Wendy Williams&#x27; team revealed she has been diagnosed with primary <strong>progressive</strong> aphasia​ and frontotemporal dementia​.

Wendy Williams diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia​ and frontotemporal dementia - CBS News

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The Progressive Corporation, through its subsidiaries, provides personal and commercial auto insurance, residential property insurance, and other specialty property-casualty insurance and related services primarily in the United States. Its Personal Lines segment writes insurance for personal autos, and recreational and other vehicles. This segment's products include personal auto insurance; and special lines products, including insurance for motorcycles, ATVs, RVs, watercrafts, and snowmobiles. The company's Commercial Lines segment provides auto-related primary liability and physical damage insurance, and business-related general liability and property insurance for autos, vans, pick-up trucks, and dump trucks used by small businesses; tractors, trailers, and straight trucks primarily used by regional general freight and expeditor-type businesses, and non-fleet long-haul operators; dump trucks, log trucks, and garbage trucks used by dirt, sand and gravel, logging, and coal-type businesses; tow trucks and wreckers used in towing services and gas/service station businesses; and non-fleet taxis, black-car services, and airport taxis. Its Property segment provides residential property insurance for homes, condos, manufactured homes, and renters, as well as offers personal umbrella insurance, and primary and excess flood insurance. The company also offers policy issuance and claims adjusting services; home, condominium, renters, and other insurance; and business owner's policies, general liability, professional liability, and workers' compensation insurance. In addition, it offers reinsurance services. The Progressive Corporation sells its products and services through independent insurance agencies, as well as directly on Internet through mobile devices, and over the phone. The Progressive Corporation was founded in 1937 and is headquartered in Mayfield, Ohio.

Progressive

Progressive Web Apps have proven very useful and we have seen them being implemented in lots of projects. However, they are not here to take the place of native apps but to fix some problems such as cross-platform compatibility. Progressive Web Applications Progressive Web Applications are web applications that can act as regular mobile applications. Therefore you can have access to some device APIs and functionalities that only native mobile applications are expected to be able to access and also have the operating system’s native interface. PWA is a technology developed by Google and was outsourced by the company for others to use and enjoy its awesome benefits. How they work PWAs are reliant on different technologies such as Manifest, Web Workers, Local Storage, Session Storage which allow PWAs to work efficiently and perform tasks as native applications would. These technologies ensure that Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen just like the app was installed, can work without internet connectivity, deliver push notifications, intercept network requests, sync data in the background etc. How to build them There are different technologies used for building Progressive Web Applications mostly JavaScript based and they all have their different advantages and disadvantages, however, that is not the focus of this article. : A powerful JavaScript library for building powerful, dynamic and modern User Interfaces. React A combination of components, tools, and templates primarily for building Progressive Web Applications. Polymer: : A JavaScript framework for building dynamic web applications, uses HTML as a template language. Angular : A JavaScript framework for building powerful applications for multiple platforms using one codebase. Ionic (AMP): An open-source project for improving the performance of web pages by making them load almost instantaneously. Accelerated Mobile Pages Use cases Just in case you are still wondering if PWAs are worth the investment, companies such as through Twitter Lite, , are using PWAs successfully. Twitter Instagram Google Maps Native Applications Native Applications are software developed to be used to particular platforms with no consideration of other platforms. These applications have large access to the device’s functionality and resources. Provided you have used a mobile device before, there is a very high possibility that you would have made use of a native application. The chances of never coming across them are almost zero. How they work Native Applications are written in languages suited for the operating system and have access to the device’s API and hardware functionality. Unlike Progressive Web Apps which are web pages having a native feel and look, native applications “live” on the device and have to be installed on them. Native Apps are all Progressive Web Apps are made to look like, except that Native Apps are not cross-platform compatible. How to build them JavaScript remains the main language for building PWAs, and the different frameworks stated earlier are JavaScript based. However, the case is different with native applications, as the language used to build them varies by operating system. : Official language of the Android operating system, used for building native applications for the platform. Java : Newer language and similar to Java, also for building amazing native applications. Kotlin (Xamarin & Unity): C# can be used to build great native applications through framework and (a game engine). C# Xamarin Unity : The primary language for building software for iOS devices. Objective-C : Apple’s released language for building software for the iOS, said to be easier to use than Objective-C. Swift Apple and Google provide development environments for the iOS and Android which are XCode and Android Studio respectively. The technologies for building native applications would always vary for each platform, therefore you should find the one that you are most comfortable with for the operating system of your choice. Use cases You can find native applications everywhere. A quick visit to the Google Play store, the Appstore and you would find native apps for the Android and iOS respectively. Software such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat are a few names from the endless list of software that have gained a large of user base through their wonderful native applications. Making a choice In truth, Progressive Web Apps and Native Apps have their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it is left to you to make the choice that benefits you the most. Below is a list of conditions you should check before making a choice. Choose PWAs when: The app to be easily distributable. There is a low app development budget. There’s little or no time for the app to be built. Search engine indexing is important. Multi-platform compatibility is needed. Choose Native Apps when: There is a need for an app store. Speed and responsiveness are critical to the app’s success. The app would be dependent on device hardware functionalities. The money would be made off app purchase and downloads. The app needs to interact with other third-party apps. Stick to what option best matches the needs of the application and there would rarely be any problems. Written by Anton Shaleynikov

Progressive Web Apps vs Native Apps — When and Which to Choose

Learn How Build a Progressive Web App in Minutes with Next.js

Obteniu informació sobre com crear una aplicació web progressiva en qüestió de minuts amb Next.js

Aprenda a crear una aplicación web progresiva en minutos con Next.js

Découvrez comment créer une application Web progressive en quelques minutes avec Next.js

Next.js के साथ मिनटों में प्रगतिशील वेब ऐप बनाना सीखें

Naučite kako izgraditi progresivnu web-aplikaciju u nekoliko minuta uz Next.js

Pelajari Cara Membuat Aplikasi Web Progresif dalam Hitungan Menit dengan Next.js

Scopri come creare un'app Web progressiva in pochi minuti con Next.js

Next.js を使って数分でプログレッシブ Web アプリを構築する方法を学ぶ

Leer hoe u in enkele minuten een progressieve web-app bouwt met Next.js

Aflați cum să creați o aplicație web progresivă în câteva minute cu Next.js

Научите како да направите прогресивну веб апликацију за неколико минута помоћу Нект.јс

Next.js yordamida bir necha daqiqada progressiv veb-ilovani qanday yaratishni bilib oling

Authors:
(1) Han Jiang, HKUST and Equal contribution (hjiangav@connect.ust.hk);
(2) Haosen Sun, HKUST and Equal contribution (hsunas@connect.ust.hk);
(3) Ruoxuan Li, HKUST and Equal contribution (rliba@connect.ust.hk);
(4) Chi-Keung Tang, HKUST (cktang@cs.ust.hk);
(5) Yu-Wing Tai, Dartmouth College, (yu-wing.tai@dartmouth.edu). Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction 2. Related Work 2.1. NeRF Editing and 2.2. Inpainting Techniques 2.3. Text-Guided Visual Content Generation 3. Method 3.1. Training View Pre-processing 3.2. Progressive Training 3.3. 4D Extension 4. Experiments and 4.1. Experimental Setups 4.2. Ablation and comparison 5. Conclusion and 6. References 3.2. Progressive Training Warmup Training. Our training image pre-processing stage provides a good initialization for rough convergence. Before fine-tuning on these images to get fine convergence, notice that the 3D object in NeRF is still the original object intact, which is quite different from what is depicted in the pre-processed training images above in geometry and appearance. Therefore, for the first stage of NeRF training, without any finetuning, we directly train the NeRF on the preprocessed images for coarse convergence. Note that when we perform fine-tuning later, the original object will have no effect because warmup training has already erased all its appearance information. Iterative Dataset Update. Given a NeRF in which the editing target has fixed overall geometry, Iterative Dataset Update (IDU), first proposed and shown effective in InstructNerf2Nerf [4], is a useful training image fine-tuning strategy which can edit the appearance and fine geometry of the target object in NeRF. In our task, warmup training has already provided a converged coarse geometry, leaving fine geometry and appearance to be determined. In their work, they use InstructPix2Pix [1] as a diffusion model strongly conditioned on the original training image. In our task, we use stable diffusion in a similar way to achieve similar objectives. The fine-tuned image should be conditioned on the pre-processed image, as well as the depth map. In detail, for pre-processed image conditioning, we adopt the same approach as in the previously introduced projected image correction. The preprocessed image and the current NeRF rendering are blended together, either in image space or in latent space. Then a small amount of noise is injected into the blended image, followed by stable diffusion denoising from an intermediate timestep. For depth map conditioning, we input the depth map of the current NeRF into ControlNet to guide the editing process. Along with training image updates and NeRF training, the underlying NeRF will gradually converge to an object with fine details, making rendering from NeRF more reliable. Meanwhile, stable diffusion correction with less noise injected into the training images introduces less multiview inconsistency to fine details. Therefore, we gradually increase the intermediate timestep of our stable diffusion correction when training NeRF, until the intermediate timestep becomes very close to the final denoise timestep. Consequently, the coarse NeRF converges to a fine one. Regularizers. To supervise NeRF training, we use the L1 photometric loss between NeRF rendering and the training images. However, sole supervision of RGB cannot avoid inaccuracies and noise in geometry. To achieve clean converged geometry, we add the following two regularizers into supervision. First, we also render a depth value along a ray, and compute the depth loss as defined in [3] between the rendered depth and our pre-processed 2-layer depth i.e., initial inpainted geometry proxies. Supervision with our planar 2-layer depth is not accurate, but it helps to avoid incorrect converged geometry, such as merging of the inpainted geometry with the background. Second, to deal with noisy RGB and depth renderings and “floaters” (artifacts hovering in the underlying NeRF volume), we use LPIPS loss [40] on RGB as a regularizing term. In practice, we found LPIPS to be effective in reducing noise and floaters. Since LPIPS is based on patches, rays selected in NeRF training are not allowed to be random, but are required to form rectangular patches. Thus we render small image patches, corresponding to rectangular areas in ground truth images, during NeRF optimization. The effect of the regularizers is also previously demonstrated in [31, 34]. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Han Jiang, HKUST and Equal contribution (hjiangav@connect.ust.hk); (2) Haosen Sun, HKUST and Equal contribution (hsunas@connect.ust.hk); (3) Ruoxuan Li, HKUST and Equal contribution (rliba@connect.ust.hk); (4) Chi-Keung Tang, HKUST (cktang@cs.ust.hk); (5) Yu-Wing Tai, Dartmouth College, (yu-wing.tai@dartmouth.edu). Authors: Authors: (1) Han Jiang, HKUST and Equal contribution (hjiangav@connect.ust.hk); (2) Haosen Sun, HKUST and Equal contribution (hsunas@connect.ust.hk); (3) Ruoxuan Li, HKUST and Equal contribution (rliba@connect.ust.hk); (4) Chi-Keung Tang, HKUST (cktang@cs.ust.hk); (5) Yu-Wing Tai, Dartmouth College, (yu-wing.tai@dartmouth.edu). Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction Abstract and 1. Introduction 2. Related Work 2.1. NeRF Editing and 2.2. Inpainting Techniques 2.1. NeRF Editing and 2.2. Inpainting Techniques 2.3. Text-Guided Visual Content Generation 2.3. Text-Guided Visual Content Generation 3. Method 3. Method 3.1. Training View Pre-processing 3.1. Training View Pre-processing 3.2. Progressive Training 3.2. Progressive Training 3.3. 4D Extension 3.3. 4D Extension 4. Experiments and 4.1. Experimental Setups 4. Experiments and 4.1. Experimental Setups 4.2. Ablation and comparison 4.2. Ablation and comparison 5. Conclusion and 6. References 5. Conclusion and 6. References 3.2. Progressive Training Warmup Training. Our training image pre-processing stage provides a good initialization for rough convergence. Before fine-tuning on these images to get fine convergence, notice that the 3D object in NeRF is still the original object intact, which is quite different from what is depicted in the pre-processed training images above in geometry and appearance. Therefore, for the first stage of NeRF training, without any finetuning, we directly train the NeRF on the preprocessed images for coarse convergence. Note that when we perform fine-tuning later, the original object will have no effect because warmup training has already erased all its appearance information. Warmup Training. Iterative Dataset Update. Given a NeRF in which the editing target has fixed overall geometry, Iterative Dataset Update (IDU), first proposed and shown effective in InstructNerf2Nerf [4], is a useful training image fine-tuning strategy which can edit the appearance and fine geometry of the target object in NeRF. In our task, warmup training has already provided a converged coarse geometry, leaving fine geometry and appearance to be determined. In their work, they use InstructPix2Pix [1] as a diffusion model strongly conditioned on the original training image. In our task, we use stable diffusion in a similar way to achieve similar objectives. The fine-tuned image should be conditioned on the pre-processed image, as well as the depth map. In detail, for pre-processed image conditioning, we adopt the same approach as in the previously introduced projected image correction. The preprocessed image and the current NeRF rendering are blended together, either in image space or in latent space. Then a small amount of noise is injected into the blended image, followed by stable diffusion denoising from an intermediate timestep. For depth map conditioning, we input the depth map of the current NeRF into ControlNet to guide the editing process. Iterative Dataset Update. Along with training image updates and NeRF training, the underlying NeRF will gradually converge to an object with fine details, making rendering from NeRF more reliable. Meanwhile, stable diffusion correction with less noise injected into the training images introduces less multiview inconsistency to fine details. Therefore, we gradually increase the intermediate timestep of our stable diffusion correction when training NeRF, until the intermediate timestep becomes very close to the final denoise timestep. Consequently, the coarse NeRF converges to a fine one. Regularizers. To supervise NeRF training, we use the L1 photometric loss between NeRF rendering and the training images. However, sole supervision of RGB cannot avoid inaccuracies and noise in geometry. To achieve clean converged geometry, we add the following two regularizers into supervision. First, we also render a depth value along a ray, and compute the depth loss as defined in [3] between the rendered depth and our pre-processed 2-layer depth i.e., initial inpainted geometry proxies. Supervision with our planar 2-layer depth is not accurate, but it helps to avoid incorrect converged geometry, such as merging of the inpainted geometry with the background. Second, to deal with noisy RGB and depth renderings and “floaters” (artifacts hovering in the underlying NeRF volume), we use LPIPS loss [40] on RGB as a regularizing term. In practice, we found LPIPS to be effective in reducing noise and floaters. Since LPIPS is based on patches, rays selected in NeRF training are not allowed to be random, but are required to form rectangular patches. Thus we render small image patches, corresponding to rectangular areas in ground truth images, during NeRF optimization. The effect of the regularizers is also previously demonstrated in [31, 34]. Regularizers. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. available on arxiv

NeRF Editing and Inpainting Techniques: Progressive Training

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Pascal Baumann, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (2) Rupak Majumdar, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (3) Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (4) Georg Zetzsche, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany. Table of Links Introduction Dynamic Networks of Concurret Pushdown Systems (DCPS) Warm-up: Non-Termination Fair Non-Termination From Progressive Runs for VASSB to Reachability Starvation Conclusion, Acknowledgment & References A. Strengthening Fairness to Progressive Runs B. Proofs from Section 4.1 C. Proofs for Section 5 D. Proofs for Section 5.3 E. Proofs for Section 6 A STRENGTHENING FAIRNESS TO PROGRESSIVE RUNS In this section we strengthen the notion of fairness for DCPS to progressiveness by proving Lemma 4.3. Idea. To prove Lemma 4.3 we modify the DCPS A by giving every thread a bottom of stack symbol ⊥ and saving its context switch number in its top of stack symbol. We also save this number in the global state whenever a thread is active. This way we can still swap a thread out and back in again once it has emptied its stack, and we also can keep track of how often we need to repeat that, before we reach K context switches and allow it to terminate. Furthermore, we also keep a subset A ′ of the global states of A in our new global states, which restricts the states that can appear when no thread is active. This way we can guess that a thread will be “stuck” in the future, upon which we terminate it instead (going up to K context switches first) and also spawn a new thread keeping track of its top of stack symbol in the bag. Then later we restrict the subset G ′ to only those global states that do not have Resume rules for the top of stack symbols we saved in the bag. This then verifies our guess of “being stuck”.

Context-Bounded Verification of Liveness: A Strengthening Fairness to Progressive Runs

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Pascal Baumann, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (2) Rupak Majumdar, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (3) Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany; (4) Georg Zetzsche, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany. Table of Links Introduction Dynamic Networks of Concurret Pushdown Systems (DCPS) Warm-up: Non-Termination Fair Non-Termination From Progressive Runs for VASSB to Reachability Starvation Conclusion, Acknowledgment & References A. Strengthening Fairness to Progressive Runs B. Proofs from Section 4.1 C. Proofs for Section 5 D. Proofs for Section 5.3 E. Proofs for Section 6 5 FROM PROGRESSIVE RUNS FOR VASSB TO REACHABILITY In this section, we prove Theorems 4.1 and 4.2. We outline the main ideas and technical lemmas used to obtain the proofs. The formal proofs can be found in the full version of the paper. We first establish that finite witnesses exist for infinite progressive runs. As a byproduct, this yields Theorem 4.2. Then, we show that finding finite witnesses for progressive runs reduces to reachability in VASSB. Finally, we prove that reachability is decidable for VASSB. 5.1 From Progressive Runs to Shallow Progressive Runs The zero-base property is easily obtained by making sure that the portion of tokens transferred which correspond to the base vector are separately transferred using E -edges. The addition of the types into the global state can be done by expanding the set of balloon states exponentially. A proof of the lemma is given in the full version. p 5.2 Reduction to Reachability 5.3 From Reachability in VASSB to Reachability in VASS

Context-Bounded Verification of Liveness: From Progressive Runs for VASSB to Reachability

2023 closed out with another major case between the crypto industry and regulators. A year after the infamous collapse of FTX, one of its main competitors, , negotiated a settlement deal with US regulators expected to reach between . Binance $4 and $5 billion This lawsuit is one in a string of cases that highlight how the crypto industry is increasingly coming under the spotlight for fraudulent financial practices. While shady trading activity needs to be tackled across industries, the way regulators make these rules could be putting the cart before the horse when it comes to crypto. One policy expert who is increasingly known as a divisive figure on this subject is , a lawyer who serves as a Commissioner for the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In an with Bloomberg TV in November 2023, she commented: “I will say that litigation is not the most effective way to carry out regulations…we should really be thinking proactively about building a regulatory framework.” Hester Peirce interview While regulators and legacy institutions have been reluctant to embrace crypto and blockchain-related technologies, ignoring their growing presence in our digital landscape isn’t likely to hold out as a strategy for much longer. For one, there’s an increasing consensus that which makes the case to lay new regulatory foundations more pressing. decentralized crypto markets will create significant security risks On the other, traditional financial structures don’t have a glowing track record with bailouts and collapsed banks as part of the regular run. For this reason, is keen to see a more competitive set-up that supports innovation “It’s something that we have to think about when we’re writing rules: Are rules preventing new products and services from coming into the industry?” Peirce And it looks like this type of question could be answered sooner rather than later thanks to a new global blockchain forum in which Peirce is participating as a speaker. The USA-UAE Alliance™ is set to launch on 6th March 2024 and is headed up by Edward Cullen of Crescite Innovation Corporation and Michael Amatulli of MVNM. Finding the answer to pressing blockchain questions While the run of aforementioned crypto-scandals hasn’t helped with blockchain’s reputation, Cullen and Amatulli are keen to point out that this is just one of the many potential ways that this developing technology can be applied. After the USA-UAE Alliance™ launches at the Emirates Financial Tower this March, the team is aiming to nurture dialogue related to the whole suite of Web3 technologies. This is expected to include everything from the technological infrastructure needed to support transfers and transactions on the blockchain through to more altruistic examples such as tokens that help underbanked citizens accumulate value through rent payments. As with crypto, much of the regulatory problems stem from the fact that frameworks are playing catch-up with the technology in real-time. With the new alliance, it’s hoped that experts can take a much more proactive approach and have open discussions about both the good and bad realities in a safe environment. Cullen used an interesting example to illustrate this by drawing comparisons to the explosive rise of OpenAI in 2023 and the regulatory backlash that followed. “AI’s prowess took many by surprise and experts are keen to get ahead of emerging technologies in a more collective manner,” Cullen noted. This dialogue between industry exports will be needed to support the creation of secure, decentralized digital systems that work for the many, not the few. The line between progress and ethics Much of the draw of decentralized systems stems from the anonymous nature Web3 promises its users in contrast to the data-surveillance era that played in during the growth of Web 2.0. But this anonymity is also a major concern for experts and lawmakers alike as it has the potential to open the door to more nefarious activity. Rather than drawing their own line in the sand on this type of subject, the USA-UAE Alliance™ hopes to shine a spotlight on thorny questions and champion educational programs that offer people a crash course on subjects like digital asset adoption. In this way, collective answers on blockchain applications can be reached by the many in reflection of the egalitarian aims of the technology itself. Cullen and Amatulli were classmates at Georgetown University and both have strong ties with both the USA and UAE. They wanted to leverage the best of both their backgrounds to help support innovation with this technology and lean on the regulatory and financial prowess found in both host countries. Amatulli noted that the alliance aims to act as a form of knowledge sharing more than anything. He commented that “there’s always a push and pull when it comes to new technologies and we need a symbiotic relationship between public-private sectors here.” And while they predict changes are likely to be very subtle in the future for users, such as wallets being backed by a crypto company, things like tackling decentralized security is a top priority for experts behind the scenes. For example, current Web 2.0 apps usually work using a two-factor authentication system that sends users back to service providers and system providers. As we navigate to the next stages of blockchain adoption, finding a way to offer security without sacrificing anonymity will be key. The future of innovation in web3 Progress rarely happens without any backlash. While there is still some scope for change within the current environment, Cullen and Amatulli believe the real gains for disruptive technology now firmly lie with Web3, where a hotbed of innovative growth is waiting. While the FAANGS have dominated the tech scene for the past decade, the events that play out as Web3 is adopted will likely usher in a new host of innovators and names.

How a New Alliance Is Setting the Foundation for Progressive Blockchain Usage

Cover photo by on Alina Grubnyak . Unsplash From its early days, decentralization has been web3’s —Bitcoin enabled decentralized payments, while Ethereum provided a decentralized computation layer for applications. The success of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and the DeFi (decentralized finance) industry further demonstrates how decentralization—facilitated by blockchains—can create novel business models, foster community ownership of protocols, and align the interests of platforms and users. raison d'être But, like everything else, decentralization has its drawbacks. For example, traditional companies often start with loose structures but become centralized over time to foster efficient planning and implementation, focused product vision, and well-defined organizational structures. Decentralization requires removing centralized control while ensuring organizations don't suffer from problems centralization was designed to correct. For crypto-native businesses, starting out decentralized can be difficult—if not impossible. This is where —the idea of decentralizing over time instead of doing it immediately—can help. In this guide, I discuss progressive decentralization, explain what it means for web3 projects, and highlight how different projects across are embracing this concept. very progressive decentralization web3 The meaning of progressive decentralization Progressive decentralization is the process of relinquishing centralized control of a particular resource, system, or organization over time. An example of progressive decentralization is gradually revoking privileged permissions over a protocol and transferring decision-making powers to a distributed network comprising members of the protocol’s community (e.g., users and developers). Progressive decentralization favors approaching decentralization in phases instead of attempting to achieve sufficient decentralization from the onset. This is important because decentralization, if handled improperly, can create more problems than it solves. For example, without a central actor coordinating economic interactions in a decentralized protocol, users may be forced to pay . the price of anarchy Why progressive decentralization is crucial for web3 projects Today, early-stage companies adopt the —a business model that emphasizes rapid iteration, innovation, and experimentation (instead of complex planning) on the road to product-market fit. Crypto products are no different and must iterate quickly based on user feedback and performance analyses. As a result, many web3 projects tend to rely on small, centralized teams in the early phases to drive efforts at achieving product-market fit and creating sustainable business models. lean startup methodology But just because a web3 project starts out centralized doesn’t mean it must stay that way forever. Progressive decentralization ensures product teams are well-equipped to drive business goals early on while creating processes and infrastructure to support decentralization in the future. This allows protocols—having achieved maturity—to transition into decentralized entities owned and operated by users (with minimal reliance on the founding team to coordinate activities). How does progressive decentralization work? Progressive decentralization can take many forms depending on an organization’s objectives. But first, it helps to understand the benefits of decentralization before looking into strategies for achieving it. Web3 projects can benefit from sufficient decentralization in the following ways: 1. : Decentralized protocols have historically been harder to disrupt and shut down—whether by nation-states or motivated groups and individuals. That’s because such protocols are designed to operate without single points of failure or choke points that malicious actors can exploit. Resilience and robustness 2. : Putting a protocol’s community in charge of operations typically incentivizes users to play active roles in the protocol’s development and future growth. Moreover, access to diverse perspectives and voices means projects can make more informed decisions that benefit the majority of users—not a narrow subset of stakeholders. Community ownership and participation 3. : Decentralized networks redistribute more economic value to participants than their centralized counterparts. For example, a decentralized protocol might financially reward external contributors (e.g., developers) or distribute a share of protocol fees to users. Value distribution By sharing value with the community, decentralized protocols create a virtuous cycle of sorts: user commitment and contributor participation increase, directly benefiting the protocol’s growth, which increases the economic value redistributed to community participants. In short, that benefits all parties instead of a zero-sum game that solely benefits the business. decentralized protocols play a positive-sum game 4. : In a typical organization, information asymmetries (among other factors) prevent the wider community from holding leaders accountable for making certain decisions. Conversely, decentralization increases transparency and accountability, ensuring that community members can . Accountable leadership hold protocol teams accountable for their actions Another benefit of decentralized governance and decision-making is that users are aware of the rationale behind decisions affecting the protocol. This empowers users to make informed decisions about whether to withdraw or lend their support for certain proposals (depending on the extent to which these decisions align with their interests). A framework for progressive decentralization Having explained why decentralization matters, we can now evaluate the different ways in which web3 projects can progressively decentralize: Infrastructure When building blockchain applications, some elements of the (e.g., off-chain storage or node infrastructure) may be centralized. Centralized infrastructure can provide efficiency, customizability, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness—things early-stage companies need to build viable products. development stack But, as a project matures, it becomes necessary to start thinking about decentralizing critical infrastructure. For starters, this can improve fault tolerance, reduce the risk of censorship, and increase reliability for users. Using decentralized infrastructure also prevents platform lock-in and provides more flexibility for development teams when choosing what services to use. Below are some hypothetical examples of how a web3 project could gradually decentralize its infrastructure: A decentralized social networking protocol might move from using centralized databases (e.g., Amazon S3) to using like Arweave, Filecoin, IPFS, and Ceramic for data storage distributed, peer-to-peer storage platforms A DeFi protocol may use a centralized node provider for blockchain access and later shift to a decentralized infrastructure network comprising different blockchain node providers. That said, progressive decentralization doesn’t apply to base-layer blockchains, like Ethereum and Bitcoin, whose value lies in being sufficiently decentralized from genesis. In comparison, Layer 2 (L2) blockchains (e.g., rollups) may adopt a progressive decentralization model; an example is a centralized sequencer for low-latency execution of transactions before shifting to decentralized sequencing to mitigate censorship and avoid downtime . owing to the failure of a centralized sequencer node Governance and decision-making As explained, building a web3 product demands quick iteration and fast implementation of design decisions in the early stages. Thus, it is non-ideal to have a large group of people making decisions about a product at this time (aka “design by committee”). Rather, project teams should be lean and comprise individuals with the experience, expertise, and drive to steer product development forward. However, once a project achieves some notion of product-market fit (reflected in daily protocol revenue, TVL metrics, etc.), it may start transitioning into community-led governance. Instead of core teams deciding behind closed doors, the decision-making process is public and open to all members of the community. Governance decisions may cover technical aspects of a protocol (e.g., upgrades, freezes/shutdowns, and parameter/variable settings) and non-technical matters (e.g., treasury allocations). Scaling decentralized governance and crowdsourced decision-making can be difficult, but not if teams channel efforts toward making it work. This may mean documenting internal processes to give context for governance decisions, for example, or using tools that enable members to signal preferences and reach consensus on proposals securely and transparently. Establishing decentralized governance requires locking away special powers conferred on core team members at the beginning. Community ownership is hardly useful if a powerful minority (e.g., project founders) can override the majority’s wishes. Furthermore, it is important to give vocal minorities the freedom to exit the protocol if they disagree with a particular decision. This may involve imposing delays on the implementation of governance decisions, which protects users against being forced to accept unfavorable proposals. A high-level of DeFi protocol Compound’s decentralized governance mechanism. ( ) Source Finances Web3 promotes the redistribution of the value generated by protocols to those responsible for creating that value (i.e., users and contributors). Therefore, projects need to develop mechanisms that align the economic interests of users with the protocol. An example might be airdropping tokens to community members and letting token-holders earn a cut from protocol fees. Beyond value distribution, protocols must also enshrine processes for the community to (transparently) decide on financial issues, such as allocating funds to protocol development efforts, rewarding core team members and external contributors, etc. Setting up a protocol treasury managed by a multisig wallet (composed of signers elected by the community) is a popular approach among DAOs and DeFi projects. This arrangement promotes auditability and prevents financial mismanagement that can occur in the absence of centralized governance. Human resources For crypto-native businesses, progressive decentralization may involve transitioning from being “lean startups” to “open-source organizations.” This means the project no longer relies exclusively on the efforts of the core team but instead taps into the wider community for individuals to steward technical and non-technical roles. For this part of progressive decentralization to work, teams need to lay the groundwork early into the project. Core team members can set up roles and internal processes in a way that makes it possible for others to take over responsibilities, for example. Building and collaborating openly can also reduce information asymmetry and reduce the barrier to entry for new contributors. This phase of progressive decentralization also requires investing in best practices for . Creating good documentation outlining a project’s objectives, contribution guidelines, and code of conduct (among others) is usually a good place to start. Developing mechanisms rewarding the efforts of contributors (e.g., using a ) is also important—incentives can encourage participation where appeals to altruism fall short. Case studies of progressive decentralization in web3 running open-source projects reputation system Case studies of progressive decentralization in web3 Infura is a great example of how a web3 product with startup roots can progressively decentralize. Initially created as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to provide users and developers with access to blockchain data, Infura is to create a robust and resilient RPC layer for Web3. Infura building a decentralized infrastructure network “ ” provides a high-level overview of Infura’s decentralized infrastructure network. Here, Infura’s current service will exist in parallel with selected node infrastructure providers (“Node Operators”)—allowing developers to route RPC calls through multiple points (via “Ingress Operators”) instead of relying on a centralized provider. Not only does this reduce the risk of downtime for dapps, but it also protects end-users against the risk of censorship and discrimination—ideals tightly woven into the fabric of web3. Infura’s Path to Decentralization Astute readers will notice that Infura’s approach to decentralization resembles infrastructural decentralization, which I discussed earlier. Elements of decentralized governance also exist in the plan—for instance, the task of monitoring and evaluating node operators is handled by a decentralized body of “Watchers” equipped with the power to penalize operators that experience excessive downtime. Uniswap One of the first DeFi projects to achieve product-market fit, transitioned to community-led governance after , a governance token endowing holders (including members of the community) to propose and ratify proposals affecting the protocol’s future. And while Uniswap’s core team is still involved with the project, the development of future iterations of the protocol has seen greater involvement from members of the community—see this for an example. Uniswap announcing the release of UNI blog post on community contributions to Uniswap V4 Despite becoming a community-owned product, Uniswap has remained profitable to date and . This demonstrates the viability (and importance) of building sustainable applications without sacrificing web3’s ethos of open-source development and permissionless innovation. recently surpassed the trading volumes of its centralized rival, Coinbase Optimism and Arbitrum and are the biggest Ethereum rollups today (by economic activity). Besides sharing similar technology and infrastructure, both projects have displayed a commitment to adopting progressive decentralization in various forms: Optimism Arbitrum Arbitrum earlier this year and formed the Arbitrum DAO to coordinate future protocol development efforts, manage treasury funding and allocation, and provide an open space for discussions on issues affecting the protocol. airdropped ARB tokens to community members and contributors Optimism has taken similar steps— after announcing the distribution of a governance token (OP) to users, founding team members, and ecosystem contributors. Optimism’s core team has also to increase the network’s robustness and security. forming the Optimism Collective outlined the protocol’s vision for progressively decentralizing key parts of the infrastructure stack MetaMask (a web3 wallet) recently , which will allow developers to build standalone apps (plugins) that users can install to customize and enrich the functionality of MetaMask’s wallet application. Snaps execute in a sandboxed environment—to prevent plugin bugs from compromising the security of assets stored in the main wallet—and can only run scripts approved by end-users. Below are some examples of Snaps from the : MetaMask announced the (beta) release of the Snaps SDK official Snaps directory The “progressive” in for MetaMask here means certain aspects of the decentralization process will see some centralized control initially. To illustrate, users are currently limited to installing Snaps that have been vetted for security by MetaMask’s in-house team, but the long-term plan—as explained in the announcement post—is to lift this restriction and pave the way from permissionless innovation, where anyone can create a Snap and users can install it without relying on MetaMask's approval. progressive decentralization Some would argue decentralization at this layer of web3 isn’t necessary (“You can’t just decentralize !”) or possible (“How do you decentralize a primarily user-facing product like a wallet?”). However, as founder Dan Finlay , it is both feasible to decentralize a web3 product like MetaMask—it just takes work—and , especially if we want to avoid reintroducing web2’s walled gardens and lack of user input in product development and application UX. everything discusses in a post necessary This form of decentralization also exemplifies the framing of progressive decentralization in crypto-native applications as a positive-sum game: MetaMask’s product team can’t ship every feature—even ones with significant demand from users—due to constraints like limited manpower and the need to prioritize safety (an important consideration, given that wallets are responsible for holding valuable assets like tokens and NFTs, and software bugs can cause non-trivial losses); if MetaMask operated as a pure, Big Tech-esque (closed-source) product, the only viable option would be to limit users to the functionality the team is able to provide—but progressive decentralization means it can do better to deliver on web3’s promise of decentralizing digital infrastructure and encouraging . composable and open innovation Using the MetaMask Snaps SDK, any developer can build new features on top of the MetaMask wallet application, and users can install those features to customize the wallet experience. For example, transaction insight Snaps protect against malicious attempts to drain wallets by spoofing legitimate websites, and interoperability Snaps allow users to connect MetaMask with non-EVM ( ) blockchains). Ethereum Virtual Machine With new Snaps-powered functionalities, MetaMask is able to keep users happy without placing additional burdens on its product team to ship more features at a rapid pace (which has also has the nice property of reducing the likelihood of software bugs). In return, third-party developers behind various Snaps get access to MetaMask’s impressive user base (100M users and counting) without having to build a rival product from scratch. Reducing user churn (and adding more users) means more opportunities to sustain or increase MetaMask's usage, which may improve the product's overall bottom line. With (potentially) increased revenue, MetaMask can improve its core product and even fund other proposals to build new Snaps (e.g., through ) that contribute positively to the experience of using MetaMask. MetaMask Grants DAO In other words, it’s a win-win for everyone involved. Conclusion Progressive decentralization is still poorly understood, and there’s hardly a one-size-fits-all solution for achieving it; moreover, decentralization—especially when it touches mission-critical components of a protocol’s architecture—can take time to implement . Ultimately, web3 projects must approach decentralization in unique ways whilst making sure it doesn’t stifle growth and innovation or introduce undesirable second-order effects. safely This article has provided a useful “minimum viable framework” project leads in web3 can use to guide progressive decentralization efforts. Still, those in search of more comprehensive analyses may want to read , , and . These are excellent resources for crypto founders, developers, and enterprises thinking about decentralization and provide a more holistic framework for making specific decisions about organizational components. Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook For Web3 Builders and Lawyers Whole Crypto Catalog: Progressive Decentralization Also published . here

What Is Progressive Decentralization?

Just go ask the boss. Not my job. They don’t listen to me anyway. You’ve probably heard a coworker or colleague say those words a million times. There is still hesitancy in the 21st-century workplace to accept responsibility for solving a problem. Too often, employees wait for a task to be shoved down the food chain instead of taking the initiative to speak up. That’s not their fault, but it’s not necessarily that of management, either. A 2019 study found that it is not only a “stuck-in-their-ways” approach for managers that stifle employee ideas but a lack of empowerment to act on that input from below. featured in the Harvard Business Review Because they can’t quickly act on any ideas, they don’t even seek them out—despite knowing that their team members likely have better insight than them, given their time on the front line. Creating that empowered atmosphere is difficult, though, which is why the culture of a manager being responsible for solving every high-level problem has persisted. I recently got to sit down with . Atif has one of the most varied and impressive resumes I’ve ever seen, with executive roles at companies like Amazon, Volvo, MGM, and McDonald’s. Atif Rafiq for the Success Story Podcast As he explained, whether you’re selling burgers, cars, or resort packages, decision-making and problem-solving— informed, collaborative decision-making and problem-solving — are at the core of business success. Gathering independent insight One of the biggest issues is that there are rarely any processes for gathering employee insights. I’m not talking about feedback. I’ve written about that side of the coin a lot lately. Make sure your decisions resonate with employees and make their experience better. But that is a reactive approach, and what I’ve been thinking about more recently is making it proactive instead. Get as many insights as possible before the decision-making progress even starts to ensure you’re focusing on the right thing. Atif called it moving downstream work upstream. Take the pressure off by allowing the ideas to flow without needing to solve a problem by a certain deadline or within a certain budget. Gather independent information, and you’ll start seeing patterns. Some might call this data-driven decision-making, but it is slightly different. Instead of learning how to fix it through feedback, this will raise questions you would have never considered. The unknown. Confidently venture into the unknown “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.” – Donald Rumsfeld This quote—regardless of its context—has always fascinated me. Because as you start to accept that there are unknown unknowns, it starts to make you question all of the things you think you know. do It is a twist on from Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham. Very simply (don’t call my psychology professor), the Johari window is a two-by-two matrix that includes things known both to self and others, known to self and unknown to others, unknown to self and known to others, and unknown to both self and others. the Johari window It looks like this, with the quadrants called Arena, Façade, Blind Spot, and Unknown, respectively. While the Johari window technique is based on how subjects see themselves, others, and the relationship between the two, it is a nice visualization of my point. Too often, we, as managers and executives, try to act on the facade. Show our employees that we have the answers and that they just need to learn from our experience. Some of us, especially the successful ones, may be embracing the blind spot. Accepting that we don’t know everything and must ask for help. But the true outliers, the companies and leaders that affect change in industry, sector, and the world, are the ones that confidently stride into the unknown. The ones willing to gather the right people, ask the right questions, and find answers they didn’t even know they needed. The steps of progressive problem-solving Here’s where I’ll borrow a little from Atif, and his brilliant, decades-long career leading organizations to new heights. There are three major phases in this new mindset that I’ll call progressive problem-solving. Exploration During this phase, the focus should be gathering as much information as possible from various sources. This includes not only internal stakeholders such as employees and management but also external sources such as customers, the market, and industry trends. Nothing should be off the table during this stage—the key is to explore as much as possible without any preconceived notions or biases about the problem or the best solution. Ask questions! Inquiry is a crucial part of the exploration phase. This is the time to engage with multiple perspectives, wild ideas, outlier viewpoints, and even clear dissenting opinions. Ask open-ended questions, encourage new ways of thinking, and foster a culture where every idea is worth consideration. Seek to understand, not validate assumptions. This can provide invaluable insights that can help uncover novel solutions. Create a common challenge Take the gathered insights and define the problem you are trying to solve. This should be a collaborative process that includes everyone. Everyone must comprehensively understand the problem and the clear parameters surrounding the challenge. This creates a common goal for everyone to target and unifies the team's mission. Alignment Once the problem is defined, it's time to get everyone on the same page for a solution. The alignment stage involves sharing the insights collected, collaborating and brainstorming on potential solutions, and gaining agreement on a unified way forward. This also sets the stage for realistic approaches, expectations, and contribution methods toward problem-solving. Converging on a solution Through sharing ideas and open communication, the team should start converging on feasible solutions for the problem. The goal at this stage isn't to rush towards a resolution but to identify the optimal solution everyone can align with. Yes, but… Ever taken an improv class? One of the first exercises is “Yes, and…” where you are supposed to build off whatever the other performer has started. This often leads to wild, unexpected scenarios. You don’t necessarily want to go down that path in the business setting, but a slight tweak can make it an effective tool. While encouraging open communication, also ensure that constructive criticism is welcomed. The "Yes, but…" technique can be particularly useful during this stage where instead of outrightly dismissing an idea, be open to thinking about its potential modifications or improvements. Execution Once there’s alignment on the solution, it's time to start moving downstream. Clear roles and responsibilities should be established, and a detailed plan of execution should be structured. It is critical for team members to understand their role in the plan and to remain flexible for adjustments. But remember that at this point, there’s still no risk involved. No budget has been allocated, no resources spent. Team members should feel comfortable expressing doubt about their role or pushing for a bigger one. Clearly lay out the actions that everyone will commit to and push toward a final decision. Building the think tank One last thing. Stop putting up walls. When you’re looking for answers, or jumping off a cliff into the unknown, the last thing you want to do is isolate yourself. Involve as many different people as you can from varying departments. Think of it this way. What do we need for this idea—not which positions. “We should get marketing in on this” isn’t as good as “We should get a creative design mind in the room.” competencies Part of this will have to come during the hiring process, but that conversation is for another day. For now, the takeaway is to build think tanks that include people who you might not normally tap. A customer support employee for a product design conversation, or a finance manager for a public relations decision. Not everyone is limited by the department they work in. Final thoughts There’s so much more to consider from my talk with Atif, and his newsletter on LinkedIn is a must-follow for anyone who seeks business success. If you want to listen to the entire interview with him, head over to the . Success Story YouTube page For now, I’m going to stop avoiding the unknown and focus on involving more people in my own decision-making process. I’d love to hear how you go about it! If you enjoyed this article, I’d love to hear from you. Write to me at or at me and I’ll do my best to get back to everyone! scott@scottdclary.com tweet @ScottDClary Also published . here

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Since 1937

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