🧮 Decentralization Scoring System (v1.3)
This scoring system evaluates how decentralized and self-hostable a platform is, based on four core metrics.
📊 Scoring Metrics (Total: 100 Points)
| Metric | Weight | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Top Provider User Share | 30 | Measures how many users are on the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%. |
| Top Provider Content Share | 30 | Measures how much content is hosted by the largest instance. Full points if <20%; 0 if >80%. |
| Ease of Self-Hosting: Server | 20 | Technical ease of running your own backend. Full points for simple setup with good docs. |
| Ease of Self-Hosting: User Interface | 20 | Availability and usability of clients. Full points for accessible, FOSS, multi-platform clients. |
📋 Example Breakdown (Estimates)
| Platform | Score | Visualization |
|---|---|---|
| 95 | 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 | |
| 🐹 Lemmy | 79 | 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 |
| 🐘 Mastodon | 74 | 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 |
| 🟣 PeerTube | 94 | 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 |
| 🖼 Pixelfed | 42 | 🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧 |
| 🔵 Bluesky | 14 | 🟥🟥🟥 |
| 3 | 🟥 |
- Top Provider User Share: Google ≈ 17% → Score: 30/30
- Top Provider Content Share: Google handles ≈ 17% of mail → Score: 30/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Can leverage hundreds of email hosting options) → Score: 16/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Easy (Thunderbird, K-9, etc.) → Score: 19/20
Total: 95/100
🐹 Lemmy
- Top Provider User Share: lemmy.world ≈ 37% → Score: 21.5/30
- Top Provider Content Share: lemmy.world hosts ≈ 37% content → Score: 21.5/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Easy (Docker, low resource) → Score: 18/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Good FOSS apps, web UI → Score: 18/20
Total: 79/100
🐘 Mastodon
- Top Provider User Share: mastodon.social ≈ 40% → Score: 20/30
- Top Provider Content Share: mastodon.social ≈ 45–50% content → Score: 20/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Docker setup, moderate difficulty → Score: 15/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Strong ecosystem (Tusky, web, etc.) → Score: 19/20
Total: 74/100
🟣 PeerTube
- Top Provider User Share: wirtube.de ≈ 14% → Score: 30/30
- Top Provider Content Share: Approximately 14% → Score: 30/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Docker, active community, moderate resources → Score: 16/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Web-first UI, FOSS, some mobile options → Score: 18/20
Total: 94/100
🖼 Pixelfed
- Top Provider User Share: pixelfed.social ≈ 71% → Score: 4.5/30
- Top Provider Content Share: Approximately 71% → Score: 4.5/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Laravel-based, Docker available, some config needed → Score: 15/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Web UI, FOSS, mobile apps in progress → Score: 18/20
Total: 42/100
🔵 Bluesky
- Top Provider User Share: bsky.social ≈ 99% → Score: 0/30
- Top Provider Content Share: Nearly all content on bsky.social → Score: 0/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: PDS hosting possible but very niche and poorly documented → Score: 4/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Mostly official client; some 3rd party → Score: 10/20
Total: 14/100
- Top Provider User Share: Reddit hosts 100% of user accounts → Score: 0/30
- Top Provider Content Share: Reddit hosts all user-generated content → Score: 0/30
- Self-Hosting: Server: Not self-hostable (proprietary platform) → Score: 0/20
- Self-Hosting: Client: Some unofficial clients available → Score: 3/20
Total: 3/100
How Scores are Calculated
🧑🤝🧑 How User/Content Share Scores Work
This measures how many users are on the largest provider (or instance).
- No provider > 20%: If no provider has more than 20%, it gets full 30 points.
- Between 20% and 80%: Anything in between is scored on a linear scale.
- > 80%: If a provider has more than 80%, it gets 0 points.
📊 Formula:
Score = 30 × (1 - (TopProviderShare - 20) / 60)
…but only if TopProviderShare is between 20% and 80%.
If below 20%, full 30. If above 80%, zero.
📌 Example:
If one provider has 40% of all users:
→ Score = 30 × (1 - (40 - 20) / 60) = 30 × (1 - 0.43) = 17.1 points
🖥️ How Ease of Self-Hosting Scores Work
These scores measure how easy it is for individuals or communities to run their own servers or use clients.
This looks at how technically easy it is to run your own backend (e.g., email server, Mastodon server) or User Interface (e.g., web-interface or mobile-app)
- Very Easy: One-command or setup wizard, great documentation → 18–20 points
- Moderate: Docker or manual setup, some config, active community support → 13–17 points
- Hard: Complex setup, needs regular updates or custom config, poor documentation → 6–12 points
- Very Hard or Proprietary: Little to no self-hosting support, undocumented → 0–5 points
📚 Sources
- 📧 Email W3Techs – Email Server Overview
- 🐹 Lemmy
Fedidb – Lemmy Software Stats - 🐘 Mastodon
Fedidb – Mastodon Software Stats - 🟣 PeerTube
Fedidb – PeerTube Software Stats - 🖼 Pixelfed
Fedidb – Pixelfed Software Stats - 🔵 Bluesky SoftwareMill – Bluesky’s Decentralized Architecture
- 🟥 Reddit Wikipedia - Reddit API Controversy
Footnotes
This is a work in progress and may contain mistakes. If you have ideas or suggestions for improvement, feel free to let me know.
Source: https://github.com/NoBadDays/decentralization-score/blob/main/decentralization_score_2025.04.md
Very good ideas, but I don’t agree at all with your estimations.
For example it is terribly difficult to self host email, and very few people actually do it. Contrary to your estimation. It’s not because of the server software, but because of the fight against spam etc. that costs so much.
You are focusing on only one “top” and so you can’t see the reality. You are scoring centralization. Not decentralization.
Better if you look at the share of hosters at the “lower end”, the ones that actually do self hosting, like:
% of servers with up to 10 users (counting only natural persons).
% of users on servers with up to 10 users (counting only natural persons).
I read this a bunch of times and put off trying it because it sounded like such a hassle. Eventually I did and… it wasn’t bad at all. I just had to add a few extra DNS entries. I haven’t had any delivery problems.
Is it self hosted or do you pay someone else to host it? Do you have a fixed IP? I’ve always wanted to try and set it up but it definitely seems like one of the riskier ones if you then use it to sign up to a lot of things.
It’s on a VPS. Whether that’s really self-hosted may depend on how much of a purist you are, but it’s fully self-managed, not SAAS.
It’s recommended to have a PTR record mapping your IP address to your domain, which you wouldn’t be able to do with a residential connection from a typical ISP. I do send mail from multiple domains though and I haven’t had issues with deliverability. What I do not send is any kind of high-volume mail, which would likely attract a different kind of scrutiny.
I like the idea, but I don’t really feel this is scoring decentralization at all.
Yeah,looking through this again, it really scores centralization, and also focuses way to much on ease of setup. Which honestly has nothing to do with it. If it’s super hard to setup, but every participant is hosting their own node. And producing the same amount of content. That would be max decentralization.
I would also argue that a requirement for decentralization is that the service keeps working even if a large portion of all nodes goes down, the remaining nodes are still operational and keep delivering the value.