Commentaries
2018
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P2P networks are inherently unstable
by Ted G. Lewis
June 2018The P2P technology underlying file-sharing systems like Gnutella and distributed autonomous organizations like blockchain are inherently unstable because of self-organizing processes akin to Gause's competitive exclusion principle, and preferential attachment. To maintain an egalitarian P2P organization it is necessary to conserve the original network's entropy, defined as the random structure of the network and actions among peers.