Inspired by the Mind Magic Station, I created an xLog blog and posted this article on it: Programming Thoughts: Penetrating the Great Firewall - C. Let me share my experience:
- xLog is a decentralized blog project on the blockchain.
- Initially, you need to get some CSB from a faucet, and getting the coins requires sending a tweet. This is not very user-friendly for those unfamiliar with blockchain or without a Twitter account, and it is also not friendly for creators with privacy concerns.
- After getting it once, it seems to be enough for a while. The things obtained are not of much value, but you can think of this blog as a car, and CSB is the gasoline. Each operation requires consuming a little bit, and getting it once is probably enough for about eighty to ninety operations, within an acceptable range.
- The official website seems to be accessible in mainland China, so friends inside the Great Firewall should be able to directly see the content above. There is currently no sensitive information on it. Whether it can withstand censorship needs to be determined over time. (In my understanding, in the long run, all websites used for displaying content will be censored, but if users run nodes locally, they can read on-chain data locally and browse/publish blogs.)
- The experience may be slightly worse than that of regular (centralized) blog services. For example, even liking a post or leaving a comment is recorded on the blockchain, so it requires a signature. This process is relatively painless, but it still involves a bit of hassle (liking a post for the first time may require clicking five or six times). So, don't expect strong interaction when writing a blog here. I initially found it a bit puzzling that even likes are recorded on the blockchain, but from an anti-censorship perspective, it can still be understood. Additionally, because every comment needs to be recorded on the blockchain, it may be more difficult to deal with spam messages (this also needs further testing).
- Actually, there are real things on the blockchain, but the user experience and steep learning curve are always a barrier. Many characteristics of the blockchain itself limit the product manager's creativity, but reducing the usage barrier on the blockchain and educating users is still meaningful. I wonder if anyone would use a Telegram bot to allow everyone to contribute and post suitable content to the chain (which should be much easier for Telegram users).
- It would have been great if this infrastructure existed when Programming Thoughts started a blog. (This is a sigh, but it needs to be supplemented with an appropriate warning: objectively speaking, current decentralized services are not fool-proof when facing opponents at the national level, and some resource-consuming monitoring/attack methods, such as running nodes to monitor the IP of the initial submitted transaction in real-time, are still feasible for powerful opponents. Extra-sensitive operations require further protection.)