<aside> 💡 This is a living document. Comments and criticism is welcomed and appreciated. If you want to help, or talk more: please reach out to [email protected]
</aside>
The Open Garden strives to be a digital space that is decentralized. A decentralized version of the website is one where each of its component relies on a community powered network rather than a central server controlled by any one entity, an individual or corporation. . If achieved, the website itself becomes a garden - a slow moving, interdependent network that supports itself. This document talks more about why this matters and what the steps are to get there
The internet was born of decentralized systems. Early computer networking looked like two paper cups connected with thread. Local Area Networks were two computers cabled together. The first Emails were sent from one computer to another, with no central server between them. Websites were just files that lived on someones computer that I could look at.
As more people came online, the internet centralized. Todays networks look more like a wheel with spokes - at each networking level there is a central authority that your computer talks to. This starts the physical layer: telephony wires and satellites owned by government or corporations. Access to connectivity is controlled by Internet Service Providers like AT&T. Applications run on servers that have recently centralized as well - most of todays applications run on servers powered by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.
Finally, and most critically - the applications we use every day are themselves deeply centralized. When you send someone a message on Facebook, that message is stored on a Facebook server before its shared with them. When you perform a Google Search, your query is stored in a table alongside your Gmail and YouTube data. When you create an Instagram page, your data doesn't live on your computer, but on Instagram's servers.
This approach has serious implications for how we are able to communicate with each other as humans. On one hand, the internet is now extremely fast and widely available because centralizing infrastructure enables efficiency at scale. On the other hand, the central entities control the internet. They often decide what data is gathered from people, where it lives, who has access, and in what ways they can access it.
Many proponents of decentralization (including the authors of this article and project), believe that this trade off needs to be re-looked at, to potentially find a better solution that gives more agency to individuals. They believe in an internet where each user controls their own data , where it lives, and how its shared. At the same time, they also don't want to compromise connectivity and are building new technologies to implement decentralization at scale.
There are a variety of approaches for how this can be achieved. One popular set of solutions uses Blockchain and related currencies like ETH/Bitcoin to provide a decentralized network as well as a financial incentive system to keep that network running. Another set of solutions, with projects like IPFS core, ActivityPub, and Hyper, reconstruct internet to give more agency to individuals. Each of these has their use cases and benefits, such that the decentralized internet of tomorrow will likely use many solutions working in tandem with each other.
Decentralizing open garden is a long process, that will take time by design. This is in part because the technology for the decentralized internet are still early. It is also because the project has many pieces and we hope to find and use the right technology that is well suited for each piece. In doing so, we are able to get a deep understanding of different decentralization solutions and their benefits and disadvantages.
The various pieces or components of Open Garden are as follows: