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seems like you could just do this with some sort of open source or shared standard that different providers use

Yes, but this is where politics comes into play. If you're a Google/Amazon/Samsung/any big player, why would you stick to the open standard when you could just change to a proprietary standard for more lock-in and profit?

With a blockchain-based standard, you could make vendor buy-in permanent and enforceable. The only way that one of the big players could win in this new normal is if the products on their proprietary standard are better (in merit) than the entire marketplace that implements the blockchain standard.

but why would they agree to that blockchain standard in the first place? it’s the same issue

You could do that with any widely-adopted standard. No blockchain required. Remember that even IBM at their late-1980s juggernaut status couldn't put the genie of the ISA bus back in the bottle.

I think the trick to lasting open standards is to provide only a MVP ecosystem at launch. No one vendor is strong enough to close the platform behind them. Again, like the IBM PC, their product both needed and spawned a galaxy of add-on and compatible products, providing enough of a force to protect the open standard.

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