This is what I’ve called miracle #2, exponential learning. As the platform starts to really perform, the tendency is for larger platforms to eat smaller ones because of network effects: We all want to use the short-term rental service with the broadest possible range of rooms advertised, or be on the social network that has most of our friends on

the enthusiasm felt by people doing what they want to do, on their own terms, rather than what they’re assigned to do.

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34144

The ways to share power and value start to become obvious as you think them through: Permit data portability.

Wide-open ones, such as GitHub and Google Docs (as well as the most open of all, the Internet), are delightfully simple, can be adapted to a large number of uses by co-creating peers, and uncover large amounts of value. Twitter, for example, requires just a username and email address.

Now let’s turn to the most amazing kind of platform, one that opens up excess capacity, the way Google Maps did. Not only does it deliver the efficiency of access platforms, but an open platform enables the creation of new value, and lots of it.

The compelling part of working with excess capacity is that full-cost economics no longer applies. Some of those apps are worth the cost of the device. For example, before navigation software systems became apps on your phone, they were sold with their own portable, wireless, single-purpose device that cost about as much as a smartphone.

The structure and complexity of the interface with the peers will determine not only if and how the peers will participate but also the potential for future innovation and thus market potential.

Mining is a complex technical dance among Bitcoin users to verify all the transactions. Bitcoin’s security comes from this hard computational work: