Incentivize what matters by Robert Drost

Incentivize what matters: How Decentralized Incentivized APIs will build the Decentralized Public Cloud The talk argues that APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are a critical component for abstracting open-source software and connecting middleware, making them a key component in modern software stacks for both web2 apps and web3 dApps. The growth of Linux led to the rise of open-source software and APIs, and startups and investors moved from proprietary software to open core + SaaS business models. Public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have transformed corporate IT by providing elastic compute, storage, and communication services, but they have also monetized open-source software by layering their own proprietary SaaS stacks on top. This has gutted the open-source startup model, as the open core OSS feeds directly into the cloud provider's revenue instead of the teams who find, build, and maintain the open core portion of the OSS. The talk suggests that decentralized incentivized APIs, a tool from blockchain technology, can change this by including decentralized metering and billing as integral features of APIs, allowing for the reconstruction of public clouds in the full image of decentralization. Similar to how gas is used for Ethereum transactions, layer 1 API metering and billing can be trustless machine-to-machine APIs that run in payment state channels coupled to the underlying TCP 1:1 communication. Layer 2 metering and billing systems can be as rich or richer than existing centralized cloud providers, with different forms of freemium and premium business models. The talk suggests that this model should spread throughout the decentralized cloud services model, driving the monetization of OSS and feeding back to accelerating its development. It aims for a multi-protocol and multi-participant world with many datacenters running the DPC (decentralized public cloud) stack and providing services through many protocols and decentralized protocols with their dAPIs.