#7: The Paradigm Shift for a New Internet

Up until now we discussed various technical approaches to building the new internet and how the DeSo blockchain stands out in taking an integrated approach. In this essay, we discuss why is DeSo such a paradigm shift in blockchains.

But before doing so, let’s discuss what is the current paradigm in blockchain development.

The current paradigm in blockchain can described with the diagram below. There are large layer 1 blockchains (like Ethereum and Solana) which provide the necessary financing, network effects and security. Applications are built on top of these blockchains.

This paradigm makes a strong distinction between the blockchains and applications. Blockchains are supposed to be general purpose meaning any application can be made of them. And the applications are supposed to have all the use case specific logic.

Now, this paradigm did succeed at financial applications like trading, lending, payments, etc which are finite state application but as we’ve seen in our previous essays, this paradigm has not succeeded in infinite state applications since the layer-1 blockchains could not store a lot of data and if all this data was with applications then we’ll again see centralization that we see in the current web.

DeSo is introducing the concept of an “Application Specific Blockchain”. In this new paradigm that DeSo is following a custom blockchain has been built for a specific use case meaning it is not general purpose anymore.

For e.g. DeSo itself is a social media specific blockchain. One can imagine other such application specific blockchains like e-commerce, cab inventory, hotel supply pricing, etc. All of these blockchains would be distinct in nature and won’t be utilizable across use cases.

All these different blockchains ecosystems can be described as below.

Now two big questions arise when we move to this new paradigm:

1. Why is this new paradigm of application specific blockchains needed?

Blockchains are ultimately just databases. A basic principle in database design that are data heavy is indexing which is always dependent on a use case. Before designing the schema of any database you need to know the use case it serves.

Thus if we need to move from just finite state applications which don’t have much data like finance to infinite state applications like today’s internet services, we need to start developing indexing in blockchains meaning developing use-case specific blockchains.

1. Will this mean a distinct blockchain for every use case?

Not every application needs to run on a blockchain. Only applications/ industries which have been overly centralized and would benefit from decentralization need to go on a blockchain. This can easily be gauged by % value extracted by a central entity from the ecosystem. In case of rhe examples we took i.e. social media and hotels, the value extracted can be >90% and >30% respectively which is very high and hence a blockchain or more simply a supplier protocol is beneficial.

Even in such cases the need of a distinct blockchain would only arise if the data structure of the use case is different. For e.g. an e-commerce use case has products but no dimensionality of date but in hotel there is a dimensionality of dates. That’s why it was easier for Amazon to expand from books to electronics because the data structure is the same but Amazon has not been able to expand to travel because the data structure is totally different.

Thus, we are at the dawn of a new paradigm of application specific blockchains which finally brings us closer to achieving the design of the new internet. DeSo is the leading blockchain using this approach to decentralize social media but we can expect more in the future.