Will RightMesh Really Change The World? (Part 3)
Without connectivity, the dream of an inclusive and decentralized world will remain just as a dream.
Can RightMesh truly make a large and positive impact to humanity, or is this another one of those projects that’s just fluff and talk?
In this series so far, we’ve presented two pictures that explain why RightMesh has a real potential to make a real change in the world:
- RightMesh addresses a real and prevalent problem.
- RightMesh allows for relevant, community-based applications to be built to connect the unconnected.
But, there’s an element that is much more important to consider when exploring the impact RightMesh can make (and frankly one that we do not talk much about).
Picture Three: RightMesh will bring the new decentralized world to the masses.
We’ve heard time and again of the promise that public blockchains can bring to the world — financial inclusion to the unbanked, removing the middlemen, personal control of your own data, creating censorship-resistant networks, distributing wealth equally through incentive-based economics, and so on and so forth. We’re only at the beginning of this revolution, and it will take years before we see the real impact these new systems can bring — but there is a lot of good work being done in this space that will lead us there.
There is; however, a major challenge that can seriously hinder the impact the new decentralized world promises to bring. And, despite the craze and the hype in this space, most people who are in the industry have not thought about this thoroughly. At least not yet.
Entrepreneur, engineer and author Daniel Jeffries wrote one of the most widely read pieces on cryptocurrencies on Medium in 2017 in an attempt to explain a severe shortcoming of all blockchains today — including Bitcoin:
“We missed the real power of Satoshi’s creation: the distribution of money.”
The impact Bitcoin can have in the world cannot be underestimated. For the first time in history, we have within our means a decentralized system of money that transcends borders and that is resistant to power and control. This revolutionary creation brings power back to the people. And, we have seen that the countries that are adopting Bitcoin are not the ones who speculate on its future, but are the ones who really need it today.
In his insightful post, Jeffries explains that the real power of Bitcoin is not in the creation of the digital coin, but rather in its distribution.
How many times have you heard — “Anyone in the world can use Bitcoin. All you need is an internet connection.”
And that, right there, is the constraint that is widely taken for granted. Unless people have connectivity, not only are they excluded from using these new forms of digital assets, but more importantly, they are also excluded from new forms of wealth creation.
We’ve always stated that RightMesh is not a platform for developers, it is a platform for the entrepreneurs of the new world to build new businesses on. It is a platform that can create new forms of wealth creation for micro-entrepreneurs. When you combine the access to connectivity, a platform to develop useful and relevant applications, and an underlying token economy that can drive behavior across a large group of actors, powerful results can occur and the opportunities for innovation become limitless.
However, the reality in today’s world is that wealth creation and distribution through the digital medium is a significant challenge, regardless of whether it is in the developing world or the developed world. This is because of one major reason:
Connectivity as we know it today — i.e. the Internet — is broken.
What was originally intended to be a peer-to-peer network and space for publishing and consuming diverse information has transformed into a network of sorts dominated by four giants — Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — who together control over 70% of the world’s internet traffic.
With the domination of these internet giants, startups and smaller players face enormous challenges in growing their own products. As a result, most startups end up focusing on a few key objectives — acquiring users, engaging them, retaining them, and attaining revenue through advertisements (using the services from Google or Facebook). Users are not using products in most cases, the user IS the product.
And so, naturally, today’s developers have no concern for the people who are not connected as there are no monetization opportunities available for that market. Even though connectivity improves over time and internet speeds get faster, it is only accessible to those who can afford it.
This results in a vicious cycle that only further increases the digital divide and leaves the unconnected even further behind.
And whether we like it or not, this is the same vicious cycle that will prevent the reach of decentralized networks to the masses.
Fortunately, more and more people have now started to recognize the consequences of being the product and not having control of their own data. This will ignite the need for more decentralized networks and applications and over time, and as need promotes adoption, we will begin to see new and different business models emerge.
We will begin to see more applications that are distributed and decentralized, where users can own and control their own data, where providers can focus on their primary value offering instead of maximizing advertising revenue, and where all participants can stand to gain in a system where wealth is proportionately distributed. These are the applications that make use of distributed layer 2 technologies such as Blockstack for identity, Filecoin & IPFS for storage, and Golem for processing. These systems and networks will create endless possibilities for new forms of distributed wealth creation through tokenized economies.
But once again, the major constraint towards having a more inclusive, global, decentralized world is connectivity.
Without focusing on this integral infrastructure element, the future of a decentralized world will never materialize. As in today’s internet world, the benefits will largely fall towards the ‘privileged few’ and those who can overcome the constraints.
This is a major focus area for RightMesh, and we have already started discussing with other projects wishing to extend their decentralized solutions to the unconnected.
It was an absolute pleasure for us to have recently attended a number of conferences in June that discussed the impact blockchain technologies can bring in the world, including the Blockchain for Social Impact conference, the Impact Summit, and the UN Blockchain for Impact conference.
We were inspired to meet the entrepreneurs who are building impactful solutions for the world and to engage in discussions of blockchain applications that can have a positive and sustainable impact. What stood out to us, though, was the requirement for many projects to reach the unconnected today, and we look forward to having more deeper conversations with those projects to extend the reach of their applications with mesh networking technology.
We are deeply excited about the future. And at the same time, we realize that building a decentralized world doesn’t happen overnight — it requires building on the way in incremental steps. We’re focused on building a new kind of network that’s needed right now and a platform that will allow community-driven applications to run on these networks in order to gain adoption that will pave the way for a more inclusive, decentralized world.
Indeed, RightMesh has the potential to change the world. But there is one last element to consider — an important factor that provides the underlying foundation for positive change to occur.
Stay tuned for the fourth and final installment in the series.
