Today we cover another great piece on the topic of what can be learned from the history of P2P protocols and their successes & failures.  Written by John Backus @backus, his article "Minimum Viable Decentralization," lays out a concept that may have been the deciding factor that separated the winners and losers in the file sharing revolution.  Why did BitTorrent succeed even without a discovery mechanism and its lack of privacy, when technology like Freenet, or iMule offered vastly better privacy and security than alternatives?  Listen to find out.

Plus, don't miss my commentary on how this concept, plus others from recent reads, could be applied to the Bitcoin/Lightning stack as well as other altcoins and blockchain applications.  There is an entirely new ecosystem at stake, not learning from the failures of the file sharing years could be a recipe for disaster. Don't miss this one.

Follow John Backus on Twitter (https://twitter.com/backus) and don't forget to drop applause on his amazing collection of works over on Medium (https://medium.com/@jbackus/minimum-viable-decentralization-d813dcf653fc)

Listen to the previous episode by Backus mentioned in the commentary here (https://anchor.fm/thecryptoconomy/episodes/CryptoQuikRead_141---Fat-Protocols-Arent-New-e2ndq4)

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bitcoinaudible/message