Overview
The decentralized web is a broad movement and technical ecosystem aimed at rebuilding internet infrastructure without relying on centralized servers, corporations, or gatekeepers. Rather than data and computation flowing through a few large platforms, decentralized architectures distribute these responsibilities across participants in a network.
Two major paradigms exist within this space. Blockchain-based systems (Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot) use consensus mechanisms and smart contracts to establish shared state without a central authority. Agent-centric systems like Holochain take a different approach, where each participant maintains their own chain and state is validated through mutual agreement rather than global consensus.
Foundational Concepts
- Web 3 — The broader vision of an internet where users own their data and participate in governance
- Decentralized Application (dApp) — Applications that run on distributed networks rather than centralized servers
- Distributed Hash Table — A fundamental data structure for decentralized key-value lookup without a central server
- Agent — The software entity that represents a participant in a decentralized network
Subdirectories
Blockchain
Distributed ledger technology, consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, and the major blockchain ecosystems (Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot, and more).
Holochain
An agent-centric distributed computing framework written in Rust. Unlike blockchains, Holochain requires no global consensus — each agent maintains their own cryptographically signed chain, and integrity is enforced through peer validation.
Concepts
Foundational theoretical concepts underlying decentralized systems: cryptography, game theory, network economics, and governance.
Decentralized Storage
Content-addressed and peer-to-peer storage systems: IPFS, Filecoin, Arweave, and others.
Layer 0 Networks
The infrastructure layer beneath blockchains: cross-chain communication, interoperability protocols, and relay networks.
Wallets
Software for managing cryptographic keys, signing transactions, and interacting with decentralized applications.
Notable Projects
- The Graph — Indexing protocol for querying blockchain data via GraphQL
- Digital Permaculture — Applying permaculture design principles to digital network architecture
- TrustGraph — A framework for establishing trust relationships in distributed systems
- Taubyte — A decentralized cloud computing platform
- Metera — Decentralized coordination tooling
- Talkee — Decentralized communication protocol
- ActivityPub — W3C protocol for decentralized social federation, the backbone of the Fediverse
- Fediverse — A federated social network of thousands of independent servers communicating via ActivityPub