+ Click to here load the audio player +
++ You owe {balance} HON, which - in this context - means you can + read on to learn more... +
++ A tamperproof, borderless, ownerless, global record is not just money + and it's not just language. It's a new way of simultaneously + ordering both which makes possible valuable, meaningful communication + with anyone, anywhere, in any way we care to program it. +
++ Open moneys{' '} + are virtual, personal and free. Any community, network, business can + create their own free money - "free" as in free speech, free + radical, freely available - but NOT free as in free lunch, or free ride. + It's not something you get for nothing. Open money is money that + must be earned to be respected. When you issue it, you are obliged to + redeem it - your money is your word. +
++ We are all here in order to make money. The only difference is what kind + of emphasis you place on that single word, "make". Does it + mean "extract the most of someone's standard of value that you + can get your hands on", or do you understand it more literally? We + can actually make money: that is the primary capability web3 + endows us with. We only need to speak it into existence with integrity. +
++ Open money is flat money. It confers{' '} + + no power of one over another + + , only one with another [...] there's no monopoly, all systems + coexist in the same space. Open money is virtual and not limited. + Physical things exist in space and time - which makes them limited - in + number, mass, place. Virtual things don't exist and need not + respect any such limits. +
++ We believe that the problems that come from conventional money can be + resolved with open money systems. +
++ Although they share a common language arising from the twin practices of{' '} + + faith and finance + + , our narratives and our{' '} + financial records{' '} + were clearly distinct before 2009. Consequently, there is confusion + around the concept of "free" speech, because its definition + shifts depending on the conp: story or money. +
++ However, programmable protocols that are intertwined with a shared + record no-one owns are both stories and money. This collapses the + distinction between narratives around which we organise and our record + of societal debt. So, what happens to "free" speech? +
++ Meaningful communication is a balance between the fact that your{' '} + ability to speak ought to be free, with the fact that you + don't get to say whatever you please. Hence we enshrine freedom of + speech as a constitutional good and implement error-handling for + exceptions like hate speech and defamation. +
++ Protocols capable of processing valuable narratives, like Bitcoin and + Ethereum, render such interpretive balancing acts unnecessary. Your + ability to{' '} + + access the network + {' '} + - much like TCP/IP - is free in all senses, requiring only a connection + that can support you speaking in the same language as your peers. Saying + anything meaningful (i.e. state-changing) has a specific, + well-defined economic cost, captured in transaction fees which accrue to + the benefit of those who "listen" to what you have to say. +
++ In some sense, it is the primary benefit of this new order of + econo-linguistic network we now communicate with: everyone is + simultaneously free to speak and the cost of any kind of + meaningful speech is well-defined everywhere. We are also provided with + a clear definition of meaning: any speech act which changes the state of + our shared record. +
++ In blockchains, speech and execution are one and the same thing{' '} + and interpretation is deterministic. The protocol has the bare minimum + of rules required for consensus, basically: you cannot double spend a + token. Every peer processes every transaction which passes these rules + without fear or favour. +
++ The context is determined not by legal interpretation, but by{' '} + economics. Rather than enshrining an ideal like "free + speech" which we agree is good, certain behaviours we{' '} + agree to be malicious are made prohibitively expensive. They are + not disallowed, just economically unsustainable, in much the same way + that prevention is better than any cure. Vitalik touches on this in his{' '} + Devcon 1 talk{' '} + and we'll return to it again and again. +
++ You can validate any kind of state transition you like in Eth2, but if + it's provably malicious, your stake will get slashed.{' '} + + Programming penalties rather than rewards + {' '} + ensures that the only state transitions worth validating are those that + maintain a meaningful consensus. It is a profound change in how we + regulate expression. +
+Again, it points at complementary opposites:
++ Pricing different kinds of speech appropriately, rather than trying to + "protect" a culturally-conditioned ideal, has the second-order + cybernetic effect of better securing public goods. For instance, SSTOREs + are a relatively expensive operation/expression because storing data on + public networks is costly, and it is a cost borne by all of us. + Therefore, we agree upon a gas price that incentivizes developers to + write contracts which store the minimum possible information required + for state-changing, meaningful transactions. +
++ We could even say that, on freely accessible public blockchains, there + is no such thing as free speech. There is only increasingly costly + expression for increasingly complex kinds of meaning, with the + incentives programmed such that the costs borne by the speaker are + always provably more than those imposed on the community of listeners. +
++ When we stop "protecting" free speech, but instead price any + speech act according to a set of explicit consensus rules we all agree + to follow, the space of meaningful communications is greatly + expanded. +
++ You may think this unfairly favours the rich, but you'd be wrong. + We can program our shared ledger in any way we care to! If your + program favours those already in power, it's because you lack + creativity, not because of some limitation in the underlying protocol. + Look at Gitcoin Grants and Quadratic Funding: a speech act which donates + $1 to a cause can have nearly as great an effect as a donation two + orders of magnitude larger, because we've{' '} + + modelled clearly the most optimal way + {' '} + to fund public goods. +
++ Money-as-a-programmable-protocol is "spoken" as hex-encoded + data strings, which are run on and interpreted by a monolithic virtual + machine which is everywhere and nowhere, so our metaphor can only go so + far. Despite the descriptive limitations of natural language faced with + such a construction, we can still be precise about the exceptions to + free speech mentioned above and how they might be handled in a world + which does not "protect" speech, but rather agrees communally + on its cost. +
++ Hate speech (analogous to malicious behaviour or outright attacks on the + network) can be more elegantly handled when you are required to have{' '} + + value-at-a-loss + {' '} + to speak meaningfully. If you then violate rules which are not just + social norms, but executable software, that value is slashed{' '} + simultaneously with your speech and you suffer provably more + damage. +
++ Defamation comes in two flavours: per se (a statement that is obviously + defamatory) and per quod (the defamatory implication must be proven). +
++ The (in)famous{' '} + + EIP-1559 + {' '} + is a great example of how we price transactional expression at the + protocol level, which is where the most contentious{' '} + + debates + {' '} + occur. Note, however, how such debate centres not on opinion, but + engineering{' '} + + trade-offs + {' '} + and technical proof. +
++ More fundamentally, this new order of communication, akin to the + appearance of language itself, is best demonstrated by the simple fact + that you need only memorize 12 magical words, incant them into an + internet-connected machine and you gain immediate access to{' '} + monetary value, anywhere in the world. One can even encode a + reference to a newspaper headline in the genesis block of a network of + timestamp servers (Satoshi's wording) which run money-as-a-protocol + to make a permanent political statement. It is unprecedented. +
++ Reimagining meaningful speech and how it is enacted on our shared + records is already an important step towards a better web, but it is + only one half of the picture. We've claimed above that we require + "incentives programmed such that the costs borne by the speaker are + always provably more than those imposed on the community of + listeners" and it is this community of listeners who will + form a big part of future modules. For now, we leave you to consider + Hanzi Freinacht's{' '} + + The Listening Society + + . +
++ This is a special post. Rather than talk about how blockchains can merge + money and speech in proscial ways, we will illustrate it. +
++ We ask that you take on a very particular kind of token we have designed + in order to read the contents of this lesson. The token is called " + + Honour + + " (or HON), and it represents obligations, rather than + assets. Learning about creative approaches to the kinds of programmable + currencies we can create together really matters, because we can + literally make money in ways which benefit the people we each care + about. +
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