I'm not sure what your objection is. Why shouldn't one Harvard/MIT person design it? I mean, somebody has to.

Web centralization is a structural and economic problem that is not going to be solved by the tech elite. We don't need new protocols; the ones we have worked fine back when the web was decentralized.

Our idea with Portal (https://portalplatform.net/) is to make it possible for regular people to run the exact same kind of Linux servers that many of us on HN run.

We're using stock Ubuntu cloud images w/CloudInit so everything that runs on Portal will run anywhere Linux VMs run. Once there are some standards for importing/exporting data we're going to make that a one-click operation. Users can already download all of their data and completely wipe all remote copies.

The original promise of the internet was that we would all control our own domain names. Instead we ended up @gmail.com facebook.com, and twitter.com. We can fix this for less than $10/user/mo now.

If the web is to be decentralized in the same way that the internet is decentralized, it will be much better if it's never "designed" at all. If your app wants to talk to my host, cool. If it doesn't, that's cool too.

But you still need a protocol for the app and the host to talk to each other - and that needs designing.

And you need a way for the app to find the host; that needs to be designed too.

Namecoin & TOR?

So you agree in a thread which started from "one Harvard/MIT person doesn't get to design it" by listing two technologies:

- one coming from bitcoin which was supposedly mostly designed by one anonymous person

- one designed in US government sponsored project for use by intelligence agencies and later improved by DARPA

What's the point you're trying to make?

That you can pick a couple of technologies such as these and use them now, but in the spirit of "If your app wants to talk to my host, cool. If it doesn't, that's cool too."