{"id":414355,"date":"2025-12-17T22:29:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/the-network-is-the-innovation-crypto-news\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T22:47:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T17:17:34","slug":"the-network-is-the-innovation-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/the-network-is-the-innovation-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The network is the innovation – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n

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\u201cThere was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb.\u201d
\u2014 Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The lightbulb has come to be associated with serendipitous flashes of inspiration \u2014 the moment when a fully formed idea pops into an inventor\u2019s head, prompting a shout of \u201cEureka<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how the lightbulb itself was invented, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Popularly credited to Thomas Edison, the lightbulb was in fact the product of a century of trial and error by dozens of inventors around the world.<\/p>\n

Electric light was first demonstrated by Humphry Davy in 1802.<\/p>\n

The enclosed bulb mechanism was developed by Warren de la Rue in 1840.<\/p>\n

Thomas Edison was born in 1847.<\/p>\n

Many more contributed both before and after 1847 \u2014 the historian Arthur Bright lists<\/a> about two dozen individuals as co-inventors of the lightbulb, with Edison\u2019s work representing its culmination, not its origin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Edison lightbulb was not so much a single invention as a bricolage of small improvements,\u201d Steven Johnson writes in How We Got to Now<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Edison\u2019s primary contribution to that bricolage was the late-1870s invention of the carbonized bamboo filament that ultimately made lightbulbs longer-lasting, safe for indoor use, and commercially viable.<\/p>\n

But even then, Edison was forced by the patent courts to share credit with Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, whose version of the lightbulb was notable for being the first to light both a private home (his own) and a public building (the Savoy Theatre).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hence the portmanteau naming of the \u201cEdiswan incandescent lamp\u201d that consumers were offered from about 1880.<\/p>\n

This joint custody of the lightbulb takes nothing away from Edison\u2019s achievements as an inventor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just the opposite \u2014 because Edison did something even bigger than bring artificial lighting to the masses: He industrialized the act of inventing.<\/p>\n

\u201cEdison didn\u2019t just invent technology,\u201d Johnson explains, \u201che invented an entire system for inventing, a system that would come to dominate 20th-century industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

That system inspired a proliferation of corporate R&D labs: teams of diverse specialists collaborating on problems, sharing financial upside, absorbing outside ideas, and freely building on each other\u2019s work \u2014 a kind of \u201cnetworked innovation\u201d that\u2019s infinitely more powerful than the popular image of the solitary genius inventor.<\/p>\n

That, Johnson says, is the true lesson to learn from the story of the lightbulb:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think that innovation comes from a lone genius inventing a new technology from scratch, that model naturally steers us toward certain policy decisions, like stronger patent protection. But if we think that innovation comes out of collaborative networks, then we want to support different policies and organizational forms: less-rigid patent laws, open standards, employee participation in stock plans, cross-disciplinary connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

And maybe crypto, too?<\/p>\n

Crypto is first and foremost a way to incentivize the kind of open, composable innovation that builds powerful networks.<\/p>\n

Edison proved that collaboration beats isolation, but his corporate model still relied on patents to retain proprietary control.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the most transformative networks in history \u2014 Roman roads, standardized shipping containers, the internet, GPS \u2014 worked differently: They were open, permissionless infrastructure that anyone could build upon.<\/p>\n

Christian Catalini makes the case for crypto by recounting the history<\/a> of these open-source networks: \u201cMoney,\u201d he says, \u201cis the last closed network.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And crypto is the way to open it up, to everyone\u2019s benefit: \u201cPermissionless innovation will always create exponentially more value than a closed system,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n

At the end of a disappointing year for open-source crypto, it\u2019s worth remembering just how powerful these networks can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb \u2014 and there may be no single moment when crypto \u201carrives\u201d either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both are products of networked innovation that only realize their full potential when they become networks themselves \u2014 the lightbulb was merely a glass ornament until it was plugged into an electrical grid.<\/p>\n

Crypto is building that grid for the digital economy \u2014 open, permissionless infrastructure waiting for the next great idea to plug in and light up.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope it happens in 2026.<\/p>\n\n

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. \u201cThere was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb.\u201d\u2014 Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now The lightbulb has come to be associated with serendipitous flashes of inspiration \u2014 the moment when a fully formed idea pops into an inventor\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-414355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414359,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414355\/revisions\/414359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}