By Chris Tse, Founding Director of Cardstack

If you’ve heard about Ethereum, you’ve likely also heard about the promise of blockchain-based decentralized apps, or dApps, that could compete with today’s centralized software. This is an important goal, as centralization around proprietary software leaves people with less freedom, puts users at the mercy of extractive tech giants, and raises the barriers to entry for new innovators. Some analysts suggest these dApps are just around the corner — that the mass market could adopt them within three to five years. But how realistic is that?

Let’s put it this way: if you are waiting for an app that runs on smart contracts in a decentralized ledger; enrolls users with decentralized identities; stores data in a decentralized storage network; and resolves disputes via decentralized arbitration, you will likely be waiting for a while longer.

Blockchain’s biggest proponents like to talk about how blockchain will disrupt everything, but the current generation of decentralized apps are maddeningly difficult to use. We won’t get mass market adoption if even the simplest tasks require users to set up a hardware wallet, buy some Ether, and then go through another 17 steps.

There is a way to get the power and value of the blockchain into the mass market sooner and the idea is called progressive decentralization.

The idea is quite simple: the crypto world needs to let go of the idea of decentralizing everything instantly, and instead think about how to make emerging technologies more and more intuitive for everyday users.

For decentralized applications, parity with traditional, single-function apps is not enough. The new crypto economy consists of complex dynamics between users, tokens, smart contracts, and more. Decentralized apps must not only help users tackle these challenges, but provide them bridges to move information and value across the centralized and decentralized Internet. This means we should build on-ramps for people to gradually change their workflows, that can allow for the centralized and decentralized Internet to coexist.

To make this work, applications must embrace composability, which means that we need to create a way for users to mix and match both new and interesting decentralized technologies with centralized services that have been proven to work.

This may be heresy to some decentralization purists, but the truth is, blockchain will only succeed if it leverages the incredible global scale and cost efficiency of cloud computing. DApps should tap into the wealth of existing software libraries that makes the cloud so powerful. They should embrace and extend the cloud for what it does best — global storage, unlimited computing power, automated deployments, fast data analytics, and at-scale machine learning.

As things stand, the decentralized versions of these technologies are simply not good enough. But one day they might be be.

To get to that point, decentralized apps should be designed so that data sources are interchangeable, meaning an app would be able to transition over time from cloud to blockchain while delivering a consistent experience. These progressively decentralized apps would also be able to run on multiple user environments — whether it be Amazon Web Services or an individual’s computer — without losing any functionality.

If we can build these kinds of dApps, then blockchain-curious users will have a way to dip their toes into decentralization. As the decentralized stack matures, users will then be able to swap out more and more of their centralized apps and services for decentralized equivalents over time.

This doesn’t mean that we should hide the true difference between decentralized and centralized software and networks, but we absolutely should make it friendlier. We should help people understand the way decentralized technology puts them back in control, rather than being another passive participant in a corporate data and attention harvesting scheme. We should never forget that the real goal here is to find a better way to relate to each other through technology.

Decentralization was a founding principle of the Internet long before Silicon Valley superpowers declared themselves the rulers of our digital lives. The underlying promises of the open web can’t be locked away forever.

However, the “all or nothing” approach that many blockchain enthusiasts promote will only take us so far in terms of breaking into the mainstream. It is imperative that we focus on user experience in this moment, because if we don’t — without an influx of real users — there will simply not be enough economic activity to justify the valuation, investment, or excitement around decentralized technology.

The reality is the next era of the Internet will be decentralized gradually, and as technologists, we need to build for that reality.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.