With the introduction of the internet, the rate of information dissemination has seen rapid growth, connecting people and ideas, fostering transparent communities and bringing about a development of platforms over the internet for their facilitation. Be it in social media, like TikTok, or code collaboration platforms, like GitHub.

However, these platforms are still prone to several disruptive inefficiencies that stem from centralized points of control. These inefficiencies include single points of server failure and the arbitrary censorship of information by a public or private, centralized organization.

Drawbacks of centrally hosted source control platforms

GitHub, a centrally hosted source control system and code collaboration platform, has experienced many outages over the years, the most recent being this month. As it is so deeply embedded in most software systems, its breakdown can often bring about a significant halt to the development of applications and in turn the progress of information dissemination. As a fail safe to these frequent breakdowns, developers faced the need to craft unique backup systems for their codebases, including hosting codebases on multiple source control solutions in parallel.

Additionally, while GitHub largely operates in the open source ethos, it has the ability to arbitrarily censor certain repositories or information it chooses to be unfit. One notable instance of this occurred when GitHub removed repositories related to Tornado Cash, a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer. This action raised concerns about potential censorship of web3 projects on GitHub, highlighting the platform's level of control over its users.

It is then worth thinking about alternative solutions that solve these problems.

Protocol.Land: A permanent solution

Protocol.Land is a decentralized source control and code collaboration protocol built on Arweave. Arweave’s underlying architecture is crucial in maintaining the permanence and immutability of all repositories.

Protocol.Land verifiably records all updates to repositories on Arweave, providing transparency and consistency in updates, while maintaining the integrity of codebases. Arweave’s unique proposition of permanent data storage ensures each repository has at least 20 backups at any given time and is stored for at least 200 years. This robust approach eliminates the issues of downtime, facilitates uninterrupted access to repositories, removes the need for custom backup solutions, and preserves the transparent ethos of open source.

Protocol.Land is code and chain agnostic, allowing the hosting of both traditional web2 codebases and web3 projects, such as EVM compatible dApps, regardless of programming language preferences.

Getting started with Protocol.Land

Leveraging Protocol.Land is possible in three different ways: you can choose from a user-friendly UI, a command-line interface (CLI), or even set up a GitHub action to seamlessly backup your existing repositories. Protocol.Land's compatibility with the Git protocol ensures that apart from the initial setup, your usual process of managing changes remains unchanged, providing a familiar workflow with added security and decentralization benefits.

Want to try it for yourself? We're inviting you to be an early user of Protocol.Land. Simply join our Discord community and create a ticket in the #get-access channel. Our team is eager to assist you in getting started and to hear your feedback as we refine and enhance the platform.