Alright so I’m not an expert so I might not be explaining it correctly.

Federated Network: Multiple instances sharing content, such as Lemmy

Peer to Peer Network: There is no “instances”, just peers. Many peers sharing content. Every user is a peer. There is no server costs, because every device connected to the network is acting like a mini-server. It will cost your device some storage space and network bandwith depending on the how the software is designed.

Or do you think Centralized servers are still gonna dominate the future?

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago

    I don’t understand the concept of peer to peer in this scenario. Isn’t lemmy essentially peer to peer?

    • @[email protected]English
      7•1 year ago

      Bit torrenting is an example of peer to peer. Blockchain theoretically works this way too.

    • NaNEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      No, each user is a “peer”, in Lemmy they access content through the instances.

      They are talking something more like IPFS.

      I don’t really know much about IPFS, but I think a downside to peer to peer is the potential for content to disappear because someone turns off their computer or quits whatever application. I can’t be the only person to have a torrent stall at 80% because the rest isn’t available in the network.