Emerging web architectures are constantly stretching the boundaries of REST [6]—the architectural style underlying the evolution, performance, and scaling of the web. Prior work within our research group analyzed the dissonance between unforeseen web technology such as Ajax and mashups, and REST-based services and applications. Resolving the discrepancies between REST prescriptions and web architecture as practiced lead to a novel generalization of REST where computations displaced content as the fundamental unit of exchange among web elements.
Experimentation with a first generation testbed led to a model of computational exchange as the foundation for a new generation of decentralized, autonomous, self-governing applications where independent and physically distributed agencies collaborate by exchanging computations rather than content. Decentralization allows multiple parties to both offer and request customized services that serve their individual purposes and interests.
In our vision of the future, systems will be dominated by peer-to-peer architectures and asynchronous interactions where high availability, resilience, adaptation, and dynamic extensibility will be principal drivers.
In this context we present CREST, an architectural style for decentralized, adaptive and secure collaboration that embraces computation exchange as the engine of application state evolution and transfer. Our hypothesis is twofold: first, the CREST architectural style is a model for secure, decentralized applications offering customization, interface uniformity, dynamic adaptation, component autonomy, and flexibility, and second, the infrastructure required for CREST, currently in development, cleanly supports a broad variety of attractive, decentralized, but collaborative architectures.