Trying to make web applications federated is a popular effort. Examples include things like the “fediverse”, as well as various other efforts, like attempts to make distributed software forges, and so on. However, all of these efforts suffer from a problem which is fundamental in building federated applications built on top of the web platform.

The problem is fundamentally this: when building an application on top of the web platform, an HTTP URL inherently couples an application and a resource.