From Thrones to Protocols*

Human civilization did not begin in freedom. It began in coordination.

The earliest human societies faced a brutal optimization problem: how to align large numbers of strangers under scarcity, danger, and uncertainty. Food had to be stored, land defended, disputes settled, and labor synchronized with seasons. In such conditions, centralization was not a choice, it was a survival technology.

Early societies lacked three things:

cheap communication, cheap verification, and cheap coordination.

When information moved slowly, truth was hard to verify, and trust did not scale, the only viable solution was hierarchy. A king, priest, or council became the single source of truth. Authority reduced complexity. One voice replaced many. One ledger replaced chaos. One command substituted for consensus.

Centralization solved several primitive constraints:

- Energy constraints: Surplus energy (grain, labor) had to be stored and allocated efficiently.

- Security constraints: Defense required unified command.

- Cognitive constraints: Humans can only maintain trust relationships with a limited number of people.

- Information constraints: Without writing, printing, or networks, truth traveled no faster than a messenger.

Empires, religions, and later nation-states emerged not because humans loved domination, but because hierarchy minimized coordination costs under technological limits.

Centralization scaled civilization.

But it came with a price...

Centralized systems create efficiency by concentrating power. Over time, that concentration introduces fragility.

When a system relies on a single authority to define truth, allocate resources, or enforce rules, corruption becomes structurally inevitable—not because people are evil, but because incentives asymmetrically reward control.

As civilizations grew more complex, centralized systems accumulated pathologies:

- Single points of failure

- Censorship of information

- Rent-seeking behavior

- Delayed or distorted feedback

- Systemic trust erosion

For centuries, humanity tolerated these costs because there was no alternative. Decentralization was simply too expensive.

Until technology changed the equation.

The decisive force pushing civilization toward decentralization is not ideology, politics, or even morality.

It is the collapse of verification costs.

Decentralization becomes viable only when individuals can independently verify truth without trusting a central authority.

Three technological breakthroughs enabled this shift:

1. Communication networks (the Internet)

Information now travels at near-zero cost.

2. Computation

Complex coordination problems can be solved algorithmically rather than administratively.

3. Cryptography

Truth can be proven mathematically instead of institutionally.

Where trust was once cheaper than verification, verification is now cheaper than trust.

This reverses the ancient trade-off.

In centralized systems, trust is personal or institutional:

“Believe this because we say so.”

In decentralized systems, trust is replaced by rules:

“Don’t trust—verify.”

Protocols do not persuade. They execute.

This is why the Internet had no king, email had no ministry, open-source software had no CEO, and Bitcoin has no issuer. These systems coordinate massive populations not through authority, but through shared, verifiable rules.

They are not leaderless. They are rule-bound.

Decentralized systems outperform centralized ones when:

- Scale exceeds human governance capacity

- Speed exceeds bureaucratic response time

- Truth becomes contested

- Trust becomes expensive

- Global coordination is required

Modern civilization meets all five conditions.

Centralized systems still excel at fast execution and emergency control. But in environments of high complexity and low trust, they fail catastrophically.

Decentralized systems, while slower to evolve, exhibit:

- Anti-fragility

- Censorship resistance

- Graceful failure

- Permissionless innovation

- Long-term resilience

They survive stress rather than suppress it.

Civilizations begin centralized because they must. They decentralize because they can.

This is not a revolution against order. It is an evolution of coordination.

The arc bends not toward chaos, but toward self-verifying systems—where power is constrained by math, not morality; where truth is demonstrated, not declared.

Humanity is not abandoning structure. It is upgrading it.

From thrones to institutions.

From institutions to networks.

From networks to protocols.

And in doing so, civilization slowly replaces trust with truth.

* with the help of chatgpt.