The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization

The promise of a decentralized system is that anyone can build anything they want, because no one owns it. There are some downsides:

-The second downside is that a lack of ownership means that no one is responsible when things go wrong. Bitcoin doesn't have a way to censor your decision to move money from one address to another or even a protocol-level sense of whether you're buying Alpaca socks or a rocket launcher... But this also means that the protocol can't tell when you me... See more

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?

-The first downside to "Anyone can build anything" is that "anyone" means anyone, and the people to whom decentralized systems are the most attractive are the ones who are banned from other systems, often for good reasons... if you want to get a sense for the typical piece of content enabled by a totally uncensored communications system, check your... See more

One of the interesting alternatives to this is Urbit, which is trying to build a network in which identity exists from the start, and is neither free nor monopolized. One of Urbit's principles is that users own their data, and while they can use third-party services, they're sharing their data with services, not using a login to access information ... See more

One of the problems with owning your own data is that it ignores the question of what format that data is in. Data formats are sometimes considered carefully, but they can also be hammered out fast to get a minimum viable product out the door.

If you assume that the pace of change in consumer-facing Internet stays high, and that it gets more compelling over time, then in the long run the only options are a) be careful what you use, or b) accept that you're outsourcing a growing share of your decisions to product managers and growth hackers who do not necessarily have your interests at he... See more

Privatizing is effective, and solves problems for users rather than protocol designers. But it does go against the spirit of the original network.