The author recently saw an interview on a16z, the topic is very direct: Why open networks always win. The interview discussed a realistic proposition:If you want to build a global network, what you have to solve in the end is not performance, but trust.

Christian Catalini is the protagonist of this interview. He was a core member of Libra and the founder of Lightspark. He gave a very harsh but accurate sentence in the recording:If you want to reform the monetary system, no one will trust your Corp chain (corporate chain). Corp chain represents that the control, upgrade, and profit sharing rights of the network are still concentrated in the hands of a certain company or alliance, which also leads to the outside world's default that it will serve internal interests.

Many people attribute Libra's failure to regulation, but Christian gave a different "truth." He noted that the regulatory impact is indeed significant, but it is not the only issue. More importantly, the market has never believed that a company can create a "neutral currency network." Even if you set up an association for governance, even if the CEO operates independently, the outside world will still give the same inference: once the leader leaves, the network will lose blood. This inference is not essentially aimed at Facebook, but at the organizational form of “enterprise chain”.

For this reason, he favored Bitcoin more and more. He believes that Bitcoin is not the “most technologically advanced” solution and that developing Bitcoin is painful, like building a car in space. But it has an element that is difficult for companies to copy: neutrality is verified by history. Founders disappear, entry is permissionless, rules are difficult to rewrite unilaterally, and governance is difficult to capture at a single point. Because of this, it is possible for it to carry high trust requirements such as "global value transfer". This logic changes the discussion from "Is the code good?" to "Who can be trusted?"

In this discussion, Christian also provided a more commercial judgment: The biggest paradox of the enterprise chain is that you can never convince the "second place" to join your network. For example, if you are the largest payment company, why should the second largest payment company entrust you with your life? For another example, if you are a stablecoin issuer, why should your partners trust that you will not expand downstream and eat up the profit pool? This problem is common in Web2. Once the network can extract profits, the controllers have an incentive to maximize profits.

Therefore, Christian made a judgment: a new closed network may appear in the short term, and there may even be a stage of "enterprise chain dominance". But in the longer term, money will definitely flow on the open network.

This discussion also reminds me of an essay I wrote before"Web3 Entrepreneurship Discussion: Do encryption projects need to be open source? 》. In that article, the author focused on the pull of two forces: open source can build trust but also brings replication risks; open source is the cornerstone of Web3, but not all teams can afford the cost of complete openness. In addition, the author also used the cases of Uniswap and SushiSwap to illustrate that copying is not uncommon, and moats do not only come from code.

This a16z discussion provides a deeper supplement, which redefines the meaning of "open source" into a trait similar to a statement of neutrality. But in fact, even if a team puts the code out, it does not automatically gain neutrality. When the market judges neutrality, it’s not GitHub that’s looked at, but control.

Then what is neutrality and how to be neutral? Portal Labs roughly breaks it down into three more operational dimensions:

1. Rule-neutral

Rule neutrality focuses on whether key rules can be unilaterally rewritten. If the fees, liquidation, freezing, permissions, and upgrades of the agreement can be changed by a few people, it will hardly be regarded as public infrastructure. Rule neutrality does not require "total non-upgradability". Rule neutrality requires that the right to upgrade has a boundary, and the boundary can be externally constrained. This dimension answers "Can you change the rules at any time?"

2. Access neutral

Admission neutrality focuses on whether the ecological entrance is blocked by you. Whether integration requires permission, whether the interface can be withdrawn at any time, whether nodes or validators require approval, and whether key resources are only open to oneself, these all determine whether the network is a public road or a private garden. Admission neutrality does not mean there is no threshold. Access neutrality means that the threshold cannot be raised arbitrarily by one party. This dimension answers "Can others join freely?"

3. Neutral interests

Interest neutrality focuses on whether value distribution will be distorted by control rights. Whether you can divert transactions to your own products through permissions, whether you can change profit sharing at critical moments, whether you can allow certain partners to enjoy special treatment, and whether you can concentrate ecological profits into the company's cash flow. As long as the answer is "yes" frequently, the market will classify you as a platform, not a network. This dimension answers "Will you turn the Internet into a cash machine?"

In practice, these three types of standards will ultimately fall back to the same Web3 entrepreneurial judgment:Are you making a "decentralized product" or trying to build a "decentralized network". The goal of the product is efficiency and controllability. The goal of a network is to be dependable and joinable. The two can coexist, but their priorities are different. What Web3 entrepreneurs really have to do is first determine their positioning, and then decide whether to be neutral and open source strategy.

In this regard, Portal Labs recommends using a set of simple questions to do a self-check.

Q1: Does your system allow anyone to integrate and deploy without permission?

If the answer is no, you are closer to the product. This judgment can directly filter out a large number of "fake networks".

Q2: Are there unilateral emergency switches for your key rules, such as freeze, rollback, and forced upgrade?

If the answer is yes, you need to explain how these powers are constrained. This question directly corresponds to rule neutrality.

Q3: Does your ecological entrance rely on the unique interface or unique ordering you provide?

If the answer is yes, you need to admit that you are building a platform. This issue directly corresponds to access neutrality.

Q4: Do you allow competitors to make money on your system without being suppressed by your rules?

If the answer is no, you can't be a public network. This question directly corresponds to interest neutrality.

When these questions are answered, open source will become a more rational engineering decision. Of course, open source itself has layers, and it shouldn't be written as either/or.

The first layer isVerifiable open source. The team exposes key contracts and security-related codes so that external audits and reproducibility can be achieved. This layer addresses transparency and also promotes trust, but it does not have to give up all business control. Many tool-type products are suitable to stop at this level. This level corresponds to "I want others to believe that I didn't do bad things."

The second layer isreplaceable open source. The team allows third parties to fork and run without locking key running rights in their own hands. This layer will bring competitive pressure, but it will also bring greater censorship resistance and sustainability. This level corresponds to "I do not rely on monopoly operating rights to survive."

The third layer isexit open source. The team gradually delegates promotion rights and governance rights, making itself structurally unimportant. Bitcoin is an extreme example, but intermediate states also exist in the real world. Ethereum still requires coordination and review, but its governance is more like a long-term evolving public process than a company charter. It’s not that the open network has no governance, it’s just that the governance of the open network does not belong to a certain company.

The discussion on the open network seems to be about whether to open source or not, but it is essentially neutral. Once control is concentrated, the second player will not join, the ecosystem will not become a public base, and the system will ultimately remain in product form.

Therefore, for Web3 entrepreneurs, open source is a product form choice. How open you are, how much power you are willing to hand over, and how much uncontrollability you are willing to bear determine whether you are ultimately building a platform product or trying to become an open network.

If you think about this clearly, the problem of open source will become simple: you are not deciding "whether to be open source", you are deciding "whether to become a network".