Humanity scales and expands by:
- building platforms
- trust minimizing systems
- dividing labour
- reducing transaction costs
- using the price system
- conducting commerce globally
Blockchains are simply a continuation of that pattern, so we need to make sure we design their governance by understanding their underlying principles and maintaining their protocols according to those principles.
Please watch the video below:
Find the slide deck I used in this video here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nUmrgSV9T3YYHk9L3LbEY0iMAKBfVQh-si-OX8_zXMw/edit?usp=sharing
Credits and Suggested Reading
– The idea of human scaling is an extension of the concept of social scalability by Nick Szabo (2017): http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html
– The idea of trust minimization is an extension of “Trusted Third Parties are Security Holes” by Nick Szabo (2001): http://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/
– The idea that social organizations, cities, corporations and organisms scale is from “The surprising math of cities and corporations” by Geoffrey West: https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations
– The concept of division of labour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
– The concept of transaction costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost
– Relationship between the price system and local knowledge by Friedrich A. Hayek: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
– Artifacts of wealth as archaic forms of money by Nick Szabo: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2016/07/artifacts-of-wealth-patterns-in_15.html
– Shelling Out: The Origins of Money by Nick Szabo: http://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
Code Is Law
