@strypey @clacke I hadn't given too much thought to search, but it seems like indexing federated systems wouldn't be something too difficult to implement, provided that an indexer deduplicates records and points the user to the authoritative source of the record. If I search for something in i.e. Google, that's one of the major issues: same text on so many separate instances.

P2P/Mesh is more interesting, but could be reduced to a federated search problem if enough data propagates to nodes persistent enough to be discovered by other indexers (e.g. Google). But then the user might be directed to a node that's not online, so what would the fallback be? A cache? Would that cache be centralized? Federated? What should be trusted with such authority? If it's cryptographically signed by the originating node, maybe it won't matter, provided a proper trust model.

If anyone has experience thinking about these things, I'd be curious to know; I haven't done research myself.