In Radical Networks class, we were learning about the differences between centralized and decentralized networks, and the costs and benefits of each.
To summarize: A centralized network means that everyone gives their data to one company to hold on to, which they do for low prices, but they own and get to see all of the data that you store. Decentralized networks mean that instead of trusting a corporation to keep your data on its servers, it is distributed across a community of users’ devices that all contribute and benefit from this distributed web. It is kind of like the difference between sending a message by carrier pigeon instead of through the U.S. mail, except imagine if the U.S. mail was like “we’ll send your letters for free, but we’re going to read all of your messages, and sell information about what we find to anyone who asks.”
Paul Baran, On Distributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks – Research Memoranda 3420 (1964)
The original intent of the world wide web according to its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, was something decentralized, with different pages all linking together, and with each user being an equal owner and contributor. Several communities of people are to create decentralized web networks, that more similarly reflect Tim Berners-Lee’s original intent.
“But initially our feeling philosophically was that the web should be a neutral medium. It’s not for the web to try to correct humanity. The web would hopefully lead to humanity becoming more connected, and therefore, maybe more sympathetic to itself — and therefore, perhaps less conflict-ridden.”
Some of the reasons people might want to create decentralized networks include increased customizability, a feeling of self-sufficiency, satisfaction of creating something yourself, cutting out billionaire money-hoarding middlemen, building community, and more transparency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7a5oj77-U
I was looking at these reasons, and maybe it was just because I spent my entire winter break knitting, but I felt like a lot of these reasons line up with the fiber arts community.
I had done all of this thinking, and it came time to come up with a project for this class. I wanted to make some kind of creative network. I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of decentralized, peer-to-peer network that could connect knitters worldwide with patterns, tutorials, and communities.
As it turns out, someone has already tried. It wasn’t a random person like me, it was Cassidy Forbes, one of the co-founders of Ravelry. Ravelry is a fiber arts community website that started as a way for knitting enthusiasts to see all of the content from their favorite bloggers in the same place. Today, it is by far the largest online community of fiber artists with almost 10 million users, and most notably, the largest database of yarn and patterns.
In 2021, in a now deleted tweet, Cassidy wrote a manifesto declaring her ideal future for Ravelry. Cassidy wanted to decentralize Ravelry’s pattern API, and wanted Ravelry to be one of many platforms where people could purchase their patterns as an NFT. I unfortunately cannot find a copy of the manifesto, but according to some blog posts, it sounds like Cassidy wanted to issue an NFT every time someone purchased a pattern, with the NFT acting as a proof of purchase.
This was not met well, with most knitters struggling to understand why Cassidy thought this was a good idea. Some agreed that it seemed like a cool idea, but not worth the extra cost, financially, mentally, and environmentally.
Quoted from this archived blog post:
There are plenty of knitters who struggle to use Ravelry as it is, and not just because of the eyestrain. We’re not all technically savvy teenagers and frankly, even those of us who are professional nerds don’t necessarily understand this stuff. More importantly, I can’t think of a single knitter who’d be okay with contributing to this level of environmental devastation for what is essentially a very minor convenience that is still ultimately trusting someone else to look after your pattern collection.
I could not find the entire manifesto online, but here is an excerpt quoted in a reddit thread:
It’s just a start. It’s not enough. The community needs an independent, not for-profit, decentralized, community owned database of patterns, yarns, and their connections to projects. Rav should be just one of many interfaces to this API and one of many ways of searching patterns and yarns, creating projects and stash that are linked to this database, and so on. The data that forms the heart of Ravelry was contributed by everyone and it belongs to everyone. We need to build this and we can’t do this alone.
It sounds great in theory, but it is true that most people are reluctant to get involved with cryptocurrency, so it is a big, dare I say radical, change to propose this out of nowhere to your near 10 million site users and expect any of them to be on board. I don’t see it as an impossibility in the future. If cryptocurrency ever becomes more mainstream, I’m sure that knitting patterns won’t be too far behind. Maybe Cassidy was ahead of her time. Since all of this backlash, Cassidy has lost twitter privileges, but remains the head coder for the Ravelry site.