Decentralization an idea whose time has come

The last decades’ zeitgeist can be summed up to be the rise of anti-establishment view. Google, Apple, Facebook are establishments. The power these tech companies wield is enormous. To quote few incidents that show their power in the public. While Apple may justify their act from their point of view but from national security point of view the act of not unlocking the phone of the terrorist involved in the shooting at San Bernardino county received widespread condemnation. The tussle between Apple Inc and FBI showed the power of Apple.

Twitter banned then US president Donald J Trump from using its platform in the wake of Jan 6, 2021 US Capitol Attack should tell. Similarly Google and Facebook followed the trend and banned him. Now that is a nasty censorship in a democratic society. Cambridge Analytica manipulated the users on Facebook by illegally collecting the data was another disgrace to big tech industry.

The stock market is viewed as establishment where companies and investment banks trade using people’s retirement money and gamble it recklessly. I know few of my friends who were planning to retire from their 401K savings were not able to do it because the 2008 financial crisis wiped out their retirement portfolio. If you want to hear one such story then watch this video. The high speed trading, day trading and other barriers to entry in stock market fuelled to launch decentralized finance movement which was amied at creating wealth for masses which was aimed to be more open, inclusive, level-playing and transparent. Today that movement has launched a $200 billion industry. Big banks and wall street traders must feel threatened by this democratic movement.

With the rise of bitcoin which is not controlled by anyone person or entity and being completely transparent has triggered the vision of making holocracy a reality with decentralized autonomous organization. Traditional hierarchial managment structures are barrier or peak performance in any company. With agile bringing all stakeholders from various roles into one team the thought of holocracy came to the mind of management people. In DAO the rules and processes are coded programatically and transparnt in execution of the work. DAO is more participatory than representative. It is a system which gives equal rights to everyone and let the community reach the consensus about the issues. This trend is now catching up in various sectors and various products and it is revolutionizing the way people and machines participate in the future for the projects.