I listened to the Vice President of Technology at Uniswap Labs in a Podcast a few days ago, and he related the new features of his companies newest creation, a cryptocurrency wallet application.
He was excited to review the wallets fresh new user Interface, and it's focus on removing the pain points of pre-existing wallets, and it was a very interesting and encouraging report.
However it was disturbing to listen to the difficulty he described in getting the wallet approved at the Apple App Store.
Uniswap is of course the busiest and largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange in the world, period.
Its supremacy has been threatened and it was once dethroned by PanCakeSwap at the height of the bull market and the height of Ethereum Gas Fees. But it has reclaimed it's spot as Ethereum Fees have retreated from their former astronomical heights.
The safety and security of Ethereum, and more accurately the level two blockchains of Ethereum like Polygon, Optmism, and others have redistributed market share.
However, as cryptocurrency slowly evolves away from centralized exchanges like FTX, Binance, and Gemini, and towards Uniswap, Pancakeswap and other decentralized exchanges, cryptocurrency application developers and content creators find themselves stuck in a conflict with a different type of centralized entity: the Apple Store.
Centralized gatekeeper if a decentralized market niche, is an anachronism.
Those of you who have watched the epic pace of technologic innovation on Leofinance have also heard Khal's Tales of frustration getting the mobile app approved on the Apple Store.
In contrast, the Android counterpart was swift and efficient.
But the Apple Store approval process was like a lingering illness, similar to Long Covid and eventually killed the patient; Leo Mobile for Apple OS.
Those of you involved with NFTs also know of the outrageous Apple policy that all NFTs sales pay 30% of the purchase price to the Apple Store, which served to kill interest in that market.
Those of you following Elon Musk and Twitter know of the Apple App Stores recent threats to remove the application Twitter from the App Store, if Twitter didn't meet it's current demands.
Apple's App Store seems determined to be the ultimate middleman, extracting outrageous amounts of value from content passing through it's store to it's captive population; the users who love Apple computers, phones and tablets.
But now Apple's App Store is starting to look like a centralized entity similar to those which cryptocurrency was created to escape from.
application developers and other content creators are feeling a new yoke of oppression around their necks, which is coming from a seemingly unlikely place: Apple, the symbol of futurism.
I am surprised that things have turned out this way, as the revolutionaries who fought for freedom from one form of tyranny have grown into an entity not unlike the one they fought against.
This irony may not be perceptible to them, because introspection is a rare trait amongst humans, while denial is very common.
I suspect that this harsh environment the Apple App Store has unintentionally created, may be the harsh evolutionary force that will induce the mutation of cryptocurrency applications as we know them.
These Mutants will bypass the Apple App Store, and ultimately lead to a revolution stranding Apple's App Store on a lonely highway to nowhere. As technological innovation diverts itself to a more efficient and less costly road to travel.
So one day we may thank the App Store for creating the current harsh environment, which made this change necessary.
As the mathmetician in Jurassic Park movies likes to say: "Life finds a way".
And remember no one is too big to fail, ask Facebook, Microsoft, Blockbuster, IBM or even Goliath, if size and technological advantage are enough to keep you on top for ever.
You can build a throne of swords and spears, and start acting like a King; ruthless and short sighted. - But such a throne is hard to sit on for long.
