We talk of the internet as digital infrastructure; but we leave the building of rails and roads to the quasi-monopolistic platform providers. Decentralised architectures provide a number of advantages: They are potentially more inclusive for small players; more resilient against adversarial events; and seem to generate more innovation. However, it is not well understood how to evolve, adapt and govern decentralised infrastructures. This article reports qualitative empirical research on the development and governance of the Beckn Protocol, an open source protocol for decentralised transactions, the successful development of domain-specific adaptations, and implementation and scaling of commercial infrastructures based on it. It explores how the architecture and governance support local innovation for specific business domains, and how the domain-specific innovations feed back into the development of the core concept The research applied a case study approach, combining interviews with core members of the Beckn community; triangulated by interviews with community leaders of domain specific adaptations and by analysis of online documents and the protocol itself. The article shows the possibility of such a decentralised approach to IT Infrastructures. It analyses the Beckn Protocol, domain specific adaptations, and networks built as a software ecosystem. Based on this analysis, a number of generative mechanisms, socio-technical arrangements that support adoption, innovation, and scaling of infrastructures are highlighted.

翻译：我们将互联网视为数字基础设施；然而，轨道与道路的建设却交由准垄断性平台提供商掌控。去中心化架构具备多项优势：它们可能更有利于小型参与者融入；对对抗性事件更具韧性；并且似乎能催生更多创新。然而，如何演进、适应并治理去中心化基础设施尚未得到充分理解。本文报告了关于Beckn协议（一种用于去中心化交易的开源协议）发展与治理的定性实证研究，包括其特定领域适配的成功开发，以及基于该协议构建的商业基础设施的实施与规模化。文章探讨了该架构与治理机制如何支持特定商业领域的本地创新，以及这些领域特定的创新如何反馈至核心概念的演进。研究采用案例研究方法，结合对Beckn社区核心成员的访谈，并通过特定领域适配的社区领袖访谈、在线文档分析及协议本身分析进行三角验证。本文展示了这种去中心化方法在IT基础设施领域的可行性。研究将Beckn协议、特定领域适配及所构建的网络作为一个软件生态系统进行分析。基于此分析，文章重点阐述了一系列生成机制——即支持基础设施采用、创新与规模化的社会技术安排。