Jack Dorsey's Shared Compute Exposes the SaaS Rent-Extraction Scam
Our read
The modern SaaS stack is a rent-extraction scheme masquerading as innovation. By shifting the heavy lifting of running apps back to the user's local hardware and decentralized nodes, shared compute cuts out the cloud middleman and threatens to turn high-margin software giants back into simple utilities.
What happened
Jack Dorsey's Block is quietly building out 'shared compute' infrastructure, aiming to let users run software locally and peer-to-peer rather than paying monthly tribute to centralized cloud servers.
The brief
The tech elite spent a decade convincing businesses that renting server space forever was progress, but shared compute exposes the scam by proving your local devices are already powerful enough to run the software you are being forced to rent.
The sides
- SaaS Monopolies
Centralized cloud infrastructure provides essential security, seamless collaboration, and managed scale that local hardware cannot replicate.
- Jack Dorsey and Block
Modern consumer devices possess surplus processing power that can run applications locally and peer-to-peer, eliminating the need for expensive cloud middlemen.
Why now
As tech investors realize that centralized cloud margins are being eaten by AI compute costs, the push for local-first, peer-to-peer alternatives is accelerating.
Jack Dorsey's public pivot toward decentralized infrastructure has turned shared compute from a cypherpunk pipe dream into a direct threat to the traditional enterprise software subscription model.