Top Articles: The Future Is Decentralized
Week 32, 2018
We live in a highly centralized economy. This means that only a few companies control the majority of business transactions–just look at Apple’s recent $1 trillion evaluation for confirmation. However, there is an emerging trend towards creating a more decentralized system. The start of modern decentralization can be traced back to the sharing economy, which normalized peer-to-peer transactions. Now that the sharing economy has set the stage, blockchain and other decentralized technologies are seeking to supplant the large behemoths.
Apple’s $1 Trillion Milestone Reflects Rise of Powerful Megacompanies
By Matt Phillips from The New York Times
This week, Apple reached a 13-figure market value. This is quite a feat, but it has implications beyond the stock market. In the past few decades, more than three-quarters of American companies have grown more concentrated, meaning that the economy has grown more centralized in turn. The good part of this is that now billions of people have access to amazing technologies that they probably wouldn’t build themselves. The bad part is that this seriously limits how small businesses can grow. This is the reason that decentralization seems like such a viable option to many smaller companies and individuals.
A Foundation of Trust Is How the Sharing Economy Thrives
By Marco Piovesan from Entrepreneur
If we’re honest with ourselves, the current sharing economy would have been unimaginable just 5 or 10 years ago. If someone told you that there would be multiple businesses that revolved around using a stranger’s house or car, you’d laugh them out of the room. However, that is where we’re at today. The interesting thing about this sharing economy is that it depends entirely on trust that the companies are connecting us with vetted, legitimate people. In a decentralized future, technology take over this role, so we’re already halfway to a decentralized future in terms of trust-based transactions.
Could Decentralised Platforms Redefine the Sharing Economy?
By Laurie Clarke from TechWorld
Though we hail the sharing economy as the first real move away from a centralized network, there are still companies monetizing these transactions. The idea behind blockchain is that it will actually remove the middlemen from the process, but how exactly does this work? The short answer is that the revenue will be distributed to all players on the platform instead of going to a single company. The finite amount of cryptocurrency means that the value will appreciate when more players use the platform. Ultimately, while the sharing economy is a huge step in the decentralized direction, it is still too centralized for many blockchain enthusiasts.
Millions of Webstores Can Now Accept Cryptocurrency through Coinbase
By David Canellis from The Next Web
In a further move towards decentralization, Coinbase now offers a plugin that gives more users the option to pay with cryptocurrencies on multiple websites. They are calling it an “open financial system” with a peer-to-peer transaction network. Stores can now accept cryptocurrencies by installing a single plugin into their websites. This itself is nothing new, but the scale that Coinbase is going for could be the jumpstart that decentralized transactions need to normalize the process.
Decentralize All The Things!
By Jon Evans from TechCrunch
This article is a bit older, but it makes some good points that are still relevant today. It discusses how the big tech companies gained their power and potential that the rise of blockchain has to at least distribute some of GAFA’s power.
