this logic also means you want to run less, not more through the blockchain -- while enabling the p2p protocols and encryption services in a bitcoin or crypto node to do more -- but just not keep it on the permanent record of the blockchain.
worth thinking about -- because it starts to make ideas like a DAO look silly... my beginning data/computing ethics assumption has to be that it will be hacked -- and if it is then what happens? well it's a permanent entity so the logical consequence is, well, what we already have an example of. we have a logical proof of why the #2 crypto system isn't logically sound because it uses bad assumptions...
but I understand why folks get excited about that... it is the creation of the machine as a god, and this appeals to a lot of folks for whom machines have been more trustworthy than people.
and there is nothing wrong with the idea -- it's just logically impossible to implement reliably -- you have to make assumptions and abstractions that leak in a system that needs to be water tight.
Some interesting points in your ideas urban_idler. As protectionism and nationalism rises in the real world, the open economy will move to the code. This is already happening, just look at our team. This is the biggest opportunity for crypto. It will become a place where people will be able to do business and exchange the created values under an open, fair, efficient and free system making this possible for them.
We will hold strong and not back down on our moral ideals. The code is a good servant but a bad master as seen in the Robocop or Tron movies.
The simple formulation would be that if we want a system to be humane, we have to inject some humanity into it.
The key problem with many governance structures, and one can argue a key issue with many trade policies - is that they lack any concept of humanity or compassion -- but are motivated by a cold economic calculus, which is portrayed as a sort of competitive inevitability. But we know this isn't true because the economic arguments tend to shift like sand in front of a brisk wind blown to benefit those in power.
So we are all very familiar with the lack of humanity -- and this lack of humanity is much easier for us to imagine than anything else, because it has defined much of our history. As Yuval Noah Harari points out -- we were not only the most imaginative -- but also the most murderous of the human subspecies and that was a key reason we are the only one left from the multiple species which existed 50,000 - 100,000 years ago.
But the challenge is if we can step back and imagine something different -- not machines in control -- not anyone in control... but a system.. so not chaos either.
My guess is that a segment of the population will go with the Facebook/VR model and collapse into code or virtual worlds -- and the virtual worlds will be cool, but the machines in virtual worlds will always be ahead of the human -- the human in virtual reality is effectively the mouse and the code or machines are the cat. This is the structure of the thing -- and sci-fi has kind of glossed over the speed differentials between neurons and circuits, because it screws up the stories.
But another segment of the population will embrace solutions which cause the code to effectively disappear -- this is the model of the code not owning us and enveloping us -- but of the code enabling humans. If we need a corporate exemplar following this strategy it is Amazon -- the Alexa interaction model is moving toward how we interact with each other, not forcing us to move into another reality...
Crown is functionally agnostic about this divide although I personally prefer the latter model. But Crown would play a role either way -- as VR comes of age, you may not entirely trust Facebook's or Microsoft's servers, or some people may want to create their own worlds. And if they live where it is difficult to have a bank account, but easy to have an imagination -- they could create that world in Crown. From a purely business perspective -- this is the arbitrage opportunity -- to lower the cost of entry into the cloud, both as a provider and as a participant.
And not in a narrow way - but with a general toolset, and a few simple guiding principles.
Another key is that platforms are great businesses -- but what if you introduced a general purpose platform but didn't run the platform as the point at which to try to extract profit? What if you built the platform and just let the benefits flow through to the nodes? Then you let the competition happen in how services where provided at the network end points -- not by charging tolls along the way. Now, traditional businesses can't do this -- they are actually legally required to produce a return on capital for their investors... but open source projects can run this experiment. And the way the experiment should work -- is that the same business which doesn't have to pay a "platform tax" or several platform taxes (Visa, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, etc) will be more profitable while being able to charge lower prices -- so everyone benefits. And the benefit comes from the absence of a need for the platform to produce a return.
What puzzles me about the Bitcoins folks is that Visa now owns large parts of that ecosystem. And then the mining is in China and concentrated in a totalitarian state. The currency has been captured on both ends -- mining and consumer... and captured by two of the largest platform tax entities in existence -- so it will be difficult for it to wriggle free. In response to this issue there is a sort of cry, sounding almost like Golem chasing a golden ring... that the bitcoin blockchain is somehow sacred. The one true chain.
But if we look at evolution, nature iterates and so it's probably reasonable for the coin ecosystem to do the same -- iterate and experiment. So that's what we're doing.
According to privacytools.io, the Czech Republic is one of the places where they can't make you cough up your keys -- that and Poland, which is where the CCEX guys are I believe. I may be that the eastern European states, as a result of having been caught between great powers, have a better understanding of freedom than American or the UK, who may have gotten to comfortable with the advantages economic might has given them. We see what may have been an obvious structural error in American creating a massive surveillance state which reports only to the president -- just as a logical exercise, this institutional structure then means that American freedom is then only as strong as the president wants it to be -- and any first grader could do that institutional analysis.
All different sorts of threads to pull together...
and more ways to screw up than there are to succeed -- but Crown will be an interesting experiment and we welcome everyone with a stubbornness of purpose, a willingness to work and anything more than modest ability to join the community and the effort.
