From Centralized to Decentralized — The Anthology of Balaji

We’re heading towards an era of greater decentralization on all fronts – geopolitics, finance, education, journalism, and energy are just a few examples – driven by technologies including, but not limited to, the internet. This newly decentralized era will require new infrastructure and organizing principles that can adapt to the chaos and complexi

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This pattern raises a question: is centralization just a natural tendency of all networks? Are we destined to have a "decentralization sandwich," where there's a hard-to-change set of protocols, something open built on top of that, and a series of closed systems built on top of that, which are the only ones the average person interacts with?

Everything used to be fractured and fragmented by definition. Then came the telegraph, then the telephone, and mass manufacturing, public education and more. We’re now returning to that early way of living before Peak Centralization. Structurally, we have more in common with the 1800s than we did with 1950s.

‘Centralization’ isn’t failing or fatally flawed. Centralized products and platforms are popular and successful. Centralization provides users with convenience, incredibly low prices, comprehensive directories and marketplaces, and just about everything else we associate with compelling innovations. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Apple, and Twitter are ... See more

To Satoshi, decentralization was valuable insofar as it mitigated some other fundamental risk: censorship, platform security, corruption, etc. It’s the properties decentralization gives us that we care about, not decentralization itself.