A few months ago, I posted here about my excitement for Plebbit and the promise it held for decentralization. I was convinced that a p2p social platform with a unique UI could be the future, with different UI of all social media…including Lemmy, a true alternative to centralized services. I saw the potential, and I wanted to believe in it.
Plebbit promised a lot of an innovative interface, decentralization, community driven governance. But after months of delays, vague updates, and little to no progress, it’s clear they never delivered. They had the right ideas but lacked the follow through to make them a reality. What was once an exciting project quickly turned into an example of what can go wrong when the hype overshadows the substance.
I wanted Plebbit to succeed, but in the end, I’ve realized that I’m better off sticking with what actually works.
If Plebbit had actually followed through on its promises especially with its vision of being a decentralized Reddit alternative. it could have been the best. The idea of a selfhosted platform, where users had true control over their content and communities, was a dream for those of us who wanted more than just another centralized app. It had the potential to be the go-to solution for anyone seeking real decentralization and p2p freedom. But unfortunately, that potential was never realized. Instead of delivering on its ambitious promises, Plebbit became just another project that failed to meet expectations, and the opportunity for a truly revolutionary platform faded away.
I’m a little confused on this point. I took a look at their whitepaper and it says that they’re not using blockchain at all. It’s some sort of
proprietary(edit: apparently open source) peer to peer algorithm. Is this something that changed in implementation? I’m not really familiar with this project so I’m certainly not trying to defend anything, just unclear as to why people are calling it a blockchain project specifically.Edit: OK, after some more digging I see what people are talking about. The project itself isn’t blockchain based, but it’s run by a DAO that operates using a governance token, which is not exactly great.
If community owners want to set a blockchain name like
hello.ethorhello.snsit’s possible, but it’s optional.Not true, it’s free software released under GPL V2, check out plebbit-js
What is the problem with DAOs? I think they’re a great way of facilitating coordination between anons on the internet
So, from what I’ve read, and you’re welcome to correct me if I’m wrong on any of the facts here, your DAO operates using a governance token that can be traded on crypto markets.
If that’s the case, those are just grey-market voting shares. All you’ve done is create a corporation and sell shares, while avoiding all of the legal protections that would be afforded to your shareholders if you actually went through the process of creating a corporation and holding an IPO.
So, based on those facts as I understand them, I guess I’d say I have two problems.
The token is not forced upon anyone, and even if we start including it in the clients somehow, anybody can fork the clients and remove any token related stuff out of it.
Tokenizing your own project is a great way of supporting development without selling shares to VCs who only care about hyper growth, regardless of the ideals of the project.
Not sure what you mean by that, everything we do is out in the open.
I completely lost interest for the project at this point of the text
Not true, it’s free software released under GPL V2, check out plebbit-js
Lmfao I actually made a huge frown upon reading that
That’s a reasonable reaction if it was true. But it’s not, plebbit is FOSS.
I’m looking for a link to the protocol source (like the blockchain integration). I can’t find it
I don’t think it’s in here https://github.com/orgs/plebbit/repositories
I’m pretty sure it’s just for community names. If you check out one of the clients, you’ll see <community>.eth. So I’d look at the code for creating a community to start.