While it is clear that there must be some appropriate level of order, the failures of systems are not only due to “too much” or “too little” centralization. Failure can also occur when one system centralizes more rapidly than another interrelated system, or when two systems fail to properly interoperate.

Kings and dictators have been replaced, at least in much of the West, by representative democracies with term limits. The aim of decentralizing power and allowing for local governance is to construct more robust political systems, less susceptible to corruption and more adaptable to local circumstances. But when economic systems, social norms, and values reinforced centralization, the robustness of decentralized political systems broke down. So the American system was destroyed by the influence of money in politics — “pay to play” — and a culture that prioritized profit over prudence. It was further weakened by gerrymandering and voter suppression.

In contrast to the self-sustaining political system designed in the Constitution, our economic system is clearly designed to naturally reach levels of over-centralization. Businesses converge to monopolies through economies of scale. Wealthy individuals concentrate power by restricting access to capital. We know this. Our political system was meant to mitigate this through corporate taxation, antitrust, and control of interest rates. But as we see, this relationship was eventually broken — and now, it is exploited systematically. This broken relationship between money and politics has caused other systems to self-corrupt through over-centralization.

Enter the Internet, a true technological innovation. It was supposed to lead a revolution, a new weapon to wield against over-centralization. Its early days were considered the “Wild West.” Slowly, as the capitalist imperative was juxtaposed on the nascent Internet, the shift was validated and glorified by society, by venture capital, and eventually by Aaron Sorkin. The growth and “professionalization” of the Internet has led to world-changing progress and created enormous value, but now what was revolutionary has become routine. Most of us interact with the Internet at levels of abstraction like the Google search bar or Facebook feed. Value is continually extracted from the individual to the institution. As time passed, like our political system, the Internet became over-centralized and broken.

Somehow now, our modern world expresses some of the worst traits of both over-centralized and over-decentralized systems. Our government has concentrated political power within groups who have no apparent interest in governing. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter exert tremendous control over the content we view (and thus the content we produce), while their failing internal controls cause the quality and reliability of the content to deteriorate rapidly — all while revenue rises. Huge corporations and political actors are crushing innovation (see Chris Dixon’s excellent recent piece) — and if we let them, they’ll crush the newest innovations of decentralization.

Blockchain brings our systems hope. It is a revolutionary technology for decentralization, just as vertical integration and religion were revolutionary tools for centralization. It is the weapon we now must wield against over-centralization.

By marrying decentralizing technology with self-sustaining incentive structures, we have found a way to break the cycle. We have found methods of self-governance that are resistant to corruption or human fallacy. We have the power to wrest control from centralized institutions.

But we must also wield all our weapons against under-centralization. The blockchain and crypto space is plagued by malicious actors, liars, in-fighters, profiteers, rent-seekers in technologists’ clothing. They seek to destroy the new decentralization revolution, not by centralizing or over-regulation, but by dividing us even further against ourselves.

The question is not — should crypto become more centralized? The question is — who will we allow to centralize it? If we wait for traditional regulators, we will get traditional results. The innovations of blockchain will be tapped, drained, and discarded by our current centralized institutions.

We must embrace self-organization and self-regulation. To do this properly, we must protect the truth at all costs. We must demand openness from organizations in our space and hold bad actors accountable. We must fund those who maintain the flow of data and information. We must reject the idea of centralization as enemy, and join together to support our ideals.

Decentralization should not be our end goal. Sustainability of our systems should be. For this, there are allies everywhere.

The Great Reconfiguration is here. Our greatest minds are escaping traditional, over-centralized organizations and dedicating themselves to the pursuit of critical projects in blockchain. That they can do so without fear of starvation is not a miracle, but by design. Blockchain has freed them.

With this freedom comes new responsibility. Now we must embrace it.