Decentralized Execution and the End of Centralized Interaction Brokers in Adaptive Computing Systems

Centralized interaction brokers emerged as a dominant architectural pattern in device-centric computing environments by mediating identity, discovery, transaction routing, and settlement between users and services. Their existence was justified by fragmented identity models, limited context awareness, and the concentration of computational resources within platform-controlled infrastructures. Adaptive Computing (AC) systems, characterized by environment? coupled computation, continuous context inference, and decentralized execution, fundamentally alter this landscape. In AC environments, identity, intent, and execution converge across distributed nodes rather than through centralized chokepoints. This paper argues that such convergence renders traditional intermediaries technically redundant rather than merely economically inefficient. We examine the architectural mechanisms by which decentralized execution replaces centralized interaction brokers, evaluate impacts on payments, identity, and transactional friction, and outline implications for governance, security, and system design. The analysis demonstrates that decentralized execution is not a philosophical preference but the natural consequence of AC architectures.