Battle Of Generations?

13 May 2020 by rate3

Today I want to make an exception from the main rule of this group to concentrate on DLT technologies and its implications and avoid politics. IMHO, Pavel Durov's statement, which was published on May 12, 2020 deserves to be reviewed even if it has nothing to do with the code.

As many of you already know Telegram CEO has announced that their "active involvement with TON is over" after US court banned the Gram (coin) distribution not only on the territory of USA but also all over the world arguing that: "a US citizen might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched."

Obviously, Durov sounds a bit melodramatic when he says: "But today, we are in a vicious circle: you can’t bring more balance to an overly centralized world exactly because it’s so centralized. We did try though."

After all as he said himself "TON was designed to share the principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum" and the fact that his own project comes to the sudden stop doesn't at all means that the battle "for decentralization, balance and equality in the world" is lost and now we all have to be "leaving it to the the next generations of entrepreneurs and developers to pick up the banner and learn from our mistakes."

Still, he makes a number of important points, which very few tech executives with similar public statute and wealth have ever dare to make:

"Sadly, the US judge is right about one thing: we, the people outside the US, can vote for our presidents and elect our parliaments, but we are still dependent on the United States when it comes to finance and technology. The US can use its control over the dollar and the global financial system to shut down any bank or bank account in the world. It can use its control over Apple and Google to remove apps from the App Store and Google Play. So yes, it is true that other countries do not have full sovereignty over what to allow on their territory. Unfortunately, we – the 96% of the world’s population living elsewhere – are dependent on decision makers elected by the 4% living in the US."

We, '4% living in the US', tend to forget and / or to avoid this subject because we are one of the prime beneficiaries of this particular world's architecture. Nonetheless, by the mere fact of our involvement in the 'decentralization movement' we also, willingly or not, challenge this system, which has served the basis of our personal prosperity. That's a difficult situation to be in.

Nonetheless, I believe that this 'challenge' has a creative - not distractive - character and must be considered as an absolutely necessary and inevitable stage in the historic progress of all socio-economic institutions. Without innovative changes systems loose their adaptive qualities, became obsolete and dangerous for all those who wholeheartedly rely on it.

I think that despite all our setbacks we all have to keep fighting for those changes exactly because, as Pavel, himself, puts it: "This battle may well be the most important battle of our generation."