We treat being “Decentralized” as being “Unregulated” and it shows
The problem I have long had with crypto phrases or terminology is that it is often largely misdefined, misused, and mis-interpreted.
We can see this all across the ecosystem. Wrong application of DeFi, misfit representation of web3, and by a far larger margin, the misunderstanding of what “being decentralized” means.
There's growing demand for consumer crypto apps, at least I've seen people talking about it a lot lately. Whilst some are acknowledging that we aren't there yet when it comes to having a unique crypto app that solves a specific consumer problem, others are references top crypto apps in their arguments which if I may add, these apps are not consumer friendly in any way as they require an integrated knowledge of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to navigate.
What's there to extract from this is that building a consumer app that fits the market is tricky. But not as tricky as building one that aligns with the mission of crypto.
Having consumer apps that are marketed as “crypto-powered” yet having very little of its entire system integrated with crypto or blockchain is a problem.
Of course, it is important to note that tokenization is not in itself a deep integration with crypto. A project can have a token but be highly centralized and this is evident in blockchain games.
Sometimes I wonder if blockchain games will ever achieve true decentralization by being heavily integrated with the immutable ledger in the backend. I admit I have limited knowledge of any of these games and this is because they most times don't talk about their deep backend designs in their documentation but from fair observation judgment, I'd say so much that makes up these games are off-chain with no on-chain integrated layer that allows a “decentralized regulation” of those off-chain operations.
Speaking of regulations, let's get to the topic of focus.
Decentralization and being Unregulated
We, as an ecosystem, have pretty much dug our own pit before we even started. As previously stated, we have a “application of phrases” problem in crypto.
The only words in crypto that I can say I'm yet to catch up on their flawed application is “immutability and interoperability,” every other phrases often gets misrepresented in promotion materials and we'd look at how decentralization has been misdefined.
Decentralization refers to the distribution of power, authority, or control away from a central authority to multiple, often local, entities. In the context of organizations, governments, or technology systems, decentralization means that decision-making processes and control are spread out rather than being concentrated in a single location or among a small group of individuals.
GPT.
I can bet $500 that 3, if not 4 in 5 crypto users think that “being decentralized” means no regulation at all, not that the power of regulation is not centralized.
How many times have you heard people say things like “so much for being decentralized” on Hive for example?
It's important to understand that it isn't entirely their fault to think that way, it is how the ecosystem has been marketed. We talk about “freedom” so much that we don't understand freedom is chaos and if you promise that and then try to limit or regulate the amount of chaos that takes place then you've failed to keep your promise.
We need to stop believing that being in crypto means being free. Freedom is chaotic, what exists in crypto is a regulation environment that's “open to everyone” allowing decisions to be influenced by many rather than a few.
Yesterday I made a joke on INLEO talking about the absence of boobs pictures and got a response from a user who was glad that such isn't on INLEO.
Others may want this, unlike this fellow, but how does the platform know if to allow it or not?
Simple: community voting.
This approach ensures that whatever is allowed in an ecosystem is regulated by the community of said ecosystem. Effectively, anyone who isn't in agreement can either leave and seek alternatives or seek ways to influence the governance following the built-in regulation mechanisms.
This is why consumer crypto apps for example need to be heavily blockchain-integrated in the backend. I mean if we look at prediction markets like Polymarket, it's clear that such a tool can be used to place many unethical bets like the murder or assassination of someone, effectively becoming a proxy for kill bounties on people's heads.
Regulation, which should be decentralized by design, would step in to restrict such bets from being hosted on the platform.
A lot of us don't understand how much we've misrepresented the values of crypto to people coming in and it shows with just how much shit gets deployed in the ecosystem.