I am fully self-aware in realizing that I yearn for the 'better days' of the web.
But honestly? It fucking sucks and I hate it.
Multiple attempts have been made to revive the 'small web'. Gopher has seen a ressurgence of popularity, peaking in ~2020. The Gemini Protocol, is similar in it's attempt to create a text only internet. These rely on a unique protocol that provides enough constraint to prevent 'all the bad things'.
Project Maelstrom and ZeroNet were attempts to 'decentralize' the internet, allowing anyone to push their content to others to serve. While technically interesting, both failed to achieve their objectives. Most people just don't care, and if they do care they are either: Technically inclined or wanting to do illegal stuff.
Finding myself fascinated with the elegance of distributed hash tables like Kademlia. I've dabbled in creating my own version of ZeroNet, seeing the same potential for a fully decentralized social network... but there's one crucial flaw: viewing a site means you are now not only in possesion of but also serving that content. Tamas Kocsis the creator of ZeroNet disappeared in 2021, mysteriously leaving 10 donated bitcoins unclaimed since then. So, yeah, there's that.
But you might say, hey James, you're technically inclined, and don't want to do illegal stuff... we already have a way to interconnect computers and connect your content to other content forming a web...
Right.
So that's what this is.
We don't need to reinvent the wheel to go back in time, the tech still exists in it's purest form. Everything about the internet is backwards compatible, the page you are reading will likely work in IE6 (I haven't tested it).
Why do we need another protocol? Another rendering format? This works fine. Just don't ruin it.