You certainly can point to a local blockchain node but the question is - have you ever run your own?
Running your own blockchain node is nothing like BitTorrent. The required storage, memory, cpu, and IOPS performance is already pushing the limits of readily available standard hardware.
This applies mostly to Ethereum. When you go to higher throughput chains like Solana and Polygon the node requirements jump to hardware that’s unobtainable/impractical for most people - top of the line NVMe drives with storage requirements beyond a single drive (typically need striping for IOPS anyway). Solana all but requires CUDA acceleration. Syncing the Solana devnet constantly uses at least 50% of my RTX 3090…
IPFS is even worse - the CPU, memory, and bandwidth requirements to do anything beyond playing around are ridiculous.
There’s a reason virtually everyone uses various node providers. This is rapidly setting the stage for all real-world uses of blockchain to end up on Web3 AWS (Alchemy, Infura, Piñata, etc).
The entire Arweave network currently hosts about 64 TB of data. In the scope of a worldwide network that’s… Not a lot.
I believe these issues will solve over time by moore's law. By the time Web3 will be mainstream viable we will all be able to run nodes on our mobile phones.
Phones have batteries and maintain the decent battery life they have with aggressive sleep, control of background processes, etc.
Ethereum does a tiny number of transactions and I'm not sure Moore's law will keep up with any scale (see Solana and Polygon) as it applies to mobile devices. Then you still have the power and cell connectivity issues.
No one is going to want to wait for their local node on mobile to take a half hour (or more) to sync after it's been disconnected/idle/etc for a few hours/days to make a transaction that should take seconds.
you can run an Ethereum node without running a full node. agree IPFS client is pretty janky but the idea of content addressable p2p hosting is not a bad thing.
the goal of these base systems is not to be faster or easier to use than a centralized Amazon server. the goal is resistance to centralized control.
mod note: my other account “web4” is rate limited after a couple comments?
Yes you can but sync time is still a problem, even today with the minuscule transaction rates supported on most chains. There will likely be advancements there but this is obviously a hard problem as we're already over a decade in with this technology and it has yet to be solved with any kind of approach that can still claim being fully secure and decentralized.
What I'm really trying to point out is that the vast majority of users do not care about centralized control. Even those that claim to pretty quickly realize that platforms with no ability whatsoever to filter content end up with universally objectionable content (such as CASM) and/or content otherwise illegal and/or regularly denounced (revenge porn, extreme violence/murder content, etc).
With centralized platforms today this has shown to merely create platforms that better align with someone's particular worldview while still exercising just as much (if not more) moderation and control.
centralization is not a bad thing - a lot of NFT websites exist that are centralized and curate and moderate the data on the public ledger to give a better UX for users. there can be multiple of these websites that co-exist - like how you can visit different book shops that sell the same product.
the core issue of web2 is that users are locking value into walled gardens run by singular corporations. if the corporation changes like Elon buying Twitter, the users have no power to escape. the same is not true in a web3 app where users can (and probably already are) operate on the shared data across a variety of platforms.
Running your own blockchain node is nothing like BitTorrent. The required storage, memory, cpu, and IOPS performance is already pushing the limits of readily available standard hardware.
This applies mostly to Ethereum. When you go to higher throughput chains like Solana and Polygon the node requirements jump to hardware that’s unobtainable/impractical for most people - top of the line NVMe drives with storage requirements beyond a single drive (typically need striping for IOPS anyway). Solana all but requires CUDA acceleration. Syncing the Solana devnet constantly uses at least 50% of my RTX 3090…
IPFS is even worse - the CPU, memory, and bandwidth requirements to do anything beyond playing around are ridiculous.
There’s a reason virtually everyone uses various node providers. This is rapidly setting the stage for all real-world uses of blockchain to end up on Web3 AWS (Alchemy, Infura, Piñata, etc).
The entire Arweave network currently hosts about 64 TB of data. In the scope of a worldwide network that’s… Not a lot.