V God: Decentralization is not only an ideal, but also a strategy with a high success rate
Original title: ""Tianwen" Session 6/Crisis·Transition/1020"
Original source: Research Group
This article is the sixth chapter of "Tianwen: A Dialogue on World Views" jointly sponsored by China Academy of Art and Zhejiang Science and Technology Association: "Radical Market and Thought Experiment ", the guest speaker is: Vitalik Buterin and Eric Glen Weyl.
"Market" is an ambiguous title, as if the market itself has magical power. In fact, the market is great, and the price mechanism is also very remarkable. Through it, the optimal allocation of resources can be realized, and the goals and information of many participants in the market can be aggregated into a unified whole. The property rights on which the market developed have always been seen as attached to society, and the two have also constructed many different paths, some of which have not yet been discovered, but may be superior to the ones we have.
Ethereum is a platform designed to run smart contracts and decentralized applications A global blockchain network, currently the world's second most valuable and recognized cryptocurrency platform after Bitcoin, this visionary project has a huge market cap of over $65 billion and growing. As the founder of Ethereum, computer engineer and writer, Vitalik has not only invested in the Ethereum project in the field of blockchain and encryption for a long time, but is also committed to using economic principles and system design to make the cooperation system more open, free, and Equitable and efficient to improve or even replace current business models or governance models.
When Microsoft CTO Glen co-authored "Radical Markets" Like a miner, Vitalik discovered the practical flesh and blood of Ethereum as a cryptocurrency platform, and Glen's thought experiment constructed using mathematical logic and economic schemes also found fertile ground for its growth. What made Vitalik and Glen collide? From the Quadratic voting in "Radical Markets" to the Quadratic Funding experiment of Gitcoin CLR, the public facilities in the free market atmosphere are combined with simple mathematical principles to make monopoly capital and The polarized market-oriented organizational form is moving towards sustainable equality and decentralization.
Quadratic Voting (Quadratic Voting) can disintegrate the simple "minority- majority" opposition. The quadratic voting method assumes that the degree of personal willingness is related to the cost they are willing to pay. All voters will pay a certain cost, and the cost increases quadratically with the number of individual votes. Since the more individuals vote to participate in the decision-making of the same issue, the higher the willingness, the greater the "cost" paid by the individual. Therefore, everyone will preferentially participate in the decision-making of the most concerned issues, and invest a greater cost to succeed. This can avoid the "tyranny of the majority" caused by "one person, one vote". Therefore, the square voting method uses the principles of modern game theory to solve some problems faced by current social institutions, trying to reach a mathematically optimal solution, and uses Ethereum community governance as a practice.
The square voting method starts from the initial capital equality and consistency, and pays more for what you want; As a reverse relationship, the second-party fundraising starts from the disparity in the initial capital, so the needs of a small number of people surface. In the Gitcoin CLR experiment, everyone can contribute money to a project on the list, and the actual amount that the project receives is determined according to Glen's formula: take the square root of the amount contributed by a single participant, and square the sum of the sum of the square roots ——That is, the financing value actually obtained by the project. Since the calculated value must be greater than the total amount donated by donors, the difference in the middle will be filled by an organization, such as Vitalik's The Ethereum Foundation, with organizational funds.
Thoughts, technology, and applications blend and grow, generating huge energy. As a platform support, Ethereum provides blockchain technology; "Basic Advancement Market" proposes possible alternative market practice methods: the combination of technology carrier and thought experiment becomes a practical practice. Vitalik and Glen reconcile with radical liberal practice what has always been a conundrum in the humanities and social sciences: collective consumption and the tragedy of the commons. Vitalik and Glen also work together on the RadicalxChange initiative, which is dedicated to imagining, communicating, and building a diverse future that uses social technology to optimize our common life.
In addition, Ethereum's smart contracts are highly dependent on the "complex property rights system" mentioned in "Radical Market" to establish mutual trust mechanisms, A shared information platform can be said to be a perfect match; the reason why blockchain and Ethereum are more suitable for some methods in the radical market is that transaction fees are required. The concept of "psychological transaction costs" allows a certain digital commodity to pay some small amount Money requires thought and brainpower, and the inconvenience it brings is a burden to the final transaction. In the context of the Ethereum consensus system, the third "radical market" solution is to use the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to motivate decentralized validator nodes. Just like the problem that the anti-monopoly law tries to solve, the regional The blockchain has different tools when it is decentralized, and vitalik also asks here, can the same "market-based" solution be used to motivate market participants in other decentralized markets?
The view of "personal data market" in "Radical Market" redefines us and The economic relationship of service providers (such as Facebook, Google), given that there is no trusted court controlled by "people" in the blockchain, how can the economic incentive strategy provided by Posner and Weyl be realized? What are the obstacles to the realization of these ideas? Vitalik is optimistic that the whims of implementing a "radical market" in practice can be solved with good default settings and personal AI, but the biggest challenge will be gradually finding bigger ones if this vision is to advance. , more meaningful application scenarios to test and show that the model is effective.
At this network society annual meeting, Vitalik will raise funds for Ethereum governance and Gitcoin quadratic How will the blockchain market provide technical support for the personal data market? How to use the thought experiment proposed in "Radical Market" to negotiate with the basic assumptions of the real society? At the same time, Glen Weyl will discuss with you how the more fluid "RadicalxChange Plan" based on "Radical Market", as a movement following the principles of science and social participation, has changed our current business and governance methods.
Speaker Introduction
Vitalik Buterin
< /p>
Vitalik Buterin, known as "V God", Russian-Canadian, computer engineer and writer, self-deprecating as a long-term resident of Cathay Pacific By. After the favorite character function in the game "World of Warcraft" was deleted, he realized the possible harm caused by centralized network services. A few years later, he came into contact with Bitcoin and founded Ethereum, which pushed the entire cryptocurrency market to its peak and opened Blockchain 2.0. era. Currently, Vitalik is working on scaling solutions for Ethereum, enabling it to become a more pervasive computing and settlement platform.
Eric Glen WEYL ;
< /p>
Glen Weyl, born in San Francisco, USA in 1985, is a political economist and social technology expert and currently serves as CEO of Microsoft's Political Economy and Social Technology Division. In 2018, Glen founded the RadicalxChange Foundation with the vision of building a society beyond the existing form of capitalism. That same year, he and Eric A. Posner wrote "Radical Market"; a thought experiment on the problematic capitalist market mechanism. Currently, Glen is dedicated to imagining, communicating, and building a diverse future in which social technology optimizes our shared life.
1. Ethereum community governance and gitcoin’s quadratic fundraising
Speaker: Vitalik Buterin
Abstract: Communities have always relied heavily on public goods, and this dependence is even greater in online communities. Funding public goods, however, necessarily presents a political dilemma: who gets to choose which projects to fund? How are these choices rated as good or bad? The innovative mechanism of "quadratic fundraising" provides a democratic and market-oriented planning method for funding public goods, and this mechanism is probably very suitable for different types of online communities. While we still face many unresolved issues in terms of implementation, the results of Ethereum’s “quadratic fundraising” experiment through the Gitcoin funding platform for at least the past year and a half have been very positive. This time I will talk about the harvest of this experiment in terms of the Ethereum ecosystem experiment and the quadratic fundraising.
Quotations and snippets:
I am very interested in a certain category of decentralized institutions , to improve the incentives for content publishing and content curation in social media that groups of people can initiate on their own without controversial changes to politics and property rights within society. Such decentralized institutions could be used to solve the defining challenges of the 21st century: promoting beneficial scientific progress, developing informational public goods, reducing global wealth inequality, and the problem of fake news, government-driven and corporate-driven social media censorship, cryptocurrencies Product stewardship: how do we collaborate in an open society and get things done with quality? —— Vitalik's Comments on "Radical Market"
In Practice Whimsy can be solved with good defaults and personal AI, but if this vision is to move forward, the biggest challenge will be to gradually find larger and more meaningful use cases to test and show that the model works . —— Vitalik's comment on "Radical Market"
The code determines what a platform can do now, the community It determines what a platform can do in the future. The reason why Ethereum can have such a strong community and open source ecology is because I don’t think we can forcefully create an ecology. The ecology needs to grow by itself, and there must be ideas and ideas that can be shared. value. Cryptocurrencies offer a new model that opens up the possibility of economic incentives for open source software development, which I think is a big part of why Ethereum, and many other projects, are possible. —— Vitalik on community and code
Decentralization is not only an ideal, but also a success Very high rate, very practical strategy. ——Vitalik on Libra
To some extent, I am a person who has been living in the "system people outside. My experience of learning a lot of things myself through the Internet made me realize that one thing is important: building a world where people who are out of the mainstream in any way can live. I didn't have a credit card when I was young, and bitcoin allowed me to buy things on the internet and more importantly it allowed me to get a job online and start earning money. To me this is an important real life demonstration of the value of decentralized technology - creating a more inclusive world. ——Vitalik on Liberalism and the First Enlightenment of Decentralization
2. The Political Philosophy of Radical Change Project
Speaker: Eric Glen WEYL
Summary: Capitalism only works if the returns are diminished (when the whole is less than the sum of the parts) In order to effectively allocate resources, the premise of human civilization is just the opposite. However, there is a certain diversity in the phenomenon of income growth that aggregates across and across borders, and even democratic nation-states cannot provide clear solutions. We must therefore move beyond these conflicting paradigms and build new and diverse institutions of collective governance that adapt to changing patterns of social cooperation. RadicalxChange is a new movement to imagine, build, experiment and advocate for these goals through rigorous science and social engagement. Glen Weyl will discuss the principles of the movement and the ways it is changing business and governance.
Quotations and snippets:
“As a global society, we stand at an extraordinary crossroads: Social and economic systems are failing around the world: growing inequality, economic stagnation, and threats to democracy Bigger. To address this, we believe that positive and comprehensive change can only be achieved through the inclusion of diverse voices. We need the arts to imagine new possibilities with us, and scholarship to help us learn the lessons of history and build a better Society needs entrepreneurship to build new institutions and activism to bridge ideological bridges against hate and division. The RadicalxChange community has spawned dozens of start-ups and local chapters around the world, making antitrust and data regulation a major event Transformation, and inspired a number of research and academic institutions, as well as a wide range of artistic projects." - RadicalxChange Homepage Manifesto
"Our solution to the current crisis is to expand the market aggressively." - "Radical Market"
“COST (Common Ownership Self-assessed Tax) will also make us think about property in a different and healthier way. COST is taxed on items, not relationships. If people put their Wouldn't it be better for emotional energy to be devoted less to objects and more to their relationships? . . Rarely drive for more than an hour or two—thankfully, people’s obsession with it is a thing of the past." - "Radical Markets Chapter 1 Property Rights Sharing"
"A market without competition is not a market at all. Investors maximize their returns by creating monopolies, markets are constantly in danger of centralization, and only governments can To stop the pace of monopoly...the most important form of concentration of our time - the rise of investment institutions...our "radical" approach is to set a strict cap on the shareholding of these investors. If our approach is followed, it will not only transform capital markets and create massive wealth, but it will also lead to greater prosperity for the least well-off. However, we also acknowledge that new forms of market concentration will emerge in the future. "——"Radical Market Chapter 4 Dismembering the Big Octopus"
"In addition to directly affecting income In addition, paying for data may change society's understanding of the digital economy. Users may see themselves as active producers and participants in creating value, rather than feeling that they are passive consumers of Internet services. We suspect that, " The term "artificial intelligence" will gradually give way to more precise understandings of the sources of value in digital systems, such as "collective intelligence." Instead of seeing helpful insights from Siri and Alexa as bot suggestions, users see them as the culmination of human contributions, just as they understand insights from an encyclopedia or a Facebook page. "——"Radical Market Chapter 5 Data as the Product of Labor"
"Quadratic Voting is a better way to make collective decisions by letting people express how strongly they feel about an issue, rather than just For or against, so as to avoid overwhelming the majority." - "30 Top Thinkers Under 30: The Inventor of Quadratic Voting, Intended to Transform the Social Machine"
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Related Articles
