Open ecosystems often have Optional Catalytic Complements.

· Bits and Bobs 4/27/26
  • Open ecosystems often have Optional Catalytic Complements.
    • Open ecosystems are amazing.
    • They can become ubiquitous, because no one is afraid that by joining they'll become indebted to some powerful actor.
    • But open ecosystems are also hard to coordinate.
    • There are some complement roles in ecosystems that are technically optional, but when they work correctly can catalyze significantly more value for the ecosystem overall.
    • These are things like a package registry, or a payments provider everyone uses, or a search engine.
      • GitHub is another example.
      • Git allows an infinite variety of different decentralized workflows.
      • GitHub provides a single, mostly centralized convention.
      • You can still do more complex workflows if you want to, but you almost never will.
      • The benefit of being in the place everyone else is and using the same conventions as them is too valuable.
    • In these cases, the complement having solved the coordination problem allows the open components to run even hotter.
      • Because the complement is optional and possible for the ecosystem to route around if it got too greedy.
    • For these OCCs, everybody benefits if there's an option everybody likes.
      • That allows you to take it for granted.
      • Supercharging the ecosystem for everyone.

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