Read "Blockchain Sociology" and "I Don't Invest"

"Blockchain Sociology: Reimagining Money, Media and Democracy" and "The So-called "I Don't Invest" Means All in Fiat Currency" are two books written by Mr. Gao Jianjian. They are the best in my opinion. There is no other introductory book on blockchain.

Blockchain technology was started by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 by creating Bitcoin, a new type of currency with the ability to store value, and flourished in the next dozen years. It is undeniable that most current applications and motivations come from money, and historically, this is a common law in the development of new technologies. However, the imagination space of blockchain far exceeds that of finance. It has beautiful characteristics such as being immutable, decentralized, and verifiable by everyone. It has the opportunity to play a paradigm-shifting role in the history of progress of human society. Kin's two books discuss blockchain technology under the vision of "designing an ideal society" and discuss many interesting topics in a very simple and non-technical way.

Here are ten small concepts selected to give friends who have not read the original book a little idea of ​​the cool content in the book. Many quotes and adaptations are from the two books "Blockchain Sociology" and "I Don't Invest", based on the CC-BY agreement, and for the convenience of reading, the references are not marked one by one.

price vs value

The most important things are invisible to the naked eye. From the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, legal currency can only reflect the rarity of low-level needs. However, this is only an "anti-diversified", linear, and single measurement mechanism, and it is a helpless choice. ; In contrast, the value of most things in this world is not properly reflected by the price. For example, the salary of graduates of humanities and social sciences is generally not high in Taiwanese society. This is not a problem of humanities and social sciences, but a problem of our society. Our current society cannot correctly reflect the value of diversity.

When the blockchain decentralizes the ability to mint certificates (tokens), and a small community, such as a DAO, can use its own tokens to reflect the values ​​valued by a certain community, diversity has been recognized. Respect the possibility.

X-to-Earn

Viewed on a larger scale, the X of X-to-Earn is a demonstration of the value that a community values. For example, move-to-earn advocates the value of exercise; write-to-earn reflects the concept that creation is valuable; read-to-earn emphasizes the importance of reading. It is precisely because social vouchers are decoupled from price that they can transcend the thin concept of price.

consensus mechanism

There is a saying: Those who gamble with their lives are often the most wonderful. The X in Proof of What is said behind Proof of Work is that I have worked so hard, don’t you believe me? Proof of Stake means I have staked all my money, don’t you believe me? Proof of Authority means I've put my trust in it, don't you believe me?

In the book, Kin takes the anti-extradition movement as an example. The protesters risked their future and even their safety and used actions to prove their love and persistence for Hong Kong. This can be called: Proof of Love .

False news

Fake news is a difficult problem for modern society to deal with. It is very common to see on the Internet that a certain public figure said something that he/she never said, or that the complete statement was quoted out of context without authorization.

Through digital signatures, a public figure or a person with first-hand information can easily prove what the "original" is and block the possibility of false information from the source. Of course, it must be clearly distinguished that false information and misinformation are two different concepts.

Inaction is also an act

When we laugh at the fool who exchanged 100,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas more than ten years ago, we are actually laughing at ourselves: because at any point in time, we could have used the amount of two pizzas to exchange 100,000 Bitcoins, but we didn’t do it. Inaction is also an act.

When you see injustice happening in society, you use a mentality that you think you have seen through life and laugh at those who insist on simple truths and fight for them. It is too young and too simple, even if it is just a moment. A little bit, but it still makes the world a little greasier. You can ignore it but don’t look down upon it, you can doubt it but don’t deny it.

The contradiction between charging and paying

Information naturally prefers to flow and does not want to be blocked by anything; as a creator, usually you also hope that your content will not have a paywall so that your work can be seen by more people. But on the other hand, if the work is completely free and open to the public, it will force the creator to look for sources of income from advertising and industry matching, and then inevitably fall into a traffic trap.

After thinking about this issue in the book, Kin proposed that the best model for the time being should be to make the content open and circulated, and at the same time allow readers to easily provide small support. The so-called everyone does what he can, everyone gets what he needs. What is currently lacking is a very small and convenient support channel. LikeCoin and BAT are both projects to solve this problem. As someone who occasionally writes as an amateur, I feel the same way.

The thinking behind LikeCoin and Matters

Many seemingly simple appearances have profound thinking behind them. Because I am a fan of LikeCoin and Matters, I enjoyed watching him and Zhang Jieping discuss and think about the development and positioning of these two products. It felt like reading a gossip magazine. The following is a direct excerpt from the book. The original text, the idea is extremely clear:

The LikeCoin blockchain is a "trustless machine", Matters is a "public discussion space without a giant", and IPFS is a "hard drive without a giant", forming a decentralized content distribution mechanism. Matters stores all articles in IPFS and writes ISCN metadata to the blockchain to ensure that the file metadata cannot be tampered with. As long as any node of the LikeCoin blockchain can be read, the entire content index can be obtained. Blockchain is not suitable for storing large files. It only stores ISCN metadata containing IPFS addresses. The main body of the file is stored in IPFS, distributed in all user terminals, and spread point-to-point. The more important the file, the more people will read it, and the more likely it will be. The more people view it, the more difficult it is to delete. The "Three Treasures Without Taiwan", in addition to partially responding to social problems such as false information and stratification, are more importantly trying to fundamentally resist the authoritarian government's online censorship.

better democracy

Taiwanese voters must have had this feeling: too many candidates said one thing before the election, but changed their tune immediately after the election, and refused to fulfill their political views. The reason behind it is also very simple: because the cost of elections, voting, and counting of votes is very high, it can only be held once every four years. In Taiwan, which has a high recall threshold, you can basically do whatever you want for four years. In addition, the rabble has a poor memory, so it is just a mess. Rational equilibrium solution.

Imagine a situation: public opinion can be immediately reflected on any public issue, the cost of voting approaches zero, and vote counting can prevent any form of fraud. Sound far away? In fact, it is completely technically feasible. Simply put, it is the beautiful features of the blockchain plus the black magic of zero-knowledge proof. This concept, which has been implemented in many DAOs, is liquid democracy that has been discussed for some time. This is a super flexible representative system. I believe if you are smart, you will be able to think of applications on more levels.

Freedom means having choices

What the book advocates is not to radically replace existing legal tender with cryptocurrencies, nor to use blockchain voting to completely subvert traditional paper voting. On the contrary, it is advocated to use blockchain as a supplement, using legal currency to deal with daily life, but having the right to choose to use cryptocurrency for storage and transactions; paper voting to deal with some situations, but using a liquid democracy mechanism as a demonstration Another addition to public opinion. The true meaning of freedom is to have choices; the choice itself is more meaningful than choice.

let's move

Marx said: "Philosophers only explain the world in various ways, but the key is to change it." Not understanding the technologies behind the Internet such as TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, etc. does not prevent us from using the Internet; those who do not understand Love does not prevent us from loving; the same is true for blockchain technology: not understanding the consensus mechanism, Hash, and cryptography does not prevent us from using blockchain technology. Water can carry boats and cook porridge. Blockchain technology is a carrier. It is neutral in itself, and its value depends on the content it carries. We must see the essence through the phenomenon, take action, and use it. After all, for For unarmed citizens, technology is a weapon.

I hope this brief introduction can arouse your desire to read the original book. After all, this article only covers a very small part of Yoshimitsu Kataha in the book.

Although this ideal decentralized publishing experiment is not mentioned throughout the article, the details can be seen here . In addition, if you need the e-book "all in legal currency", please contact me. I also encourage you to use this link to purchase. The entire sale is only until the end of November, that is, there are only five days left. Come and support this super ideal project Experiment with publishing! Finally, I hope you can get the same happiness as me while reading.

PS If someone buys through the link, I will get 30% of the royalties of the book. Please send me a private message and I will send it all to your designated wallet in the form of LikeCoin. After all, "Medium Cup Starbucks" is still alive. I plan to continue using love to generate electricity for a while. The reason why I didn’t put the original purchase link is because this form of “ individuals are channels ” is also part of this decentralized publishing, and I want to participate :P