The Internet’s original design objectives included sufficient decentralization to ensure the survivability of packet network services despite failures (or some form of censorship) of intervening nodes. Although the Internet is decentralized, only a small number of major international technology companies are in charge of our daily activities. These businesses are beginning to resemble old-style monopolies more and more. This is unhealthy given the significance of the Internet in our daily activities. As web services become more central to daily activities, Web 3.0 seeks to use decentralization ( and blockchains in particular) to disrupt the digital sovereignty of proprietary Web 2.0 platforms. Web 3.0 decentralization focuses on maintaining individual control and ownership of data and other digital assets. Decentralization remains a tool for economic regulation to deter market dominance or anti-trust monopoly influences that can distort online services. Most countries provide legal remedies against market monopolies. While many blockchain advocates assume their blockchains provide decentralization, the reality may differ from the ideal. Blockchains have already been proposed or deployed in many other domains from finance to healthcare. While public network infrastructures like 5G have been evolving native support for a greater variety of services decentralization has not been a major focus. 5G systems are in the stage of early deployments in several countries while 6G requirements are being gathered for the infrastructure to be deployed in the 2030s.
6G Decentralization
There is emerging academic literature articulating potential requirements for 6G infrastructure. Data sovereignty is emerging as a topic of national interest in managing the emergence of proprietary platforms capturing citizens’ data. The Internet is a transnational communications platform that challenges notions of jurisdiction. The development of decentralized blockchains stretches these notions even further, with consensus occurring through nodes distributed across multiple jurisdictions. An individual’s control of their own identity is fundamental to self-determination human rights. Identity theft has emerged as a significant threat in current communications networks. The tension between privacy and surveillance has long been discussed. Individual privacy becomes increasingly problematic considering the increasing deployments of IoT. Cybersecurity has become such a pervasive topic across the breadth of society that there are even cybersecurity awareness programs for children. Technology centric 6G developments risk building an infrastructure that does not meet societal needs and wasting considerable amounts of scarce human and economic capital solving the wrong problems.
Decentralization is a deceptively simple term with a long history in politics and management /organizational theory than communication networks. Web 3.0 decentralization can be seen as a response to this demand for greater personalization and control through decentralization protocols. Deployments of decentralized networks are relatively recent with the processes and technology for monitoring them is also relatively immature. Algorithms and protocols embodied in communications infrastructures and services also implement and enforce other social objectives and requirements.
5G deployments have introduced the public to a number of new communications services – e.g., targeting Machine-Machine (M2M) communication as well as new communication modalities- e.g., Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technologies for metaverse applications such as Digital Twins. The plethora of different services currently available or enabled by 5G has already spawned a huge variety of business models. This significantly impacts the number of stakeholders impacted by 6G services. Safe, reliable decentralized technologies such as blockchain can be expected to play a significant role in delivering 6G services.
6G is still within the requirements-gathering phase with deployments targeted for the 2030s. Proposals are emerging that place decentralization squarely within the scope of 6G. Decentralization remains a tool for economic regulation to deter market dominance or anti-trust monopoly influences that can distort online services. 6G developers have the opportunity to focus on solving real human needs rather than extrapolating technology possibilities. Decentralization has demonstrated utility in a broad range of fields from politics and organization theory to networks. Algorithmic approaches to implement decentralization objectives already exist and are being further industrialized
For additional details refer to Wright, S. A. (2022, November). 6G Decentralization. In 2022 International Conference on Electrical and Computing Technologies and Applications (ICECTA) (pp. 309-312). IEEE.