Back when I grew up, Americans were taught the perils of Soviet Communism. We were outraged that people were forced to stand in line for hours due to shortages. Long lines are, indeed, an excellent symbol of a failing, centralized system. These days, the queues seem to be getting longer.

Centralization is the organization of society so that people must interact primarily with large organizations for survival. Today, we depend almost entirely upon institutions to earn a living, to buy what we need and want, for education, for entertainment, essentially for everything. When we do connect with other people, we do so through platforms controlled by large corporations who spy on us just as they advertise to us. At its best, centralization is a single point of failure, a bottleneck, a cause of scarcity, or a source of frustration. At its worst, centralization becomes an inhuman force to be feared.

The Blockchain Revolution, starting with Bitcoin and taken further with Ethereum and other decentralized technologies, is the breakthrough idea that centralization is no longer the only way to organize society. By removing a centralized server than can be breached or shut down, Blockchain technology is beyond the reach of centralized institutions. This changes everything.

We now have an opportunity to shift away from the centralization of power toward a model of decentralization—the organization of society so that people are at the center. How might a decentralized future look? Consider the idea behind a blockchain startup called “I am” by Infobeing, an Ethereum-based Decentralized Social App (DApp) for the mass-market. 

A true shift toward decentralization requires an efficient, systematic way of connecting people directly. This will be done on “I am” by describing who you are, what you want, and what you are doing in the form of structured sentences called “I am” Statements. Statements are stored in a decentralized database as follows:

I am [Verb] [Description] [Location] [Price].

Compatible Statements are matched. Users effortlessly meet the right people, form new relationships and business connections, they can even buy and sell stuff using cryptocurrency. “I am” reduces the need for people to rely so much on institutions. No matter what you want or what you are trying to do, you can do it by connecting directly with other people.

Decentralized platforms like “I am” have the potential to unlock human potential by creating a reality in which people are at the center. Institutions that survive will have to adapt to serving us (and not the other way around). If all goes well, this might mean the end of standing in line.

On November 23^rd, 2017, the IAM Token will be introduced as the first cryptocurrency deriving its value directly from the unleashing of human potential. Find out more at www.infobeing.com.