We need decentralized Github alternatives to ensure resilience in smart contracts platforms and blockchains

Crypto is undoubtedly under attack, following the lawsuit filed against Binance and Coinbase, there has been some follow ups like the victory over Ooki DAO where the U.S District Judge and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission CFTC declare the DAO a "person" thereon laying a fine and order a seizure of operations as it terms the tokenized margin trading platform an illegal trading platform operating deceptive and unregulated trading services thus misleading and putting users at risk.

This got me thinking of how crypto can actually survive this storm and remain untouchable and after looking at the possible forms of attack, I figured the quickest way to go after an open source and decentralized project is to go after their code.

Github as we know is a big part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem as though majority of core project codes are often deployed on the platform for other experienced programmers to contribute or clone to build their own projects. After doing some digging, I figured Github is a subsidiary of Microsoft, which was particularly shocking but then again gave me the information I needed to know just how centralized and bendable to government policies the platform actually is.

Tornado Cash

After the sanctioning of Tornado cash by the U.S Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on August 8, 2022, we saw what actions we taken right after. One of those actions was a move by Github to disable Tornado Cash code from its platform, even though it was later made public in read only mode after clarifications from the authorities that sharing or leveraging the open-source code wasn't a crime following the sanctions against the project, this still goes to show just how many projet codes are vulnerable to centralized attacks here.

Of course, a ban from Github does not means a project cannot be duplicated by others, there are obviously people with the expertise regardless plus alternate code backups, but Github was supposed to aid in the availability of open-source codes all round the clock so as to allow the public easily access, contribute or modify codes to build new projects.

The Urgency Of Decentralized Alternatives

Github may naturally allow for some layer of distributed project building with its current infrastructure that allows programmers to share open-source codes for others to contribute to publicly but Github as a company is utterly centralized and is legally not required to ensure the availability of any code on its platform - so I read to say the least.

What this means in reality is that Github can choose to take any code off its platform and will not be held responsible for any damages. Given the recent strike on DAOs, I can only wonder what next these authorities will go after, smart contracts platforms? And if yes, what would make such platforms resilient to the attacks there off?

The publicly available codes would be one of the definitive forces that would ensure that these platforms don't go burst and that people can continually build new layers to perfect its structures and services. The future of Web3 and the success of crypto and blockchain needs platforms that would consisteny host data for the general public to access. Blockchain currently does this perfectly, but if other codes are hosted on a chain, who hosts its own platform code? This shows that we don't need one, but multiple decentralized alternatives to Github. Open-source codes need to be immune to these threats and attacks from the government authorities, this is one of the ways the cryptocurrency ecosystem can keep developing at operation pace.

Any form of influence over open-source codes could slow down things and other times be harmful. Github is centralized, too centralized for the services it offers, better alternatives are urgently needed.