Designing Systems That Endure

Closed systems often succeed by making things feel safe. They feel simple. They reduce choice. That can be comforting.

That comfort is powerful. It’s why closed sometimes wins the first round. And sometimes the second, third, and fourth. Closed can dominate for years, even generations.

But history shows their limits. Closed restricts. Closed caps out. Closed stalls. The most significant breakthroughs, the ones that reshape industries, come from open systems.

As a designer, I think about this a lot. Openness isn’t just a technical detail or a governance choice; it's a fundamental principle. It’s a design principle in the truest sense. Closed systems optimize for control. Open systems optimize for trust, interoperability, and innovation. And open is what compounds over time.

AOL: A Cushioned Cage

In the 1990s, millions logged on through AOL. For many people, this was their first experience with the internet. It looked like the internet. It felt like the internet. But it wasn’t.

AOL was curated, controlled, and contained. As a design choice, it made people feel comfortable, but comfort isn’t the same as freedom.

And AOL worked for a while. It made billions, and for years, it felt permanent. But it hit a ceiling that the open internet never had. The real internet was out there: open, decentralized, permissionless. No company owned it. Everyone could use it. That’s where the future compounded.

When no one owns the network, trust lives in the system, not in a company. That’s Bitcoin.

Railroads: Scale Through Alignment

A century earlier, America was racing to lay down railroads. Every company wanted to own the future of transport. Each built its own track gauge. At one point, 23 different gauges were in use.

That choice for control created friction. Railroads still ran, but they couldn’t connect to something bigger. Trains stopped at every border. Cargo had to be reloaded. Passengers had to switch cars. Progress was constrained by design.

In 1886, the country adopted a single standard gauge. Thousands of workers moved tracks in just two days. The result was transformative. Commerce scaled overnight. Travel became seamless. The same rails carried an entire nation forward.

It wasn’t about more steel. It was about aligning what already existed. That’s the essence of good design: interoperability that turns fragmentation into scale.

That’s the Universal Money Address (UMA). It’s an open protocol designed to connect financial systems the same way a standard gauge connected the railroads.

AT&T: Opening the Lines

For decades, AT&T owned the entire U.S. phone system. They owned the lines. They owned the devices. They even dictated what you could plug into the wall.

It worked, and it endured for decades. But at a cost. Prices stayed high. Progress slowed. Innovation had to fight for permission.

Then, in 1984, the monopoly was broken and the lines opened. What followed wasn’t just cheaper calls, it was an explosion of entirely new industries: phones in every pocket, the internet in every home, broadband, Wi-Fi, streaming.

The shift wasn’t just about lowering barriers. It was about unleashing creativity. Once the lines were open, people built on them. Entrepreneurs didn’t have to ask permission. They didn’t have to wait for AT&T to decide what was possible. Entire industries emerged because the foundation was finally free.

That’s what openness does. It’s a design decision too. By giving up control, you create space for others to imagine, invent, and build things you never could have planned.

At Lightspark, we’re starting to see that same dynamic with Spark. It’s still early, but as an open platform for Bitcoin, it invites builders to create on top of money itself. Wallets like Xverse are live on Spark. Global players like Tether are onboarding millions through Spark’s Wallet Development Kit. Marketplaces like Magic Eden are building new experiences on it. Brale is making it possible to issue regulated stablecoins natively on Bitcoin. And developers everywhere are integrating Spark through SDKs to create world-class wallet experiences.

When networks open, innovation doesn’t just improve what exists. It creates entirely new categories.

The Pattern

When you zoom out across these moments, the shape repeats.

Closed systems can thrive. They can dominate for decades, sometimes long enough to feel permanent. But eventually they reveal their limits. They stall, they fragment, they suffocate what comes next.

Open systems often feel uncertain at the start. They lack polish. They lack control. They can stumble if adoption doesn’t come. But when they work, they have something more powerful: the ability to compound. They foster trust, invite participation, and create space for new ideas to emerge.

As designers, we see this tension everywhere. Closed often feels clean and comfortable at first because someone else has made all the choices. But open is where resilience and creativity take root. Open is where people discover possibilities no one planned for.

It’s why AOL, for all its size and comfort, couldn’t outlast the open internet. It’s why 23 competing gauges of rail couldn’t beat a single shared standard. It’s why AT&T, after owning communication for generations, couldn’t hold back the explosion of new industries once the lines were opened.

And it’s why Bitcoin exists today, because trust belongs in the system, not in a single company. It’s why the Universal Money Address (UMA) matters. Only standards can unlock true scale. And it’s why Spark will thrive, because openness doesn’t just unlock efficiency, it creates entirely new categories of invention.

Closed can dominate for years, but only open compounds.

CorpChains Are Shiny Cages

Now we are watching the same story unfold in money.

CorpChains, the corporate-controlled payment networks being built today, look sleek. They feel modern. Some are technically impressive. Some even appear open. But they’re not. One company sets the rules. One company holds the keys. One company decides who gets in and who gets left out.

History is full of shiny cages like this. Some looked technically superior, others were simply more comfortable or familiar. Each thrived. Each endured. And each eventually hit its ceiling once openness began compounding outside its walls.

Take CompuServe in the 1970s and 1980s. It was one of the first online services, carefully curated, and for a while, it defined what “online” even meant. But once the open internet arrived, CompuServe’s walls turned into limits.

Or Sony Betamax, launched in 1975. It was technically superior to VHS and could have defined home video for a generation. But Sony kept it closed and proprietary, while VHS spread more openly. The technically superior system still lost. That lesson is worth remembering today: technical brilliance is not enough if the system itself is closed.

And cable TV bundles, which controlled content distribution for decades, eventually fractured once streaming introduced open access to content on demand.

Each of these systems shows the same pattern. They can be shiny. They can feel comfortable. But they’re still cages. And cages don’t compound. Open networks do.

Designing the Alternative

The lesson isn’t just technical, it’s about design.

Closed systems win by making something new feel easy. That’s good design in the short term. But control eventually creates friction. Fragility. Limits.

Open systems endure because they’re designed differently. They distribute trust. They connect what’s already there. They invite innovation rather than restrict it.

Openness doesn’t guarantee success. Some closed systems endure because they offer so much value that people accept the limits. Plenty of open systems fail if adoption never comes. But openness creates the conditions for trust, scale, and invention over time in a way closed systems rarely can.

As designers, our job isn’t just to make things easy in the moment. It’s to build systems that last. Systems that scale. Systems that endure.

That’s the future of money we’re building: Bitcoin as the neutral base, UMA as the open protocol that connects financial systems, and Spark as the platform that gives builders permission to invent on top of money.

Closed can dominate, but open is what truly compounds.