Systems Challenges in the Decentralized Web

Abstract: The "Fediverse" has recently seen a renewed momentum, with a number of Fediverse platforms like Mastodon gaining increasing traction (partly due to the controversial acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk). These platforms offer alternatives to traditional 'centralised' web platforms like Twitter and YouTube by enabling the operation of web infrastructure and services without centralised ownership or control. They do, however, raise several key systems challenges related to performance, security and resilience. In this seminar, I will present some recent work evaluating and building decentralized web services, focusing on the challenges encountered in-the-wild. The presentation is based on several papers recently published at SIGCOMM, SIGMETRCS, IMC and WWW. 

Speaker: Gareth Tyson, HKUST/QMUL