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Email can be decentralized because of DNS as its underlying routing "protocol". To reach somebodies emailserver, you need to know the MX record of its domainname (which is part of the emailaddress). Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle, by using TXT records for example.

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> Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle

This is how Matrix works, but using SRV records:

https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#setting-up-federation

I've tried Matrix, and I feel it has potential, but right now the standard homeserver is slow and a bit of a memory hog. There are some on-going projects to develop other implementations, but they are far from complete, and not usable. I'm also a bit miffed why they didn't just choose the standard "user@domain" format for user identifiers.

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