Decentralisation and Design
Jul 7, 2025
- tags
- #internet
Currently, there is a working group at the IETF studying decentralisation in the internet - Decentralisation of the Internet Research Group (DINRG).
According to its charter, its objectives include:
- Investigation of the root causes of Internet centralization, and articulation of the impacts of the market economy, architecture and protocol designs, as well as government regulations;
- Measurement of the Internet centralization and the consequential societal impacts;
- Characterization and assessment of observed Internet centralization;
- Development of a common terminology and understanding of (de-)centralization;
- Interaction with the broader research community to explore new research topics and technical solutions for decentralized system and application development;
- Documentation of the outcome from the above efforts via different means (e.g., research papers and RFCs) as inputs to the broader conversation around centralization; and
- Facilitation of discussions between researchers, organizations and individuals involved in Internet standards and regulations.
These are really fascinating and pertinent questions. It got me thinking about the question of whether we can ‘design’ for decentralisation.
Designing is about principles. In the case of the internet, some principles include:
- permissionless innovation - you shouldn’t need a ’licence’ to innovate on the internet, i.e., you shouldn’t need permission from some central authority.
- interoperability - protocols and parts of the internet should be modular and work well with each other
- global connectedness - the internet shouldn’t care about territorial/nation-state boundaries
- resiliency - this is more of an outcome of decentralisation - if a network is properly distributed, there is no single point of failure
These were just some of the important principles that informed the design of early protocols and standards, and which resulted in the internet we have today. Throughout the internet’s history, culminating in the IANA transition of functions from the US government to the global internet community in 2016, a battle was fought against a government-controlled internet. In other words, there has always been resistance to one particular kind of centralisation.
However, as is acknowledged by the existence of the DINRG and some of the speakers it has had, there is another form of centralisation at work in the internet. A handful of major tech companies now increasingly control a large amount of the internet ‘stack’, from subsea cables, to datacentres, to social media forums. With companies like Meta and Amazon controlling both the lower and upper layers of the internet, it is almost like a car manufacturer also owning the roads in a country, as well as the charging points, and parking garages, and the radio stations playing in the car.
So, if the protocols and standards underlying the internet are so open, ‘modular’, and decentralised, how could they have resulted in such a high degree of centralisation?
The internet is often contrasted with the telecoms industry, which was highly centralised at the national level prior to its liberalisation in the 80s and 90s (with anti-trust laws in America, or privatisation in Europe). Yet, even at the height of their power, the telecoms companies had nowhere near the amount of influence that the tech companies today have.
This power and influence is re-shaping society, where we are increasingly becoming data ‘subjects’, due to the business model that happens to be dominant for the major tech companies.
This is a long way from the promise of the early internet, which was about decentralised information sharing and breaking down borders.
If there is a lesson to be learned here, it perhaps comes from Deleuze, who understood that centralisation and decentralisation were two sides of the same process. There is no such thing as a ‘decentralised system’ or ‘principles of decentralisation’; systems, principles, goals, ideas, are all are processes, containing a multiplicity of forces and interests, some tending toward centralisation and some towards disruption and anarchy. The very design of the internet attests to this - one the one hand we have a very open and decentralised protocol system, but on the other we need some degrees of centralisation (ICANN/IANA) to manage the global coordination of unique identifiers.
What should be sought after is not an ’escape’ from centralising forces (which is impossible), but a strategic centralisation, like what happens in ICANN, which is relatively grassroots-led, and is a real alternative to the corporate centralisation of the big tech companies. Strengthening multistakeholder governance is the solution to the centralising forces of big tech. If the past 20 years have taught us anything it is that there isn’t a ’technical’ solution here; there is no technical protocol or technology, be it the fediverse, blockchain, or the AT protocol, that you can use to design your way out of the problem. Only organic communities of action and resistance can counter the centralising tendencies of big tech. You need a real politics of action, not just a technical standard.
