Composability with other tools

Commercial software, especially aggregators, are incentivized to resist interoperability. To be composable is to be commoditized. Interoperability means you no longer have a data lock-in moat, or a privileged hub position in the network.

With one-off API integrations, every app must be connected with every other app in both directions. The number of integrations required for interoperability is equal to the maximal number of edges in a directed graph, or n * (n-1).

The protocol acts as a hub in the network, cutting the number of connections necessary for full interoperability from n * (n - 1), to just n. The number of integrations scales 1:1 with the number of apps.

Instead of every app integrating with every other app’s bespoke API, what if they communicated through a shared protocol?