I read through the introduction but feel like I don’t fully understand or grasp the point of this… Is this just basically a new type of p2p protocol? They reference local-first or local-only apps, but then what’s the difference between that and just a locally hosted server with local DNS etc? And what would an example of “ephemeral data” be? If it is actually “ephemeral”, wouldn’t you have to connect somewhere to use it whenever you need it anyway? I’m probably just not grasping the foundational aspects and ideas of this
I only discovered local-first recently. Indeed, with only 1 node doing self-hosting of any app there seems to be no difference, but that’s a narrow view. The local-first apps are a new concept, using new data structures (e.g. CRDTs), you can read more in a non-technical ‘manifesto’ here: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ this is indeed a highly cited article within the movement.
