Digital Decay & Illusion of Decentralization

The internet is experiencing a silent crisis of digital decay, where 38% of all web pages from 2013 are no longer accessible, and 32 million Wikipedia pages contain broken links leading to 404 errors. This widespread link rot is a direct result of centralized hosting dependencies, where content disappears due to domain expirations, server shutdowns, and shifting business models.

In the decentralized web, a similar vulnerability exists. Many websites, intended to be decentralised and censorship-resistant, rely on centralized pinning services like Pinata and Fleek to store their content on IPFS. If these services go offline, restrict access, or change their policies, the supposedly decentralized websites also face disappearance, mirroring the failures of the traditional web.

Without true decentralized persistence, both the Web2 and Web3 ecosystems suffer from the same existential threat: the impermanence of online content.