IP addresses were never meant to be real estate.
Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. They are resources that everyone can use without depleting their availability for others. The internet's addressing system was originally supposed to be one.
Instead, IPv4's finite space turned connectivity into a commodity. Today, IPv4 blocks are hoarded, traded like digital real estate, and aggressively rationed through NAT (Network Address Translation). This artificial scarcity has centralized the web, forcing everyday users behind corporate gateways and destroying the original peer-to-peer vision.
IPv6 is an economic shift, not just a technical upgrade.
With 340 undecillion addresses, it is mathematically impossible to corner the market. It is abundant enough to be truly non-rivalrous. IPv6 returns the internet to its core end-to-end principle—where every node can speak directly to any node, without asking for permission or paying a toll to a gatekeeper.
You cannot corner the market on infinity. IP addresses should be basic infrastructure, not a speculative asset class.
NAT was a compromise. IPv6 eliminates the need for middleboxes, allowing direct, unmediated device-to-device communication.
Without the artificial scarcity of IPv4, innovators don't need to ask ISPs for public IPs. Deploy and connect freely.