 |
November 21, 2016, 05:24:05 PM |
|
Just wanted to bounce around a few ideas with folks and see what people think. First I want to introduce three key ideas, and then start weaving things together:
THREE IDEAS
P2P NETWORKS
Bitcoin and alt-coins are P2P networks. The use for exchange is just one use of P2P networks. The killer use of Bitcoin, BitTorrent and other technologies which were what got everyone excited about the internet was P2P -- not the corporate systems which have emerged in the HTTP economy (facebook, google, etc...).
ENCRYPTION
With Private/Public key cryptography, we have a system for creating private channels of communication or exchange.
NAMING/ANCHORING
As TS Eliot noted, "the naming of cats is a serious matter..." And the naming of all things is a serious matter because as Richard Rorty and the Pragmatist philosophers noted, we tend to think about the world in terms of our descriptions which we attached to real world objects. The name or the description becomes the reality in our thinking process.
THE LOOM OR THE COMPASS
In Jacqard's Web by Essinger or The Riddle of the Compass by Aczel -- the authors illustrate how unexpected factors come together to create new inventions which change the world. Invention is not invention -- it is combination and permutation, or tinkering... so the task at hand for Crown and other alt-coins is to tinker with the P2P legos which have been built thus far and build things which have not been imagined before from them.
The challenge is to create a system which will enable and catalyze a world which is yet to be. There is an element of midwifery to all this...
STEPPING BACK - COMBINATIONS & PERMUTATIONS OF P2P SYSTEMS
So I take a step back and survey the field. What I want is a system where I can be private or public, as I deem appropriate -- just like in the rest of my life. What I want is a way to go online without being spammed or tracked. What I want is a way to access resources and services as I need them. What I want is to be able to talk to and message my friends and not have it stored for government searches or advertiser targeting. What I want is to be able to have a means of exchange and contract independent of a centralized manipulator.
So far a variety of P2P systems have been developed to solve individual problems listed above (I'm sure these could be articulated better or added to but I'm just riffing here - this, like everything is a draft to be revised/iterated upon). Each individual P2P system has been important and popular, but they have lacked the scale and force of centralized commercial systems.
Perhaps the answer to being able to being able to break through to mainstream use of P2P systems is a little centralization in a decentralized platform -- perhaps the answer is to collect and integrate a set of P2P applications in a new way.
ECONOMIES OF SCALE & PORTFOLIOS OF USE
As Bruce Greenwald notes in Competition Demystified, the only real competitive advantage is scale. Scale allows a business to spread costs over more units, volume, users. This makes any cost "feel" lower -- lower on a marginal or percentage basis. This also means that a business can choose to lower price and then the lower price ends up being a barrier to entry for new competitors.
The issue with the "coin economy" now is that it isn't scaling. It works. It just isn't scaling out to users for a variety of reasons. The obstacles which decentralized systems face in scaling are different than traditional businesses. This is a separate issue for another time.
The key is: how can the "coin economy" reach scale? And the answer is both obvious and complex.
In the case of Crown, the goal is to create a portfolio of "uses" which will support a stable value for the token. One key discussion is what those uses should be. In the case of Crown, Stonehedge and Chaositec obviously have some ideas on applications and utilizing the CPU power of the thrones, as well as potential alternatives to proof of work which probably just ultimately create another security layer or additional "hardening" to the blockchain. Defunctec likes games and there are likely to be more applications there. But -- none of these uses really change the game, yet.
To extend the community of users for Crown or any alt-coin or Bitcoin -- we need to think of the use cases for P2P networks -- not just the use cases for coins. And by stepping back and broadening our perspective, we may also broaden the uses and the community.
CIRCLING BACK TO THE 3 IDEAS
It's understandable to be anchored on wallets and coins and bits, but I want to anchor on P2P networks and "imagine" (not really imagining since I think this is actually just a better description of what exists -- but when we "play" we think more creatively and telling people that how they have been thinking is wrong is not a good strategy for persuasion), and "imagine" that we are just building a new P2P technology stack to enable communication, commerce and computing.
There are a few constraints/considerations:
1. The solution has to use open source technology, and it's solutions will be open sourced and shared with that community.
2. Since Godel has pointed out one has to start with some sort of assumption (Incompleteness Theorem) and this seems to be consistent with the structure of Faith in different religions -- we have to make a "beginning/creation" assumption, or take a certain leap of faith. I would refer to what is "assumed" as being "sacred" or beyond questioning. In the case of any system I would propose, what is sacred is human agency. This is it's own much longer discussion. Human agency, the ability of people to act and engage -- to ask, inquire discover and build, is sacred. So the system uses computers and coins, but it is about the people and how they live their lives and creating more options and opportunity.
3. The solution also needs to be hardened against centralization -- and centralization is a risk which will never go away.
4. The solution should echo real world structures in it's initial form. There is information in the persistence of certain human artifacts, and that information will assist in people adopting the system. User adoption is probably the most difficult problem for the network, not the easiest -- but if the system is designed appropriately, adoption will feel easy. A good system makes things that are very hard feel very easy...
THE QUESTION
So what is this system? What are your ideas?
For my part -- I don't store keys in a wallet, and I actually don't really even use a wallet anymore -- and a wallet was never something I used for networking so I have no idea why I would call the software on my computer for accessing a powerful P2P network a wallet. I do carry around a notebook or a "journal" -- where I right down ideas or store things I don't want to forget. Seems like if I thought of this software on my computer as something else (not just a wallet) but really a gateway on a new world which is being built... I think of different things, the ideas step through and click together in new ways.
Maybe it's a journal, but I want to be able to make encrypted phone calls and encrypted texts, and group messaging and calls and video calls all within this thing too... and that's not a journal...
I don't know. Just riffing.
The question is what do you think the "wallet" should become?
|
