Distributed Web

We need a new internet.

Internet and the IT revolution hold the potential to realize one of the most decisive breakthroughs in the history of human kind.

The Internet technology allows unprecedented amounts of information to flow within the human population, at unprecedented speed. By connecting us worldwide with people from different cultural backgrounds, the Internet is creating, for the first time in history, the right conditions to enable human cooperation at a global scale.

Internet is the perfect tool for humanity to achieve a synchronized, coordinated turn to a new socio-economic model in less than a century, which, as we said before, is exactly what we must do.

Unfortunately the Internet as-we-know-it is firmly in the hands of the elites, who are using it for their own special plan which involves a global surveillance state with Orwellian features. The present Internet is in fact a development of the original protocol funded by the US Department of Defense in the 60’s.

Still today, the Internet protocol features all the characteristics and limitations of a centralized model: a finite 32-Bit IP address, whose distribution and allocation into Domain Names is managed by a central authority (IANA, ICANN) under the exclusive control of the United States government.

With the ISP market monopolized at the very top by a few state-sponsored corporations, the ongoing mass-surveillance scandal that emerged in 2013 and exposed a massive and illegal surveillance program on worldwide communications comes with no surprise.

Think about it for a moment: the whole Internet, controlled by only one nation? No wonder the Chinese and Russians are now trying to build their own — even more tyrannical — versions of it.

The WAM must network on a better Internet. A new, distributed web that can scale and outperform the old one.

So, what is a distributed web?

In a centralized network every node (client) is connected with a central station (server) which acts as a middleman. Think of an old Telecom network.

In a decentralized network, every client is connected to a server which in turn communicates with other servers. That’s how the current internet works.

In a distributed network, every node is both a client and a server. Data is stored locally and shared directly between the nodes, with no third party involved.

Now, which model looks stronger and more resilient?

In a centralized Internet we are vulnerable to hacking, censorship, tracking, and numerous other abuses. And because we have little say in how these systems we rely upon operate, we aren’t able to improve how they work for us. The centralized nature of today’s Internet makes us less able to adapt to change, and less capable of confronting the complex challenges that we face.

An alternative exists. The WAM must run on a distributed, p2p internet where corporate servers are replaced by our own computers.

By designing the internet on a more human scale, thus cutting off the middlemen and taking back control over the data we exchange, we will empower each other, foster trust between ourselves and create a thriving network of individuals and communities committed to bring positive change from their neighborhoods to the entire world.

In the last few years, many projects have emerged proposing alternative architectures for the new distributed Internet, or Web3.

One of its pioneers, Raffael Kemenczy, had filed a proposal back in 2011 which envisioned the creation of a world-wide user-controlled network based on a distributed mesh architecture. In 2014, an organization called Open Libernet took the idea a step forward, devising an internal incentive mechanism based on digital currency that would rewards users for actively joining, expanding and maintaining the network.

Today, what appeared to some as the unrealistic dream of a bunch of utopian nerds, is very close to becoming reality. The Holochain project, started in 2017, has already received more than one million dollars via crowdfunding and is about to release its software’s Beta version in the third quarter of 2018.

Holochain is a scalable, agent-centric distributed computing platform. It functions as a data integrity engine supporting an eco-system of distributed applications or (d)apps. (See whitepaper).

Holochain is specifically designed for groups that want to collaborate or coordinate together according to a set of agreements which allows them to share data or other value in reliable ways. For example:

• Social Networks, Social Media & VRM: You want to run a social network without a company like Facebook in the middle. You want to share, post, publish, or tweet to shared space, while automatically keeping a copy of these things on your own device.
• Supply Chains & Open Value Networks: You want to have information that crosses the boundaries of companies, organizations, countries, which is collaboratively shared and managed, but not under the central control of any one of those organizations.
• Cooperatives and New Commons: You want to create something which is truly held collectively and not by any particular individual. This is especially good for digital assets.
• P2P Platforms: Peer-to-Peer applications where every person has similar capabilities, access, responsibilities, and value is produced collectively.
• Collective Intelligence: Governance, decision-making frameworks, feedback systems, ratings, currencies, annotations, or work flow systems.
• Collaborative Applications: Chats, Discussion Boards, Scheduling Apps, Wikis, Documentation, etc.
• Reputational, or Mutual Credit Cryptocurrencies: Currencies where issuance can be accounted for by actions of peers (like ratings), or through double-entry accounting are well-suited for holochains.

Holochain is a part of a much larger vision for distributed computing to enable quantum leaps in our collective intelligence and abilities for groups to organize themselves on all scales. You can find out more about Ceptr here.

Feel free to leave any comment or question below, and join the discussion on the dedicated forum.

Also in Coop Network:

• Mutual Credit — Smart contracts platform
• Circular Economy — Regenerative business model
• Universal Welfare — Ethical incentives program

Other WAM! publications:

Life Tribe

A new humanity

Conscious Forum

A new consciousness

Eden Planet

A new world