The Architecture of freedom with Decentralization ⚖

Divy Vaid

6 min readJul 26, 2022

Firstly, decentralization is not new; 🙅

It is the original form of existence since any society has operated or begun

Decentralization is undoubtedly the most commonly used term in the Web3 space because, at the end of the day, it’s all about communicating or transacting in any form, directly without the involvement of any third party. 🌐

Centralisation is relatively new. How?

To scale the organisation of power in society, centralisation is practical, but it looks like a pyramid. 🔺
Centralisation has obviously proven to be effective in organising cities, states and countries where 100s of millions of people make decisions within a society.

Consider this hypothetical scenario: 🎬
You’re hosting a concert in a stadium 🏟 which has 100 gates.
You apply a centralised ticketing 🎟 system where your audience has to pay 💲10 at the gates in order to get in for the concert.
So now, out of those 100 gates, how many gates will you have to control in order to not be a free concert? ⛔
49?
51?
75?
99?
You will have to control 100 gates, right? 💂🚨
Because if you only control 99 gates and everybody knows which gate is free, your stadium will fill up even though no one came from the 99 gates.
You will have a free concert because you left one of the gates open.
If you have a system of end-to-end control that applies identity with rules of control and censorship over money, how many doors do you need to leave open for everyone who wants to take the exit? Just One. ₿itcoin
- And you immediately undermine the system of end-to-end control.
- In fact, the gatekeepers are left with this incredible dilemma: 🧩
- If there is a way to exit the system in which you don’t have end-to-end control,
- Who will you be left surveilling and controlling? 🦸🏻‍♂️
- Mountains of data of the Innocents and the Idiots?
- The people who could not figure out how to use the exit door, which is free, 🔓
If you build a power pyramid🔺, the wider the base ↔, the higher ⬆ the top.
The peak of the pyramid is powerful because of the base.
The lower we are in the pyramid, the more liberty we trade-off.

What happens with human beings when you concentrate power? Power corrupts

When you’re on the top of the power pyramid and you look down and see the lowest pyramid can also vouch for the same power choosing decentralization, it’s terrifying, but in practise it’s not about that analogy, it’s about everyone being equal in representation. ⚖️

Biggest Lust and lie of the power pyramid? 🤥
A promise that one day you can climb up the pyramid and the power can be yours

For millions of years, humans lived in small, decentralized network communities of about 30–70 people, where everyone knew each other and it was difficult to get away with bad behaviour. 🗓️

Then, years later, something happened that altered the course of history.
Agriculture was invented. 🌾
It enabled people to produce food on a scale never before possible.
It enabled thousands and millions of people to coexist in large societies.

As famously said, “Each time the history repeats itself, the price goes up.” 🚀

500 years ago, the tide started to turn again, returning human history to the decentralized society we had lived in for millions of years. 🌍

The span of the majority recorded history of 10,000 years of centralised society is actually just a blip in time. It’s a short transition phase that takes us from the decentralized society of the past, ⏮️
It is on a short scale to a decentralized society of the future that allows millions and billions of people to stay in a decentralized way.
The reason we are talking about decentralized systems again after thousands of years of centralisation dominance is that we now have the ability through network protocols to scale decision making across millions of participants, making every peer equal.

As addressed through Dunbar’s number, humans have a memory capacity to well-remember 150 people. 🧠

This created anonymity 🎭 and threatened social order, providing an opportunity for strong men to emerge and restore social order. These strong men instituted a centralised social system demanding control, resulting in the Power Pyramid. They kept the social order in place, but with great power comes great abuse. 🔫

So what is it that allowed us to bridge and transit Dunbar’s number?
- People-based trust system don’t scale beyond Dunbar’s number
- Technology based trust-systems scale virtually without limit 🦾
The whole point of Decentralized is not to be more effective but to give you liberty autonomy Independence empowerment for everyone for participates, not the lie the one day you will rise and the power will be yours

The four pillars of the technology of trust 🤝

Decentralized communications 💬
Before we do anything, we need to communicate what we need to do, The Internet and cryptography enable it.
Decentralized Law ⚖️
Following agreement on how to operate the communication, we need to select the appropriate law, judicator, and enforcer using smart-contracts and dApps.
Decentralized Production 🏭
Decentralized material (e.g. 3D printers, where someone on one side of the world can upload a design and someone on the other can download and print it) and,
Decentralized energy (e.g. someone can produce energy through solar panels at their home without a central authority taking commissions)
Decentralized finance 💰
Decentralized currency and decentralized contract systems are the most important aspects of exchange value. Crypto-currencies and Smart Contracts enable it.

There’s a logical order to these, 🧮

First, we communicate about what we want to do.
Then we agree on the terms of our cooperation.
Then, we produce in accordance with our agreement, and finally,
We trade the goods and services we produce.

If you think of these systems; centralisation and decentralization as architectures, the architecture determines how the power will be distributed. 💪

If the architecture of a system looks like a pyramid, it will attract power at the top by design. If the architecture was flat, fewer points would be concentrated on the power struggle.
Power is always attracted to the point-of-control and every-time you create a point-of-control you create power which can damage and leak to both centralised and decentralized systems

Decentralization is the architecture of freedom, that, allows us to change the nature of social institutions ❤️‍🔥

Payments is just the beginning. This is about being conscious that we now have through internet protocols the ability to re-design the mechanisms of social organisations to create systems that provide autonomy, independence, and freedom of expression to empower millions and billions of people around the world simply by choosing decentralization.

The technology on which ₿itcoin is created, i.e.,
The architecture of decentralization, is magical 🧞‍♂️
That is the thing that gives us the opportunity and hope to change the equation and architecture of power.🤞

If there is a decentralized system of power, you have to have 100% control. A little bit of decentralization can really screw up the system. We don’t need to be 100% decentralised.

A little bit of decentralization goes a long way. 🤌

Decentralization is not a scary thing, it’s a possibility of hope to create new opportunities for everyone. It’ll be Society 3.0. 🏙️

This article is a blend of 4 of the best talks and vision on the future, decentralization, Crypto-currencies and Blockchains,

Thanks and Cheers 🥂 to a more decentralized world ahead! 🍀

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