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Inverted Applications

· 5 min read

Distributed apps at best can have tamper detection.

Decentralized apps at best can have censor resistance.

Consider then a github clone with a central token. Once roughly 51% of all the governance tokens have been controlled, which could be done by censoring maybe three or four people if not distributed well, then the entire app is at the will of the censor. Worse, perhaps the underlying blockchain is overthrown somehow - then the github token goes down as collateral (excuse the pun) damage. The problem is confounded by the requirement that surviving blockchain operators need to communicate with each other, as forking is considered a system failure. This repeated communication makes them easy targets. Yes, the system could start again as soon as the first copy re-appears and starts operating, but during that window the censor is in control - supression is the norm.

An inverted version of github makes its own dedicated set of blockchains for each git repo that anyone wishes to host. These apps might communicate with each other, and might even trade using some currency selections. They might share block producers, they might not.

To take down an inverted app requires finding all the blockhosts and all the key owners of all the github repos that every get created using this means of operation. The problem is far thornier than the other classes of apps. We believe this is censorship proof operation - if a censor can find every actor who is running a copy of the software. Whole subsegments of user can go offnet, and run local only. You can only supress what you can detect, and so this is the worst possible scenario of any censorship effort - we should strive for this, and not accept inferior systems that offer anything less that censorship proof apps for everyday users.

Email is an example of a sort of inverted app. It has massive distribution, it is not centrally controlled. The central control however, is exerted by the DNS namespace, and the IP allocation tables of the internet. but it has many of the characteristics, and its wild spread indicates the scale for these types of apps. It could be that email is the simplest form of such a thing, as it really just does transmission and receiving. More complex and more useful interactions such as long form stateful collaborations have yet to see such an exlosion, but git offers a glimpse of what that could be like. If only git came with its own independent version of github wrapped around every repo that was created. Its components lack the resilience and internal integrity necessary to travel thru many inverted instances unaltered.

The first inverted app is the dreamcatcher. Each idea is free floating, owned by its creator and optionally private. Then projects are created - themselves a form of idea - to capture these ideas, seek missing ideas, and refine them into something usable. Each project is entirely sovereign to itself, optionally run by whomever has compute capacity to do so. It is completely free of any centralized token control, system control, or even version control. It can, at the freewill of its owners, communicate with other organisms such as itself, or with other external systems such as email.

The spreading of a codebase creates a desire for future improvements to that program. This is primarily how we get paid, and the service we are offering - future improvements quickly, of quality. The more people get copies of our software, the more pressure is created.

The power of enduring social pressure. The emergent will of a thousand whispers.

Inverted apps put their consumer first, and coordinate while being fractured into many pieces. inverted apps harness the inverted capital allocation mechanisms enabled by dreamcatchers to perform functions in line with the benefit of their consumers, not their controllers. Distributed apps spread the operation of an application across multiple physical machines with control held by a central entity. Almost all cloud applications that hope to offer any kind of reliability operate in this way. Decentralized apps are distributed apps that spread the central control amongst many entities, often dynamically. Whilst the control may be spread around, the central control is still fiercely present, usually in the form of a token as a central registry of intent. Inverted apps are the opposite of these forms, in that there is no central coordination of intent, but rather any central tendencies emerges, without force or registration, and are apparent when entities communicate. For example, the collection of all bitcoin chain forks is a crude form of inverted app - the forks do not communicate well with each other, but their central token registries are at least partially split from each other to serve the needs of their respective user groups, and sometimes they coordinate via exchanges where overall, the utility of cryptocurrencies of this class is enhanced. Inverted apps can easily wrap controlled apps, but controlled apps are incapable of wrapping inverted. Inverted can wrap inverted. Inverted can emulate controlled where needed. Almost all blockchains could currently be classed as perverted apps - proporting to offer freedom, but really having no more structure than a public company with central product and distributed public shareholdings. These operations have no future.

an inverted exchange is different to an exchange on a blockchain. True inversion means that any partipant can come and go if the possess commodity electronics. Ethereum for example you need to have ETH, then you need assets on the chain - the list of barriers goes on and on. An inverted exchange would let people peer with one another and find the best prices. Yes there would appear aggregators, but these would be assistants, and easily replaced at any time they stop being useful.

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