Wait a minute, how did you handle redundancy in your old solution? Did you do something like 3x redundancy in case some of the nodes went down?
I didn't develop (pursue) the idea beyond the conceptual investigation phase, because I determined that it wasn't a solid enough direction to pursue.
The idealism of it appeals to me of course. But I've also learned to be very skeptical of idealistic causes, because they can be intoxicating and cloud objectivity.
I am obviously going to be more circumspect about dubious project technologies, given my age. I don't have another decade to expend on something that does not pan out.
Everything starts as an idea. Do you believe in the idea of distribution and decentralization? It all falls apart if we can't get our data out of centralized data centers. What good is a decentralized application if its just run at Amazon S3?