Hi,
New here, and discovering LBRY, I have a few questions around it, especially around the blockchain. My main question is why does LBRY needs a blockchain. It has a few disadvantages (not energy efficient, requires you to get coins to participate, ever growing database not pruning obsolete content, …)
In particular, why not just use a DHT to store metadata?
The only reason I can see is channel names that must be unique, and blockchain is the only decentralized known way I know of to do that. But way create yet another blockchain where perhaps NameCoin can be reused, or a separate blockchain dedicated to naming. Are every application that needs to register unique names is going to create its own blockchain? That seems to me quite inefficient.
There is the added perk of rewarding content creators, but then they are forced to spend coins to register a content file or a channel. And again, this could perhaps better come from integration with other coins.