It Was Ten Years Ago Today

Ten years ago today I posted Economies of Scale in Peer-to-Peer Networks . My fundamental insight was:

• The income to a participant in a P2P network of this kind should be linear in their contribution of resources to the network.
• The costs a participant incurs by contributing resources to the network will be less than linear in their resource contribution, because of the economies of scale.
• Thus the proportional profit margin a participant obtains will increase with increasing resource contribution.
• Thus the effects described in Brian Arthur's Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy will apply, and the network will be dominated by a few, perhaps just one, large participant.

In the name of blatant self-promotion, below the fold I look at how this insight has held up since.

Warning: Slow Blogging Ahead

Vicky & I have recently acquired two major joint writing assignments with effective deadlines in the next couple of months. And I am still on the hook for a Wikipedia page about the late Dewayne Hendricks. This is all likely to reduce the flow of posts on this blog for a while, for which I apologize.