Characterising Global Platforms: Centralised, Decentralised, Federated, and Grassroots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework using multiagent transition systems to classify and analyze global digital platforms into four categories based on essential agents, providing a unifying mathematical approach.

Contribution

It presents the first formal characterization of centralised, decentralised, federated, and grassroots platforms using atomic transactions and essential agents.

Findings

All platform types satisfy the same correctness properties.

Different classes have distinct sets of essential agents.

Grassroots platforms have all agents as essential, unifying previous definitions.

Abstract

Global digital platforms are software systems designed to serve entire populations, with some already serving billions of people. We propose atomic transactions-based multiagent transition systems and protocols as a formal framework to study them; introduce essential agents -- minimal sets of agents the removal of which makes communication impossible; and show that the cardinality of essential agents partitions all global platforms into four classes: 1. Centralised -- one (the server) 2. Decentralised -- finite $>1$ (bootstrap nodes) 3. Federated -- infinite but not universal (all servers) 4. Grassroots -- universal (all agents but one) Our illustrative formal example is a global social network, for which we provide centralised, decentralised, federated, and grassroots specifications via multiagent atomic transactions, and prove they all satisfy the same basic correctness properties, yet have different sets of essential agents as expected. We discuss informally additional global platforms -- currencies, ``sharing economy'' apps, AI, and more. While this may be the first formal characterisation of centralised, decentralised, and federated global platforms, grassroots platforms have been defined previously, using two incomparable notions. Here, we prove that both definitions imply that all agents are essential, placing grassroots platforms within the broader formal context of all global platforms. This work provides the first mathematical framework for classifying any global platform -- existing or imagined -- by providing a multiagent atomic-transactions specification of it and determining the cardinality of the minimal set of essential agents in the ensuing multiagent protocol. It thus provides a unifying mathematical approach for the study of global digital platforms, perhaps the most important class of computer systems today.