It is a decentralization movement.
A few words inspired by and re-read with love many a times here.
Blockchain is one of the largest and most important experiments in human coordination. It is a decentralization movement that has propelled a generation of researchers, engineers, builders, and users into creating some of the most interesting technologies of our lifetime.
Blockchain’s property of transparency empowers users with the thematic guarantee of control. Examples of this include preservation of anonymity, transparency around transaction settlement status, and clarity around how utilized services operate. Users have the further option to participate in blockchain networks and get rewarded accordingly. From a builder perspective, developers can reuse existing code, accelerating the pace of innovation.
As more technologies move on-chain, the network effects of seamless composability will increase, further improving the value proposition of decentralized apps.
Putting users, developers, builders - the community - first
As an industry, blockchain exercises radical transparency. The industry standard of making project code open source, as well as the immutability of contracts on chain, means that it is possible to use a network’s services even if the main organization behind the network disbands.
There are countless examples of centralized entities discontinuing services, leaving developers and users stranded. As one example, earlier this year, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, its popular cloud gaming service. Decentralization and immutability protect users and developers from this risk.
Under the web2 paradigm, users indirectly “pay” for services because their personal information and online behaviour are captured and sold to third parties. In web3, one’s address is one’s only identity; users are anonymized and apps require minimal information to transact. Blockchain users also never see reversals, and settlement is instantaneous.
But because of this, web3 services typically charge users directly through protocol-level transaction fees which are rewarded directly to independent network operators in order to cover operating costs. To counteract transaction cost inflation, more efficient layer ones have been prioritizing architecture that supports cheaper transactions, while users also have the advanced option to participate in network operations to earn rewards that offset costs. For example, on the Ethereum network, users may build on a growing ecosystem of services, run a node, or secure the network through pooled staking. Rewarding user network operators aligns user-network incentives and is also a form of user empowerment.
Another distinct benefit of using a decentralized network is having access to how these services operate. The industry standard of open-source code means that services do not come with surprises such as the retention of private user data or hidden fees.
From a builder perspective, open-source code and libraries contribute to equality. Building in public not only produces better results, but it also makes it easier to innovate quickly. Builders can stand on the shoulders of proverbial giants.
The future is open innovation and interoperable blockchain
Decentralized applications that run on top of blockchains enjoy the same properties as its base layer. In recent years there has been a surge in the number of on-chain use cases. These use cases range from gaming and music, to data storage and documents writing. Web3 builders are making existing and new use cases more prevalent in our daily lives through ongoing improvements to UX and UI.
It is no small feat to keep hundreds of thousands of nodes - running in disparate locations on varying setups - in sync with each other, but this is exactly what Ethereum has managed to accomplish. The transparency and resiliency of the network provides a basis of trust which can be utilized by millions daily. In the future, further scaling improvements and improvements to the capabilities of the blockchain’s virtual machine will help decentralized apps reach billions of people.
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Monad is a highly performant EVM-compatible Layer 1 that reaches 10,000 TPS (Transactions Per Second) and <1s Time to Finality.