What Does Decentralization Mean To Me

Decentralization is not a new concept. One of my favorite books on the topic is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Rod Beckstrom. It explores the ideas of centralized and decentralized organizations and networks in great details and offers some interesting insights. According to Beckstrom decentralized organizations and networks stands on five legs. If one ore more legs cut out the network still survives. However, when all legs work together, decentralized network can take off be become unstoppable.

The idea of decentralization has been around even long before the advancement in computer, internet, and blockchain technologies. It has just been dormant for many years. Creation and advancement of the internet unleashed its force. Creation of blockchain technologies and innovations in the space brought forward tools for us to pursue decentralized systems once again.

Centralized systems have their benefit. They are important when it comes to efficiency and security. However, with centralized system we have to rely and trust on central entities that they will be responsible, of high integrity, and won't take advantage of its participants. This trust has been broken many times. As a result bitcoin has emerged as hope for decentralization and an alternative to traditional financial systems.

Current events in the global markets once again demonstrated how actions of centralized entities like central banks play crucial role in our everyday lives. While damage done to participants of economies is not obvious in good times, it becomes more obvious during crisis. When central banks try to stimulate economies, and stabilize markets those who are at the top take the most advantage and ordinary people lose. I can see how people's pension funds and 401Ks taking a big hit and losing value. These people don't have any way to take actions to protect their wealth, because they are locked in trust funds where they have no direct control over.

Bitcoin's value proposition was to counter these situations and give the control back to ordinary people. It is yet to be seen if it will be able to deliver on the original idea of preservation of wealth. It seems the time has arrived to test the concept of bitcoin. At the same time I hope things won't get any worse, markets stabilize, and the virus gets eradicated.

The idea of trustless and decentralized systems brought with bitcoin, motivated many to innovate and create systems for decentralized web. One of the promising projects was Steem that was embraced by many including myself. Humans are social beings, it is in our nature to engage in social interactions. It didn't take long for us to take our social interactions to the internet. Companies that realized the potential value of social interactions on the internet were able to capitalize and compete to centralize the space. While internet itself is decentralized, vast majority of the activity is centralized in the hands of few giant companies. Not only these giant centralized entities get all the monetary value and don't share the anything with the participants of the networks, they also gather, store, track all user data and behaviors. They invest in development of AI technologies to execute these goals more efficiently, for one goal to make money and lots of it.

Projects like Steem, Brave, Basic Attention Token, and others started emerging offering an alternative to traditional social networks. This value proposition was appealing for many including myself. I liked the idea of giving control over the data and online actions of users back to users. I liked the idea of sharing the value generated among all participants of the network. I liked the idea of trustless systems, where there is no central entity that controls everything. I liked the idea of decentralization. I still do.

This is one of the reasons I like Beckstrom's model. It focuses on users and participants of the network and the value users get from the transactions in the network. With the increase of value users/participants are getting from the network, the value of the network itself increases. Decentralization makes it possible for all participants to benefit based on their participation, not just at will of a centralized entity.

Decentralization is not a state, but rather a goal. What united most participants of Steem was this goal. We formed communities, built Apps, spent years of efforts, time and money in building a decentralized system on Steem. While there were problems along the way, things seemed to be falling in place, pieces coming together. It seemed like we were on the right path. Then, Tron hostile takeover happened. For me personally, it was something unimaginable. I didn't expect an attack on decentralization by somebody who claims to be a leader in the space. It just demonstrated lack of integrity, competence, and respect. Despite, all the negativity and stress this incident may have caused, I think it was one of the best things for Steem.

It demonstrated how Steem matured as a decentralized network and a community have come a long way. The community was able to counter the attack in a way we didn't think was possible. The community came together, raised their voices, voted in community witnesses and put a halt on hostile actions of the centralized entity. Nobody knows what the outcome will be. But if a hostile attack like this on the decentralized network were to happen, it is better it happens sooner than later. So, that we can innovate, develop solutions, and counter measures to further advance in decentralization.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with words of Douglas Rushkoff.

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Being human is a team sport. We cannot be fully human alone. Anything that brings us together fosters our humanity. Likewise, anything that separates us makes us less human.

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