The Danger of Centralization and the Importance of Decentralization
If you Google the most significant threats to humanity, you’ll find three common scenarios of a catastrophic event: nuclear war between powerful nations, an asteroid colliding with Earth, or a global pandemic. But there’s another danger—one that is even more insidious because it is already underway and goes largely unnoticed.
The Centralized Monopoly of Knowledge#
The centralized monopoly of digital knowledge, especially in its most advanced form—Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—poses an existential risk. When examining the current global distribution of knowledge, it becomes clear that most of it is concentrated in the hands of a few powerful corporations, backed by governments.
Centralized Knowledge: A Growing Concern#
Today, we rely on cloud infrastructure for nearly everything—companies, governments, and individuals alike. But who owns the cloud? Who controls the largest IT infrastructures in the world? Unsurprisingly, it’s the same companies that process and analyze vast amounts of global data, including private data.
And when it comes to AI? Those same companies have the largest computational infrastructure for training and deploying AI models. This has created a scenario where just four major companies dominate global data, IT infrastructure, and AI capabilities.
A Dangerous Cycle#
The narrative pushed by these corporations is one of trust: “Don’t be paranoid,” they say. Governments assure us they have contingency plans. But history shows that centralized power is rarely benevolent. If we look back to ancient times, centralized empires like the Ottomans and Romans ruled much of the known world, hoarding power, monopolizing resources, and making decisions in secrecy.
Today, modern monopolies—such as those dominating Web 2.0—have even greater global reach and influence than historical empires. These monopolies pose a significant risk to democracy and human freedom. In a truly democratic society, no small group of individuals should unilaterally decide what is good for the rest of us. Yet, large corporations have assumed this role, and we’ve unwittingly granted them that power.
The Promise of Decentralization#
This is why decentralization is so critical. Imagine a world where trust is built into the design of systems—where technology itself ensures fairness, security, and immutability, rather than relying on the goodwill of corporations or governments.
Bitcoin, as a decentralized communication protocol, offers a glimpse of this vision. For the first time in history, we have a self-evolving, autonomous, public infrastructure that is open to everyone and controlled by no one—not a government, not a corporation. This is why I was drawn to Web 3.0 initially. The promise of demonstrating democracy and freedom through innovation and technology was inspiring.
The Threat to Web 3.0#
Unfortunately, the problem of centralization is repeating itself within Web 3.0. Challenges related to scalability, security, and decentralization—the so-called “blockchain trilemma”—have driven many projects to rely on centralized cloud providers like AWS to host critical infrastructure and run nodes.
But if Web 3.0 depends on centralized providers like AWS, where is the decentralization? In 2020, AWS controlled less than 40% of the Web 3.0 market share. Today, that figure exceeds 80%, and it could reach 90% in the coming years. This is deeply troubling, as the same asset managers behind Web 2.0 monopolies are now becoming the largest custodians of crypto assets as well.
The Path Forward#
In my opinion, decentralization is already compromised. To protect the future of Web 3.0, we must rebuild from the ground up with secure and decentralized infrastructure as the foundation. This requires careful attention to design principles, prioritizing open-source technologies and decentralized systems.
Decentralization isn’t just about convenience or idealism—it’s a safeguard for democracy, freedom, and the fair distribution of power. The time to act is now.