We are at the start of a paradigm shift in software architecture: the wave of decentralised data networks. The movement we have seen build up over the past few years goes beyond Bitcoin and other crypto-assets, or even open source software and blockchains. Taking a broader view, it is the victory of peer-to-peer data networks based on open standards, it reflects the power of properly aligned economic incentives, and it begins to harness the individual data centres in everyone’s pocket, desktop, car, living room and wrist. The movement is made possible by the proliferation of access to high speed wireless broadband, rapidly maturing cloud-native software and a surge of recent machine learning advancements.
Over the past few decades, technology architecture advancements have commoditised operating systems and software packages by making them globally accessible via data centres and cloud infrastructure. In this new wave, the data centre is being spread to the very edge of the network and the data itself is being ‘open-sourced’, commoditised into reusable trusted building blocks. Distributed users and machines interact with this data via a substrate of peer-to-peer networks. These peer-to-peer data networks become a ‘fabric’ that validates and curates information inputs without the need for third parties, while empowering individual users with their own data in a usable, secure and scalable manner.
To support this vision, Fabric Ventures is adapting the patient venture capital model to investing in decentralised data networks: backing the boldest technologists & communities at the earliest stages, supporting them throughout their journey and becoming active participants within the networks they are building.