Great article!
I have been talking about this a lot myself of late.
I'll just add some points on what I think is the right path forward.
Since all nodes share the same underlying database/ledger, there will be nodes like bitclout.com that are generalized with some basic curation of a "global feed".
The more interesting nodes will be more uniquely branded, targeted and have their own approach to curation, moderation, features and purpose.
I see bitclout.com always exisiting as a gateway to other nodes instead of it's current role as the primary destination as the main node and frontend UI. It should evolve to be an easy onboarding site that features and highlights nodes as if they were Subreddit or Mastadon communities or other mainstream entities. ESPN Sports node comes up a lot as an example as well as politics, news, universities etc.
Earlier today I wrote about how I think nodes > users as in more nodes sooner than later may be more important than more users.
https://bitclout.com/posts/577c2752f47662197b677ccb6e4642ec360d08352bad678e3bb1b01899de1a40
The analogy to Subreddits or even Mastadon instances (a federated social network) is accurate to describe what we should see on bitclout.com in the future (as well as other bitclout portals).
My post regarding the Mastadon comparison :
https://bitclout.com/posts/ffa9df5b63e0db2af92361f8cb09e0dc021e3ac5f56c6e6e7ced9aee1fd889e6
It will be interesting to see if users can actually have a familiar "join" UX when it comes to nodes. Sure, they can use their same username on any node and anything they post there can technically be displayed across all other nodes. But how will users keep track of the nodes that they want to be a part of on the consumption side? There may need to be a 2nd layer database, possibly also decentralized, or local apps that store such info (exportable/importable) so the user can easily switch between nodes in apps or bounce among several domain names on the web via portal(s).
As far as targeting a node with your content, that is tricky because it works in the opposite way. You post to the blockchain and any node can pull that content to the frontend. Nodes will do curation of content and user feeds to work as a filter that exposes that nodes community, but this does not mean the content is only available on specific nodes.
Essentially, joining a node needs to be tracked somewhere so that node can "whitelist" those users/feeds. Currently, there is no way to keep track of this natively onchain although this could change in the future. Nodes would need some universal ID and that discussion is only just beginning.
Much to discuss....
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