The Web and the 'blockchain' : Moving From 'Online' to 'Inline'

Future Web technology will have native features to build and manage Cooperative Ecosystems and Open Sharing economy

‘Online’ to ‘Inline’ : Intent of this paper is to "connect the dots" to describe this paradigm shift.

Technology side

Within a distributed organization, you operate in a context where information as a whole can be modified by any actor at any time, and you need to know who, did what and when with its parts.

Your context is inline when over the time the chain of dependent transformations on the parts resulting from the decentralized process execution has root information trusted by all the parties of the decentralized organization.

The World Wide Web is a native global decentralized organization but it does not include native features to to operate inline. Inline actors do not need intermediaries to trust in information within a decentralized process, agreements are enough.  

Today Intermediation depends on a trusted organization which owns root information. With the emerging Distributed Ledger Technology a decentralized organization can operate without any trusted organization.

In a way, all actors become intermediaries and intermediation, a peer process. Any information - digital assets in particular - used in a such process must be inline in order to be fully effective and open to any player. 

Back to future with the original proposal of Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in March 1989, the root of the WWW.

Remind that WWW is the viral enabler of disintermediation and the best vehicle for the adoption of this technology. With a transparent integration of Hypertext and Distributed ledger, The WWW will become a "Distributed Web", a new framework compatible with existing W3C standards and development frameworks but rethinking applications with process level introspection and reflection capabilities and associated features to manage agreements.

An agreement rules orchestration into decentralized process such as chains of context information result in inline information for participating parties. Orchestration manages cost and value of risk of inline information within an Open law framework.

Note that 'Distributed web' is not a new concept: See Xanadu.

To summarize, by extending the Web with integration of Distributed Ledger features to its main components the Internet will become a Media to record and manage activities in any kind of decentralized organizations. It enables any people and organization to create digital assets.

Business side

From a business point of view, with the enablement of decentralized organizations, business model innovation will result in transformation of the way to monetize, including the enterprise itself. 

Business will increasingly be ruled by mutual agreements with as a side effect, the emergence of distributed platforms with an open framework suited to the development of applications based on the sharing economy model. Then organization of the Web itself is going to evolve to manage agreements as it has changed the way we manage Information...

From a governance point of view, a new regulation will be required to cope with a market ruled by multiples agreements to manage inclusion of all players with requirements to implement interledger capabilities. 

Business opportunity

Large players already anticipate and try to shape the future, for instance in the financial sector. Large enterprises want to benefit from Digital Ledger technology to support their own organization and business. Making disintermediation as a business is the driving force...

On other side, consortiums and startups drive the game with in some cases foundations to support players willing to develop an enabling technology, i.e make a market and develop an ecosystem with startups to address market needs where disintermediation is the driving force...

But remind that we are at the first stage...

Third option is based on "decentralized model of intermediation", with W3C compliant technology (native), easy to integrate and viral technology to get all players to be safe from disintermediation!

Long term vision

Instrumenting decentralized organization will boost any potential to reshape markets which also mean fostering business innovation, from a market point of view, a sustainable disruption. That requires to encode organization in the digital medium.

Personally, I think a "Social money' will emerge to drive adoption of a model where "doing more with less" will require to creating more value for all players, a golden rule for each player : Cooperate more to be more competitive.