The blockchain symbolizes a shift in power from the centre to the edge of the networks.” – William Mougayar
The current internet infrastructure and business model surrounding server farms has produced one of the biggest centralised systems in the world. Server farms are dominated by large and central corporation which provide the required cloud service to host certain commercial and non-commercial services.
A report published by Steve Ranger found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) dominates with a 33.8 percent global market share, while its three nearest competitors; Microsoft, Google, and IBM, together accounted for 30.8 percent of the market, according to calculations of the analyst- Canalys (Ranger, 2019).
This current cloud model confirms that renting virtual hardware through online portals are much more cost effective as central companies ensure that all servers are up to date with the most advanced technology, easily accessible and lastly, both time effective and user-friendly with the high customer support.
This forecasts a major flaw with the aimed decentralised technological advancement.
All computer software which has been built from the platform level requires infrastructure. By supporting and building on these central entities, a decentralised system is being erected on centralised infrastructure.
Consequently, increasing dependency on centralised services and dependency on centralised corporation.
This section presents the major issues within the current internet structure and how this project aims to disrupt central entities, by re-engineering from the foundation to build the next generation internet infrastructure, providing a decentralised suite of product and services on a decentralised and distributed network.
The first major key issue which supports the increased dependency on corporate centralised servers are hardware investment and other cost association as well as knowledge base limitation and user incentive.
Research conducted by Statista aiming to understand the most common internet use case resulted with over 90% claiming to use the internet mostly for email and instant messaging, as well as over 70% using it for social media/networking (Statista, 2019).
Data link: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183910/internet-activities-of-us-users/
This research illustrates that the majority of all internet users primarily use the internet for personal use without the need of owning, understanding or being incentivised to own a server.
Recent technological development followed by the rise of Masternodes eco-systems; which incentives the user into running a Masternode, is gradually being adopted, leading to an increase in security and infrastructure vulnerability. In addition to the lack of user knowledge, hardening techniques/skill and non-existent user-friendly interface to guide and support the user, this is forecasting a potential security weakness which could allow an adversary to theoretically manipulate and exploit mass Masternode servers.
Reference:
Ranger, S. (2019). AWS dominates cloud computing infrastructure market, bigger than IBM/Google/Microsoft combined | ZDNet. [online] ZDNet. Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-dominates-cloud-computing-infrastructure-marketbigger-than-ibmgooglemicrosoft-combined/.
Statista (2019). Leading U.S. internet activities 2017 | Statistic. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183910/internet-activities-of-us-users/.