A useful, critical taxonomy of decentralization, beyond blockchains

Not all who decentralize are bros.

I keep getting sucked into discussions of web3, decentralization and cryptocurrency. It’s only natural: much of the rhetoric and stated goals of the people behind these technologies intersect with my longstanding causes, like access to cryptography and decentralized communities (what we used to call P2P).

The reason I say I get “sucked into” these discussions is that, despite the rhetorical overlap, I’ve sensed a significant ideological divergence between my position and the dominant web3 ethos. In general, I would say that I think there are only a few circumstances in which markets produce good incentives and distributions, and that these depend heavily on publicly accountable governance that set up their rules.

Which is not to say that I reject markets altogether. As John T Harvey — the “Cowboy Economist” — says, an economist who says that we must always use markets to attain our goals, or never use them, is like a carpenter who says, “I will only join those two pieces of wood together with a nail; screws are for commies!”

So I think markets are a tool, not a ethical imperative, and I think the core of the web3 project not only values markets beyond their worth, but also sees the problems of…