It should be obvious to everyone now that centralized platforms (like Apple's App Store) might be generous and foster innovation during their growth stages, but then become extractive and limit innovation in later stages. After all, they have total control of the platforms. This is why decentralization matters.[1]<p>The problem is that "decentralized" protocols often end up becoming de facto centralized because they lack key economic features.[2] And centralized platforms fill the gaps by offering those economic features — at the cost of giving them total control of the network.[3]<p>This is why the most innovative and most interesting web applications occur in the browser, which is open and permissionless — and where web domains are mostly decentralized in nature. The only way to ensure a platform retains something close to its original economic properties is to ensure it remains decentralized, but it's hard to resist centralization.<p>I know HN hates it, but there is a class of protocols that use cryptography and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanisms and are designed to resist centralization... and they have explicit and verifiable economic properties. They're known as crypto, and involve blockchains. And this appreciation for decentralized-by-design systems is colloquially called web3.<p>[1]: <a href="https://cdixon.org/2018/02/18/why-decentralization-matters" rel="nofollow">https://cdixon.org/2018/02/18/why-decentralization-matters</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGfS6pPJ5jo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGfS6pPJ5jo</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech" rel="nofollow">https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a...</a>