Talk for "Blockchain - Fact, Fiction, Future" @ IMAL, Brussels, November 2016

1. BACKFEED
From autonomy to collobaration
JELLE GERBRANDY >>
Blockchain. Fact. Fiction. Future 4 November - 5 November 2016

2. Evolution of Blockchain
DECENTRALIZED WHAT'S THERE? USE CASES STAGE
BLOCKCHAIN 1.0 Ledger “things of the
internet”
trustless money, tokens,
tracking of ownership and
provenance, pulbic data
software that manages
assets
FACT
(BitCoin, ...)
BLOCKCHAIN 2.0 Code Execution software that runs
autonomously
smart contracts, IoT, skynet
autonomous software that
manages assets
FUTURE
(Ethereum)
BLOCKCHAIN 3.0 Collaboration reputation,
values, decision
systems
decentralized
collaboration, local
economies, curation,
insurance, investment
autonomous organisations
that manage assets
FICTION?
(Backfeed?)

3. “[Blockchains are] Lego Mindstorms for
building economic and social institutions”
(Buterin, 2014)

4. What's a DAO?
DAO: Decentralized Autonomous Organisation
- Decentralized - no central point of control, no physical
location
- Autonomous - self-governing, not subject to (direct)
outside control

5. “The” DAO
●
A decentralized investment fund
managed by its participants
●
Decisions made by voting
●
anyone can make a proposal
●
votes weighed by amount
invested
●
April 30: The DAO launched by slockit on Ethereum spring 2016.
Enthusiasm.
●
May 28: Creation phase ends. Raised 150 million dollars. Euphoria.
●
June 17: Hacker steals 50 million. Panic
●
Now: money more or less recoved.

7. The P2P Economy is dominated by rent-extracting Big Companies
- Censorship
- Privacy issues
- Labour conditions
You can be a consumer or a product

8. (Heather Marsh, Binding Chaos, 2013)
The whole Economy is dominated by rent-extracting Big Companies

9. The Coming Disruption:
Blockchain-based P2P networks
● decentralized social
networks
● decentralized airbnb
● decentralized ride sharing
● decentralized insurance
● decentralized banking
● decentralized startups
Decentralize Everything

11. We need Social Technologies
“If the blockchain is to be used to coordinate
individuals beyond a basic set of
algorithmically-verifiable actions (such as
proof-of-work in Bitcoin), it needs to come
along with an additional governance layer
that is capable of regulating the interactions
between people in a decentralized manner. “
(“Economics of Blockchain”, Sinclair
Davidson, Primavera De Filippi, Jason Potts)

12. BACKFEED:
GOVERNANCE FOR DAOs

13. 0111 0111 0111 0110 0100
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Game
Theory
Code Horizontal
Organisation
Design Games in which Collaboration is the winning strategy

14. STIGMERGYis a mechanism of indirect coordination,
through the environment, between agents or actions.
The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action
stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a
different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and
build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of
coherent, apparently systematic activity. [wikipedia]

15. STIGMERGY
●
Myxobacteria
●
Ants
●
Termites
●
Birds
●
Optimization problems in CS
●
Wikipedia
●
Open Source Software
Development
●
(Social networks, scientific
research, economies, ...)

16. A social operating system for
DAOs to enable large scale
open source collaboration,
without central coordination

17. THE BACKFEED PROTOCOL:
TOKENS
●
Tokens are transferable assets
●
Tokens represent value in the network
●
Tokens are created by contributing to the organisation,
based on “proof-of-value”

18. THE BACKFEED PROTOCOL:
REPUTATION
●
Decentralized reputation system
●
Reputation is non-transferable
●
Reputation represents your influence in the network
●
Reputation is gained by contributing to the network
●
Reputation is gained by assigning value to contributions
in a way that is aligned with the consensus

19. THE BACKFEED PROTOCOL:
ACCOMODATING DIVERSITY
●
The network rewards alignment
with the “consensus”, creating
networks of people with a
similar value system
●
Groups with different value
systems can create a new
network by “forking”
(You can copy/paste a network)
●
Networks can interact in a
network of networks

21. CONTROL NOTHING