized Web Summit, the audience was rewarded with a stunning demo from ZeroNet.

We witnessed a blog served in a fully decentralized manner thanks to the power of DHTs and their content-addressable philosophy.

Moreover, we saw comments being loaded in a decentralized manner. There was a little counter showing the number of comments increasing as they were loaded from peers.

While this certainly is an impressive achievement, it’s still not the golden egg we’re looking for. Why?

Comments must be stored by peers who drop offline all the time. Would you be OK visiting a semi-obscure blog and not being able to see the comments because no peers are available? Only half the comments? An unknown percentage of the comments? Comments out of order? My guess is that for most users this would be unacceptable.

For comments to work, there must always be at least one peer online. That is kinda like a … server.

And even though “server” is a taboo word in many decentralization communities, it’s nevertheless a fundamental reality that someone must always be available to store the data you’re looking for.

How Do We Decentralize This “Without Servers”?

We can’t.

What we can do, however, is make the “server” part arbitrary and permissionless so that anyone can play this role.

What is needed is: