Recently, the investors and the market have lost interest in cryptocurrencies and specifically in Bitcoin. There are reasons to believe that over the next 2–3 years, the digital currency will be used not for trading, but for crowdfunding, marking of intellectual property, as well as for blockchain instruments based on some traditional material values.
However, the main application of blockchain technology is not about it. The old rules of centralization don’t suit the new world: the concentration of resources in one place is dangerous. It may lead to scam producing or misappropriation of funds, subordinates the idea to the requirements of regulators. This is why decentralized technologies are becoming more and more popular, allowing each user to participate fully in network development if others trust him.
Now decentralization is especially relevant — the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the telecommunications market, forcing operators to postpone the transition to 5G. In addition, over the past two or three months, it was recorded a significant increase in traffic due to the mass remote work and a huge demand for “heavy” content. If the telecom industry continues to centralize, it will be extremely difficult to find the resources to expand the capacity of communication channels and ensure contact between consumers and businesses during the global recession.
The transition to a distributed network, where everyone can share a small amount of capacity by connecting their device (computer or smartphone), may change the situation. If the contribution of many thousands of users takes place, the speed of communication will no longer depend on the resources and policies of one or another operator.
The pandemic has revealed another use of decentralized networks — scientists need the power of supercomputers (for which there is not enough investment) to find a vaccine, solve problems caused by the crisis. Therefore, in order to meet such large-scale challenges, scientific communities are inviting volunteers to share digital capacity. Some networks connect hundreds of users in just one day, helping researchers to move faster.
There are already several projects on the market that you can connect to if you wish. Stanford University’s Folding@home project is the most massive today, with nearly half a million people joining in just a few weeks. While the device owner doesn’t use it (at night, for example), the gadget performs a small easy task, simulating the process, solving an equation, or processing an image, then sends the results to scientists. In May, the performance of this distributed network exceeded the power of 500 supercomputers, producing 2.4 exaflops (that’s a billion operations per second).
So, do you understand why the future is for decentralization and each of us?
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