Decentralized Ecosystems

Provides examples of decentralized eco-systems as communities

So far we’ve been exploring architectural concepts, but didn’t mention any particular group of users who would be interested in such metadata capture and analytics, provide resources for hosting infrastructure, etc. In Web 2, it is quite obvious that the enterprises provide all necessary resources, but in Web 3 realm, there should be incentives given to individuals who will host nodes.

Why would a decentralized community of users want such advanced metadata analytics and application interoperability? The parallel can be given with English as the de facto language of business and the languages of the world. Imagine one day English ceases to exist and everyone will be required to speak some other language and online translators no one has developed yet. What will happen to remote teams? What will happen to education? To all the resources that we are used to finding on the web? Googling a bug and hoping to find its root cause on Stack Overflow? It will be a total collapse of the business society as we know it.

But now let’s do the reverse mental exercise. Some decentralized community doesn’t have common language, such as English yet. And suddenly it appears and everyone can learn it and speak it. What type of opportunities it will bring? New ideas that immediately become possible if one dApp understands metadata produced by another dApp and both dApps can collaborate on something new.

In that regard, the Cardano community looks interesting. It’s one of the most decentralized protocols with around 3000 stake pool operators (SPOs) maintaining the network. However, only 500 were required for the consensus protocol to be functioning. This means the resources of another 2500 can be used for such metadata side chain, if they are properly compensated for providing these resources.

However, if interoperability within one ecosystem is achieved at the metadata level, it also can be extended to another L1 ecosystems and DAOs, providing interesting opportunities for cross-chain interoperability when NFTs could be locked in one chain, if they are listed on an auction in another chain.