The User Experience of decentralization

The purpose of this post is to express the problems and complexities I had as I approached the design of a product that interacts directly with different blockchains with the goal of expressing how important is now to dedicate technology innovation and resources into this specific area of work instead of

I will try to express all the caveats and user problems solved and to be solved. Main differences between a usual digital product data model (web or mobile app) framework of possibilities and limitations and which new possibilities and limitations offer to interact with this new technology.

The structure will be something like that:

• What is a decentralized app? And why it matters?
• UX Designing key points for blockchain apps.
• Problems to be solved yet.
• Decentralized digital identity UX

So let's get into it. First things first.

What is a decentralized app? And why it matters?

The Ownership paradigma.

The Internet borned as a fully distributed system in which there were now central core in order for the network to exist, any participant with a network (phone line connection before) could participate of the network and access what others at their personal computers where exposing publicly to the network. If you had the "address" of the computer that was exposing the data in the form of purely files through ftp or in the form of a website though http you could literally access the personal computer of that person and navigate its deepness as this person had decided to express it. The protocol that holded this specific way of interacting has been "almost" the same since the moment in which it was originated.

One key invention that supposed a key advancement into the accessibility of people into the internet was the well known browser or internet navigator. That permitted a graphical access to the personal files that people (and now companies) were sharing on their computers. This specific invention changed the way others could perceived the content shared in the network and created a the language of the internet. It abstracted away the initial layer of complexity and permitted a new market to emerge on top of it.

With the browser appeared the next abstraction on top of it. Javascript programming language.

As we humans do, we always push the limits of what is possible to the extend of its container as much as our inventive and our minds let us do. The container of the internet, in this case made us abstract the fact of diving into the personal computer of another unique individual server into massive user experiences that needed massive "personal computers" holded by companies instead of individuals.

As the internet grew, and suddenly swats of people using it from each personal computers, created limitations on how those other personal computers exposing websites and creating experiences were behaving and started to clout, more computing power and networking capabilities were necessary in order to support the demand and were there is demand there is offer, those personal websites made it to turn that demand into profit and reinvest into creating more of those experiences that were creating the demand, and so on.

That loop ended in the paradox that in order to create a better user experience resources needed to be centralised, controlled and organised. Marketed and hierarchical capital based models on top of a fully horizontal network maintained by all, nicely crazy. Those new markets were created on top what using javascript as the entry point to the computers now holded on companies were able to craft amazing experiences that by that time were news online, search engines to abstract and curate to people of what was hidden in the internet