Top all-time · #6198
Varun Srinivasan
Personal blog · varunsrinivasan.comstartupseconomicsprogramming
Varun Srinivasan's personal blog at varunsrinivasan.com covers startups, economics and programming. Since 2022, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-01-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this author's essays on blockchain and decentralized social networks, especially the 'sufficiently decentralized' post about Farcaster. The comments cite it as a source for the idea rather than judging it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I’m building Farcaster, a decentralized social network.
Most-linked posts?
- /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-04-19
- Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-01-17
- The Goldilocks Consensus Problem2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-29
What Hacker News says?
If you are outside US, joining Farcaster via Warpcast will cost $5. I joined, and the UX does feel quite slick. Mostly it is just crypto users on this network. Note that Farcaster is not decentralized, but "sufficiently decentralized" https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent...
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Bluesky signups are now open to the public”Submitted Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks as a story · 145 points
HN discussionThere is nothing that would ever convince you which is why I didn't want to try in the first place. You're starting from a position of thinking you're unshakably correct (and constantly write wildly over-confident condescending things like "99.9999999% of all discussions with crypto people follow the same pattern" which make it unpleasant to interact at all). Maybe if that number is true for you it's because you are…
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value”Submitted A Better Model for Valuing Startup Equity as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThe idea of a CEX directing this kind of engineering effort sounds like a nightmare. Tangentially related, see below for a better idea of “Twitter on the blockchain”: https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent...
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Crypto exchange Binance, Musk's co-investor, to help Twitter with blockchain”Submitted Technical Shorts, Not Technical Debt as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI've been enjoying Farcaster in recent months. I think they've taken a very thoughtful approach with the "sufficiently decentralized" philosophy [1] and that openness is now helping them grow the ecosystem of apps using the network. [1] - https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent...
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Substack Notes Launched”Submitted Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks as a story · 3 points
HN discussion- preventing double spend in a distributed ledger - creating a secure timestamped append only log of signed messages - apps like multisig wallets, privacy preserving rollups, cross-site attestations - creating a global namespace registry for social networks[1] - building other things on top of these primitives, like disintermediated collectibles for games, art, web communities.. [1] https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2…
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Blockchain Solutionism”Submitted Decentralizing Social Media with CRDTs and Blockchain as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWorth checking out farcaster (farcaster.xyz). They are working towards a solution where things are "sufficiently decentralised". The server admins can't prevent users from following one another etc. https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent...
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Tim Bray · Private and Public Mastodon”Submitted The Goldilocks Consensus Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFarcaster(farcaster.xyz) is working towards sufficiently decentralised social network ( https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent... ). It aims to have a model where server admins don't get the power to prevent users from following one another.
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “Tim Bray · Private and Public Mastodon”Submitted Seven Weird Tricks to Avoid Getting Hacked as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBuilt-in economics doesn't mean users pay per use. A popular design path is to try to build systems where data that goes on the blockchain is very limited[1] and easily subsidized. It's also very easy to design systems where data writes and computation are subsidized by clients or the system itself.[2],[3],[4] The reality is that in current networks, which are totally financial but only implicitly and in a way that…
Comment linking /2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks
on “The Missing App Economy”Submitted Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
