The Emerging Internet Of Value

Decentralisation across domains converges towards network states – user-defined digital nations maximising autonomy. By wresting control of identities, communities, currency, data, and creative output back to individuals through technology, network states promise to empower users in a more sovereign, equitable, and open digital future.

The internet, money, organisations, and social structures are all evolving from centralised to decentralised models:

• The internet is progressing from the read-only Web 1.0 to the participatory Web 2.0 to the decentralised Web 3.0 based on blockchain.
• Money has transformed from physical coins to digital fiat currency to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that aren’t controlled by central banks.
• DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations) are being formed that operate through smart contracts on blockchains rather than top-down management.
• Social lifestyles are shifting into metaverse communities where avatars interact in virtual worlds that mirror the physical world. Reputation systems and social tokens are emerging.
• Network states have been proposed as online decentralised nations without geographic borders, where residents collectively self-govern through cryptographic democracy.

The internet has transformed how we communicate, work, learn, govern, and even how we socialise. Yet the foundations underlying today’s digital world still have some centralisation at their core – whether it is with regards to the networks themselves, monetary systems, organisational structures, or social platforms. 

However, the wheels are in motion for a monumental shift towards decentralisation across all aspects of technology and society.

The Evolution Of The Internet – From Web 1.0 To Web 3.0

The internet has undergone a significant evolution since its inception decades ago. Web 1.0, arising in the early 1990s, established the foundation for a read-only internet experience through static web pages. Users were limited to passively viewing content rather than interacting with it.

The arrival of Web 2.0 in the 2000s brought about social media, user-generated content, and two-way engagement. However the underlying networks and platforms remained centralised under the control of big tech firms. This enabled issues like censorship, privacy violations, algorithmic manipulation, and restricted innovation due to walled gardens.

Now, Web 3.0 promises a dramatically decentralised internet architecture built on blockchain, enabling true peer-to-peer connectivity and collective governance of platforms and communities, untouched by corporate or state control. 

User identities, data, and networks are wholly owned by individuals in Web 3.0 rather than any central entity.

From Physical Money To Crypto – Decentralising Currency

Before Money:

• Barter System (6000 BC onwards): The earliest form of exchange, directly trading goods and services. Imagine a farmer swapping wheat for a blacksmith’s tools.

Early Forms of Money:

• Commodity Money (3000 BC onwards): Objects with inherent value used as currency, like cowry shells, salt, spices, or precious metals.
• Standardised Weights and Measures (3000 BC onwards): Ensuring consistent value in commodity money, like specific quantities of grain or specific weights of gold.
• Clay Tablets (3000 BC onwards): Mesopotamia used tokens representing agricultural goods to record debts and transactions.

Metal Coins:

• First Coins (7th century BC): Lydia (present-day Turkey) minted electrum coins, considered the first official currency.
• Standardised Coinage (6th century BC onwards): Different kingdoms and empires issued their own coins, often made of gold, silver, or bronze.

Paper Money:

• Early Promissory Notes (7th century AD): China used paper receipts representing deposits of valuable goods.
• First True Paper Money (11th century AD): Song Dynasty China introduced “jiaozi,” backed by precious metals and widely accepted.
• Expansion of Paper Money (18th-19th centuries): Gradually adopted worldwide, initially backed by gold or silver.

Modern Developments:

• Gold Standard (19th-20th centuries): Many countries tied their currencies to the value of gold, ensuring stability.
• Fiat Money (20th century onwards): Modern currencies not backed by physical assets but by government trust and economic strength.
• Digital Currency (21st century): The rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, challenging traditional notions of money.

Money has undergone a parallel transformation, evolving from physical objects like coins to centralised fiat currency controlled by central banks to decentralised cryptocurrency systems like Bitcoin.

Precious metals served as early commodity money due to inherent properties like scarcity and durability. Later state-issued fiat currency like dollars imparted legitimacy and convenience. However, central authorities still exercised significant control over the monetary supply and the financial system.

The invention of Bitcoin first showcased how a natively digital currency could operate through decentralisation, using cryptography and consensus algorithms to enable peer-to-peer transactions without centralised oversight. This opened the floodgates to a burgeoning array of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based financial applications aiming to transfer authority from central powers to individuals.

The Future of Organisations – From Hierarchy To Decentralised Autonomy

Just as networks and money are decentralising, organisational structures are also transforming from rigid hierarchies into fluid, decentralised arrangements known as DAOs – decentralised autonomous organisations.

Traditional institutions like companies necessitate centralised leadership setting strategy and policy while controlling resources. This frequently concentrates power among insular groups prone to groupthink, bureaucracy, and limited stakeholder representation.

DAOs allow loosely assembled groups to coordinate through open, transparent and accountable governance rooted in blockchain-based smart contracts. The protocols replace top-down human managers with decentralised, equitable control. 

Members collectively propose and vote on proposals, with decisions enacted autonomously by code. The result is self-governing organisations aligned with user incentives. Prominent examples include MakerDAO and MolochDAO.

The Evolution Of Social Interaction – From Physical To Virtual Worlds

Human interaction and society are evolving through metaverse platforms that facilitate economic, social, recreational, and creative activities. Unlike social media dominated by centralised tech firms, metaverse worlds may enable users to fully own and control their virtual identities, data, and assets better.

Interoperable decentralised metaverses allow users’ avatars, currency, goods, and accumulated social capital to persist across platforms. Everything is user-owned rather than platform-owned. 

Event spaces, NFT marketplaces, DAOs, and more can interlink sites through blockchain-enabled open standards. This lays the foundation for open, persistent worlds reflecting true community ownership.

Emergence Of Network States – Nations Without Borders

The cumulative effect of these trends is enabling new decentralised entities dubbed “network states” that transcend geography. Network states are digital clouds of users who converge around shared protocols, purposes, economic systems, cultures, and social contracts.

Rather than physical borders, network states have permeable digital borders linked to artefacts like domains and crypto addresses. Participation is fluid rather than binary. 

Governance is decentralised through cryptographic direct democracy and delegates rather than elections. This enables like-minded individuals to self-organise at scale, irrespective of location. Ultimately, network states could supplant legacy notions of nation-states.

A highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that may crowdfund territory around the world and eventually gain diplomatic recognition from existing states.

The Arc Of Decentralisation

The common thread across these spheres is the shift away from centralised intermediaries controlling technology, finance, institutions, social interactions, and governance. 

In their place are empowered individuals directly coordinating through code in a decentralised manner. This stands to enable unprecedented transparency, equity, accountability, personal sovereignty, and global collaboration across all facets of society.

However, decentralisation also faces challenges in governance, scaling, fragmentation, and more that warrant thoughtful solutions. But the momentum is accelerating. The foundations have been laid for the Internet of Value – a user-owned web shaping an increasingly decentralised future for the world.

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