My enthusiasm about a decentralized internet lies with the hardware infrastructure needed to liberate all of our packets.

I personally believe this is where the focus should be, even up to the point where there's a massive crowdfunding to send satellites up into space to provide coverage.

Until then, development of mesh networks using mobile phones would be interesting. Even if you used a power-saving store-and-forward (think the old FIDO network) strategy, I think it would be a utility that people would embrace.

It may not charge out of the gate with boundless bandwidth to give to everyone, but just meshing up large urban centers with long-haul connectors via strapped-to-something raspberry Pi nodes would be cool.

I'd write up something more technical if I had the time, but I'm sure there are others thinking along the same lines who may have already done the legwork for me.

Work on the infrastructure first, the protocol level can wait.