# The Ethereal Spatial Network Paradigm By [Ross Baltimore](https://paragraph.com/@rossb) · 2022-11-09 --- > At a Glance: We are undergoing the most significant paradigm shift in digital networking since the mid-2000s. The Internet is bifurcated into content and audiences. Social networking unbundled content into creators. Audiences amass people into a lump sum wherein each individual is anonymized, passive, and expendable. Ethereal unbundles audiences into autonomous individuals, enabling people to self-organize to converse and collaborate across any content node online (unlocking Reed’s Law, the most valuable network effects). What is Ethereal? Ethereal is a spatial layer built into the entire Web that lets content consumers interact and transact with each other anywhere they go online. Taking Advantage of Existing Network Paradigms ---------------------------------------------- In the past 30 years, we have seen two major networking paradigms emerge that have enabled previously unimaginable value creation. These two paradigms can be categorized broadly as **Information Networking** and **Social Networking**, aka the Internet and Social Media, respectively. To understand Ethereal’s Spatial Network paradigm, it is first essential to define a few key attributes of these underlying networks. Networked systems follow a predictable and repeating pattern of unlocking value, extracting value, creating new, locked value, and unlocking value again: **Phase I — Enabling Network Paradigm** A new network paradigm, (`NP1`) unlocks value locked within the previous paradigm, (`NP0`). In this phase, value creation skyrockets, because there is latent value sitting and waiting to be unlocked. In the case of the Internet, the latent value was all the world’s information. Transitioning information from offline to online storage made the information exponentially more valuable: it could be accessed by many more people who could in turn take action on it (read it, add to it, apply it to other disciplines, etc.) **Phase II — Unlocked Value Extraction** As `NP1` becomes the dominant network paradigm, more and more nodes are added to the system. Each additional node creates _increasing marginal utility to the system_ than the previous node. In the early going, this exponential growth in utility is easy to extract. Over time, network density approaches the upper limit of the paradigm’s capacity. Value becomes more difficult to extract from the system as new nodes compete with existing nodes for connections. Eventually, each additional node creates diminishing marginal utility to the system. A sub-phase of this is when all remaining value in `NP1` is locked. During this phase, the size of the network grows, but the opportunities to extract value become more difficult. Each new node creates additional value, but that value cannot be extracted by simply connecting new nodes with existing nodes in the network. Would-be participants are no longer incentivized to contribute to the network, so growth slows. **Phase III — Newer Network Paradigm** A new network paradigm, NP2, unlocks value locked within the previous paradigm, NP1. This _paradigm does not replace its predecessor; it builds on top and harnesses_ the existing network as a primary input. This new paradigm unlocks the latent utility that was building. Value creation skyrockets, and participants flock to the new paradigm. The Ethereal Spatial Networking Paradigm ---------------------------------------- The Information Networking paradigm provided broad access to bundles of information (websites). The Social Networking paradigm unbundled that information and curated pieces of it to bundles of people (audiences). The Ethereal network builds on top of the two foundational network paradigms, **harnessing existing network effects** to bootstrap a new paradigm. ### Three Ingredients There are **three ingredients** that make Ethereal’s network paradigm possible: 1. Implicit network effects are already present, which we use to bootstrap a new network paradigm. 2. Autonomous self-organization between people in a local network cluster. 3. Content agnosticism, aka Ethereal’s spatial algorithm works with any type of content on the Web (long- and -short-form video; text, audio, or video content; etc.) **Bootstrapped Network Effects** Because Ethereal works everywhere on the web, our platform starts out with the same network effects that social networks have spent decades cultivating. Existing network effects become our network’s inputs. Anyone with our browser extension plugs into the Ethereal network. We distribute the extension to pre-formed communities, so even in the early days, when the network isn’t large overall, it has high network density. **Last-Mile Autonomous Self-Organization** Think of any time you’ve been to a conference or party. You can bring 500 people together in one room, but as soon as you let people move about freely, they naturally form conversational groups of 2-5 people. People do this naturally in physical spaces. However, due to the design constraints baked into existing online environments, it is nearly impossible for large groups to branch off into smaller sub-groups. Ethereal’s three-dimensional spatial design allows people to move about autonomously — thus facilitating natural sub-group formation. We take advantage of the convergence of large groups present all over the Web today, and we provide a medium for the autonomous self-organization of people from that large group into small, natural sub-groups where true interpersonal interactions can flourish. **Content Agnosticism** As long as content causes people to converge into large groups, Ethereal’s spatial algorithm can use it. Ethereal works with content from YouTube and TikTok, where audiences come together around long- and short-form video content; it works with Discord and Reddit, where individuals converge in live and asynchronous chat rooms, respectively; and it works with text-based and audio-based content like blog articles and podcasts. Secret Sauce Makes the Meal --------------------------- In addition to the three main ingredients discussed above, Ethereal’s Spatial Networking Paradigm has four additional characteristics: * **Synergy with existing networks**. Our Spatial Networking Paradigm takes advantage of the existing organization of information and people on the web. We **do not attempt to replace existing networks** with something else (like other “metaverse” projects), and we do not compete with the core organization of the web. Rather, we bootstrap our network with content from existing platforms and the audiences who consume it. * **Codified implicit groupings**. Today, content creates local network groupings in time and space. New content is added, then sorted, filtered, and pushed out to end users. These processes are explicitly codified in the existing paradigms. What happens next — the convergence of people around content — provides the opportunity for connections between every individual person and every possible sub-group in that group. Our network paradigm explicitly takes advantage of this phenomenon. * **Proximity-based links.** People are connected based on their proximity to one another, and their proximity is determined by their existing behaviors. If Person A and Person B are both consuming Content X, they are more closely related to each other in the network than Person C who is consuming Content Y. By taking advantage of proximity clusters in real-time, the spatial network supports easy group communication. ![3. Local groupings around content](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c9a6f99d7afc74cdd6c45552b4183875a83a30b54e9124c47094f6305c4c5b1a.png) 3\. Local groupings around content * **Orders of magnitude more potential links.** Because we enable connections between individual people within a local cluster, the utility of the spatial network scales exponentially based on the number of sub-groups and follows a Reed’s Law utility function `2^N - N - 1`, where N is the number of users. ![4. Sub-group formation in the Ethereal spatial network](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/2dee98bdbb5cde9aa191690c6bc278e083f577a8d2c2d8a947638c6150fee7cc.png) 4\. Sub-group formation in the Ethereal spatial network Join Ethereal ------------- Ethereal is a spatial layer built into the entire Web that lets content consumers interact and transact with each other anywhere they go online. We are making explicit the network opportunity that is implicit in the way information, content, and people are organized online today. Learn more and join the waitlist at [etherealkind.com](https://www.etherealkind.com) --- *Originally published on [Ross Baltimore](https://paragraph.com/@rossb/the-ethereal-spatial-network-paradigm)*