During the first era of the internet — from the 1980s through the early 2000s — internet services were built on open protocols that were controlled by the internet community. This meant that people or organizations could grow their internet presence knowing the rules of the game wouldn’t change later on. Huge web properties were started during this era including Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. In the process, the importance of centralized platforms like AOL greatly diminished.
During the second era of the internet, from the mid 2000s to the present, for-profit tech companies — most notably Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) — built software and services that rapidly outpaced the capabilities of open protocols. The explosive growth of smartphones accelerated this trend as mobile apps became the majority of internet use. Eventually users migrated from open services to these more sophisticated, centralized services. Even when users still accessed open protocols like the web, they would typically do so mediated by GAFA software and services.
The good news is that billions of people got access to amazing technologies, many of which were free to use. The bad news is that it became much harder for startups, creators, and other groups to grow their internet presence without worrying about centralized platforms changing the rules on them, taking away their audiences and profits. This in turn stifled innovation, making the internet less interesting and dynamic. Centralization has also created broader societal tensions, which we see in the debates over subjects like fake news, state sponsored bots, “no platforming” of users, EU privacy laws, and algorithmic biases. These debates will only intensify in the coming years.
One response to this centralization is to impose government regulation on large internet companies. This response assumes that the internet is similar to past communication networks like the phone, radio, and TV networks. But the hardware-based networks of the past are fundamentally different than the internet, a software-based network. Once hardware-based networks are built, they are nearly impossible to rearchitect. Software-based networks can be rearchitected through entrepreneurial innovation and market forces.
The internet is the ultimate software-based network, consisting of a relatively simple core layer connecting billions of fully programmable computers at the edge. Software is simply the encoding of human thought, and as such has an almost unbounded design space. Computers connected to the internet are, by and large, free to run whatever software their owners choose. Whatever can be dreamt up, with the right set of incentives, can quickly propagate across the internet. Internet architecture is where technical creativity and incentive design intersect.
The internet is still early in its evolution: the core internet services will likely be almost entirely rearchitected in the coming decades. This will be enabled by crypto-economic networks, a generalization of the ideas first introduced in Bitcoin and further developed in Ethereum. Cryptonetworks combine the best features of the first two internet eras: community-governed, decentralized networks with capabilities that will eventually exceed those of the most advanced centralized services.
Decentralization is a commonly misunderstood concept. For example, it is sometimes said that the reason cryptonetwork advocates favor decentralization is to resist government censorship, or because of libertarian political views. These are not the main reasons decentralization is important.
Let’s look at the problems with centralized platforms. Centralized platforms follow a predictable life cycle. When they start out, they do everything they can to recruit users and 3rd-party complements like developers, businesses, and media organizations. They do this to make their services more valuable, as platforms (by definition) are systems with multi-sided network effects. As platforms move up the adoption S-curve, their power over users and 3rd parties steadily grows.
When they hit the top of the S-curve, their relationships with network participants change from positive-sum to zero-sum. The easiest way to continue growing lies in extracting data from users and competing with complements over audiences and profits. Historical examples of this are Microsoft vs. Netscape, Google vs. Yelp, Facebook vs. Zynga, and Twitter vs. its 3rd-party clients. Operating systems like iOS and Android have behaved better, although still take a healthy 30% tax, reject apps for seemingly arbitrary reasons, and subsume the functionality of 3rd-party apps at will.
For 3rd parties, this transition from cooperation to competition feels like a bait-and-switch. Over time, the best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have become wary of building on top of centralized platforms. We now have decades of evidence that doing so will end in disappointment. In addition, users give up privacy, control of their data, and become vulnerable to security breaches. These problems with centralized platforms will likely become even more pronounced in the future.
Cryptonetworks are networks built on top of the internet that 1) use consensus mechanisms such as blockchains to maintain and update state, 2) use cryptocurrencies (coins/tokens) to incentivize consensus participants (miners/validators) and other network participants. Some cryptonetworks, such as Ethereum, are general programming platforms that can be used for almost any purpose. Other cryptonetworks are special purpose, for example Bitcoin is intended primarily for storing value, Golem for performing computations, and Filecoin for decentralized file storage.
Early internet protocols were technical specifications created by working groups or non-profit organizations that relied on the alignment of interests in the internet community to gain adoption. This method worked well during the very early stages of the internet but since the early 1990s very few new protocols have gained widespread adoption. Cryptonetworks fix these problems by providing economics incentives to developers, maintainers, and other network participants in the form of tokens. They are also much more technically robust. For example, they are able to keep state and do arbitrary transformations on that state, something past protocols could never do.
Cryptonetworks use multiple mechanisms to ensure that they stay neutral as they grow, preventing the bait-and-switch of centralized platforms. First, the contract between cryptonetworks and their participants is enforced in open source code. Second, they are kept in check through mechanisms for “voice” and “exit.” Participants are given voice through community governance, both “on chain” (via the protocol) and “off chain” (via the social structures around the protocol). Participants can exit either by leaving the network and selling their coins, or in the extreme case by forking the protocol.
简而言之，加密网络使网络参与者团结起来朝着共同的目标共同努力——网络的发展和代币的升值。这种一致性是比特币继续无视怀疑者并蓬勃发展的主要原因之一，即使像以太坊这样的新加密网络也随之发展。
今天的加密网络受到限制，使它们无法严重挑战中心化的现任者。最严重的限制是围绕性能和可扩展性。未来几年将是解决这些限制并构建构成加密堆栈基础设施层的网络。在那之后，大部分精力将转向在该基础设施之上构建应用程序。
说去中心化网络应该获胜是一回事，说他们会获胜是另一回事。让我们来看看对此持乐观态度的具体原因。
软件和 Web 服务由开发人员构建。世界上有数百万高技能开发人员。只有一小部分人在大型科技公司工作，只有一小部分人从事新产品开发。历史上许多最重要的软件项目都是由初创公司或独立开发者社区创建的。
“不管你是谁，大多数最聪明的人都为别人工作。” —比尔·乔伊
去中心化网络可以赢得互联网的第三个时代，其原因与赢得第一个时代的原因相同：赢得企业家和开发者的心。
一个说明性的类比是 2000 年美国维基百科与其中心化服务（如 Encarta）之间的竞争。范围和精神的合适度。但维基百科的应用速度要快工具，它有一个年轻的社区，其所分散的、社区管理的吸引。到 2005 年，维基百科是互联网上最受欢迎的参考网站。Encarta 于 2009 年关闭。
教训是，当您比较和分散式系统的时候，您需要将它们动态地形成地流程，而不是集中式地系统形成的嵌入式产品。集中式一开始就完全成熟，但通常只有在赞助公司的员工去中心化系统一开始是半生不的，但在适当的条件下，随着他们吸收新的贡献者而呈指数级增长。
就密码网络相关，存在一些复合反馈循环，涉及核心协议的开发人员、补充密码网络的开发人员、应用程序的开发人员以及运营网络的服务支持。这些反馈循环相关代币的鼓励进一步放大，我们在比特币和以太坊复制中的哪一个，加速社区的发展速度，有时会导致负面结果，例如摄像头可以消耗电力）比特币（）。
去中心化或中心化系统是否会赢得下一个互联网时代的问题归结为谁将构建最引人注目的产品，这反过来又归结为谁将获得更多高质量的开发人员和企业家。GAFA 有很多优势，包括现金储备、庞大的用户群和运营基础设施。加密网络对开发人员和企业家具有明显更具吸引力的价值主张。如果他们能赢得人心，他们就能调动比 GAFA 多得多的资源，并迅速超越他们的产品开发。
“如果你在 1989 年问人们他们需要什么来改善生活，他们不太可能会说使用超文本链接的分散的信息节点网络。” —农夫与农夫
集中式平台通常在发布时与引人注目的应用程序捆绑在一起：Facebook 有其核心社交功能，而 iPhone 有许多关键应用程序。相比之下，去中心化平台通常启动不成熟且没有明确的用例。因此，他们需要经历产品与市场匹配的两个阶段：1) 平台与将完成平台并构建生态系统的开发人员/企业家之间的产品与市场匹配，以及 2) 产品与市场之间的匹配平台/生态系统和最终用户。这两个阶段的过程导致许多人——包括经验丰富的技术人员——一直低估去中心化平台的潜力。
去中心化网络并不是解决互联网上所有问题的灵丹妙药。但是它们提供了比集中式系统更好的方法。
将 Twitter 垃圾邮件问题与垃圾邮件问题进行比较。自从 Twitter对第三方开发者关闭了他们的网络后，唯一一家致力于处理 Twitter 垃圾邮件的公司就是 Twitter 本身。相比之下，有数百家公司试图通过数十亿美元的风险投资和企业资金来打击垃圾邮件。垃圾邮件没有解决，但现在好多了，因为 3rd 方知道电子邮件协议是去中心化的，因此他们可以在此基础上建立业务，而不必担心游戏规则会在以后发生变化。
或者考虑网络治理的问题。今天，大型平台上不负责任的员工群体决定如何对信息进行排名和过滤，哪些用户被提升，哪些被禁止，以及其他重要的治理决策。在加密网络中，这些决定是由社区使用公开透明的机制做出的。正如我们从线下世界所知道的，民主制度并不完美，但它们比其他选择要好得多。
中心化平台一直占据主导地位，以至于许多人忘记了构建互联网服务的更好方法。加密网络是开发社区拥有的网络并为 3rd 方开发者、创作者和企业提供公平竞争环境的有力方式。我们在互联网的第一个时代看到了去中心化系统的价值。希望我们能在下一次再次看到它。
最初发表在Medium 上。