The promise of Web3 is a sovereign internet—a digital landscape free from the gatekeepers of Silicon Valley. We are told that decentralized applications (dApps) are uncensorable and permanent. However, a peek under the hood reveals a startling reality: the “decentralized” revolution is currently being hosted by the very giants it seeks to replace.
The Hidden Centralization
While blockchain ledgers are distributed, the infrastructure required to access and run them is dangerously concentrated.
The Infrastructure Paradox
Most Web3 projects rely on centralized services for critical operations:
- Cloud Hosting: A significant portion of Ethereum and Solana nodes run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud.
- API Gateways: Developers often use centralized intermediaries like Infura or Alchemy to interact with the blockchain, creating single points of failure.
- Front-end Hosting: Most dApp user interfaces are hosted on traditional servers, making them vulnerable to domain seizures or provider outages.
Why It Matters
This dependency creates a “decentralization theater.” If a major cloud provider pulls the plug or faces a regulatory crackdown, the supposedly unkillable web goes dark. True decentralization is a hardware problem as much as a software one.
Conclusion
Until the industry prioritizes decentralized storage and physical node ownership, Web3 remains a layer of code sitting atop a centralized foundation. To achieve true independence, we must move beyond the cloud and reclaim the underlying infrastructure.