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I don't know about that. There's a flurry of open protocols being built on Blockchain and maybe there's a golden age ahead . . .

> "Historically many key protocols, such as TCP/IP and HTTP, have come from researchers. Subsequent iterations of these protocols were often handled by nonprofit organization that tried to wrangle with more or less success the various commercial interests that sprang up around this protocols (the companies that were making and selling software and hardware based on them). The more money was involved the harder this became.

> "Now, however, we have a new way of providing incentives for the creation of protocols and for governing their evolution. I am talking about cryptographic tokens . . .

> "I can’t emphasize enough how radical a change this is to the past. Historically the only way to make money from a protocol was to create software that implemented it and then try to sell this software (or more recently to host it). Since the creation of this software (e.g. web server/browser) is a separate act many of the researchers who have created some of the most successful protocols in use today have had little direct financial gain. With tokens, however, the creators of a protocol can “monetize” it directly and will in fact benefit more as others build businesses on top of that protocol. Given this new incentive I expect a lot of resources to be devoted to protocol innovation."

~ https://continuations.com/post/148098927445/crypto-tokens-an...




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