How should browsers integrate decentralized websites?
If you tried recently (May 2021) to access the dWebsite (decentralized website) uniswapexchange.eth using the popular .eth.link gateway (uniswapexchange.eth.link), you got the following message.
The gateway .eth.link is operated by Cloudflare since January 2021. For a majority of dWebsites users, those links are the only way they access dWebsites right now.
Cloudflare blocked uniswapexchan ge.eth in order to avoid confusion since it’s not Uniswap official link (uniswap.eth is). While their decision is reasonable, it does show how fast can the dWebsites ecosphere runs into centralization.
There are those who say that this situation will be solved once the main browsers integrate native support for dWebsites, but would it really? If browsers would implement it, let’s say, by taking all the data from Cloudflare, would it solve anything?
There were 23 dWebsites when Almonit launched its directory in September 2019. A year and a half later the number is almost 1000. At this rate next year it will likely exceed 10K, and the year after that a 100K. At some point we’ll reach the 1 million dWebsites mark, and who knows where it will stop?
