This page sketches the philosophical and practical differences between a Platform and a Substrate, as they apply to software, the Internet and projects like Hitchhikers.earth for the creation of an ecosystem ofHitchhiker Guides.
# Intuition A simple way to feel the difference: - A **platform** is a stage you stand on. - A **substrate** is the soil everything grows in.
On a platform, you are told what you can do. On a substrate, you help determine how things will change. Or, more sharply. - Platforms specify and enable what you can do. - Substrates specify how behaviours emerge and how things change over time.
# Definitions
- **Platform** A bounded environment with rules, APIs, metrics and governance that defines how participants can act. A platform offers services and constraints so that apps and users can plug in and interact in predictable ways. It focuses on **permitted actions** and visible features.
- **Substrate** An enabling layer of relationships, protocols and materials that other things are built from. A substrate is less about productised services and more about the shared “stuff” that shapes **feedback loops, transformations and long run behaviour**. It focuses on **how actions accumulate and transform the system**.
In short, platforms are things built on top of a substrate. Substrates shape what kinds of platforms and patterns can emerge at all.
# Agency
A platform typically says: > Here is how you act here, and here are the buttons you can press. A substrate typically says: > Here is how your actions combine with others and with time to create outcomes.
On a platform, agency is mostly about choosing from predefined actions. On a substrate, agency includes the ability to reshape the conditions under which actions make sense and have effects.
# Visibility
Platforms are foreground objects. You see them, sign up to them, log in, follow, subscribe. A platform is a character in the story.
Substrates are usually invisible. You notice them when patterns repeat, when incentives bend behaviour, when different tools keep producing similar dynamics. They form the ongoing background in which platforms appear, evolve and disappear.
# Power Platforms centralise some combination of: - Control over participation. - Control over visibility and ranking. - Control over monetisation and access.
Substrates distribute power differently. - They set basic conditions, protocols, schemas and norms. - They define how behaviour feeds back into shared memory and future choices. - They make exit and forking easier, because the shared material is not owned by a single platform.
The philosophical bet of a substrate is that long term freedom and resilience come from shaping the **rules of emergence**, not from hoping for a benevolent platform owner.
# Onboarding
Platforms optimise onboarding flows. You sign up, accept terms, learn the interface and start using features.
Substrates require orientation rather than onboarding. You learn a few basic conventions and then discover how different communities use them to generate different cultures, tools and rituals.
The question on a platform is: > How do I use this feature?
The question on a substrate is: > What happens here if we act like this, and what will that become over time?
# Governance
Platform governance is usually top down or owner centric. Even with user councils or community input, there is a centre that can change the rules, shut down features or sell the platform.
Substrate governance is closer to constitutional infrastructure. It defines. - What counts as valid participation? - How actions are recorded, remembered and made accountable. - How changes to core protocols and schemas are proposed and ratified. - How communities can fork or opt out when they disagree.
This is why The Substrate is deeply connected to things like Hitchhiker Constitution and Community-Driven Development. We are not just choosing features, we are choosing **how behaviours and norms will emerge**.
# Emergence Traditional platform thinking asks: > What features do we ship, and what can users do?” Substrate thinking asks: > What patterns of behaviour will emerge if we connect people, memory and rules in this way, and how will they change over time?
In this sense. - A **platform** is a menu of actions and views. - A **substrate** is a set of transformation rules and feedback paths.
# Examples. - A platform might let you “create event”, “invite guests”, “post photos”. A substrate defines how events become part of shared memory, how that memory shapes trust and reputation, and how those in turn shape future invitations and gatherings.
- A platform might let you “vote on proposal”. A substrate defines how proposals are surfaced, how discussion is remembered, how consent is recognised and how the outcome affects future power and participation.
The emergent question becomes. - When many people act through these tools, over months and years, what kinds of communities, habits and power structures will crystallise as a result.
Substrate work is the art of tuning those conditions so that **desirable patterns can emerge and undesirable ones are easier to notice and correct**.
# Examples In The Hitchhiker Context Within the Hitchhiker ecosystem. - A festival app, a wiki skin, a passport wallet or a voting tool is a platform. - The shared identity model, event schema, wiki conventions and governance processes are part of the Substrate.
One community might run a minimal wiki plus in person assemblies and almost no extra tools. Another might run a rich constellation of apps and bots. Both are “on” the same substrate if they. - Recognise the same basic forms of identity and consent. - Can interpret each other’s pages, events and decisions. - Share enough governance language to cooperate and disagree constructively.
Over time, the Substrate is judged less by any single feature and more by **what kinds of guides, festivals and governance cultures tend to emerge from it**.
# Failure Modes Thinking only in terms of platforms leads to: - Endless migrations between apps and services. - Fragmentation of community memory when a platform dies. - Power concentrating in whoever owns the most “sticky” platform. Thinking only in terms of substrates leads to: - Underestimating onboarding and user experience. - Confusing people who just want to “show up and do the thing.” - Neglecting the real work of running and maintaining specific platforms.
The aim is not to abolish platforms, but to **situate them firmly on a shared substrate** so they can appear, collaborate, compete and retire without taking whole communities down with them, and so that their behaviour is shaped by a healthier set of emergent conditions.
# Design Heuristics
When designing something new, it helps to ask. - Am I building a platform or contributing to the substrate. - If it is a platform, what substrate does it rely on, and how does that substrate shape the emergent behaviour of its users. - If it is substrate work, how will platforms discover, adopt and test it without central approval.
A healthy Hitchhiker ecosystem should see. - Substrate changes treated as constitutional questions about **how behaviour emerges and changes**. - Platform choices treated as tactical, reversible decisions about **what people can do right now**. - Communities empowered to fork or retire platforms while staying rooted in the same substrate and its shared memory.
# See Also - The Substrate - Hitchhiker Guides - Hitchhiker Constitution - Community-Driven Development