Transhuman Crypto Cloudminds. Melanie Swan

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Transhuman Crypto Cloudminds
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Transhuman Crypto Cloudminds
Melanie Swan, Technology Theorist, Philosophy Department, Purdue University USA,
Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies and DIYgenomics
June 23, 2018
Essay Winner: Humanity Plus Essay Competition
“Mutual Benefits of Blockchain and Transhumanism”
https://humanityplus.org/projects/essay-prize-mutual-benefits-of-blockchain-and-transhumanism/
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
-Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 17761
)
Abstract
Considering the mutual benefits of blockchain and transhumanism, this essay
proposes crypto cloudminds as a safe mechanism by which the human mind might
transcend its unitary limitations by permissioning partial resources to join a multi-
party mind (comprised of human and machine minds) in a cloud-based
environment. Cloudminds could have diverse purposes including problem solving
(addressing future-of-work issues with Maslow Smart Contracts), learning,
experience, exploration, innovation, artistic expression, and other personal
development activities. Crypto cloudminds could be multicurrency, operating with
payment remuneration, security, and (especially) ideas as the denominations of
measure. For thriving in the future, mind node peers could enter “Yes-and”
Payment Channels with one another for collaborative idea development. For
surviving in the future, good-player behavior could be game-theoretically enforced
with the simultaneous privacy-transparency property of blockchains, together with
the immutable peer-confirmed consensus algorithm and audit-log checks and
balances system. Overall, blockchains might serve as an institutional technology
that is the basis for treaties and progress in a multi-species society of human,
algorithm, and machine, guiding the way to positive transhuman futures.
Transhuman Problem Context and Blockchains as a Solution
This essay understands transhumanism to be the idea that the human race can evolve
beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and
technology. Kurzweil’s view is that the transhuman future will be a convergence of artificial
intelligence (machines) and intelligence augmentation (humans).2
This is also his answer to the
Friendly Artificial Intelligence (AI) question, namely that Unfriendly AI will not “take over the
world” (or make paperclips3
and strawberry fields4
) because humans and AI will become the
same thing. Reformulating Kurzweil’s convergence argument, at least the immediate future is
more likely to be one of a multi-species society with various permutations of human, algorithm,
and machine.

Thus, one of the most pressing near-term challenges is evolving into a multi-species
society in ways that support the success of all. This is going to entail agreements such as treaties,
and enforcement mechanisms that produce good player behavior in large-scale network
environments, including contracts, penalties, and reputation systems. The governance systems of
the future may be based on game-theoretic incentives to coordinate large groups of actors, as
opposed to policing and force (which may be practically impossible, costly, and otherwise
infeasible). Blockchains are a future-class technology that supports these needs. Such distributed
ledgers are a new form of smart network and global computational infrastructure that might be
used to implement safe, empowering, and enlightening transhuman futures.
A blockchain (also known as distributed ledger technology) is an immutable,
cryptographic (cryptography-based), distributed (peer-to-peer decentralized network), consensus-
driven ledger. Conceptually, blockchain technology is a software protocol for the instantaneous
transfer of money and other forms of value (assets, contracts, public records, identity credentials,
and program states) globally via the internet. Just as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is an
internet-based software protocol for transferring email, blockchains are a protocol for
transferring money. However, the transfer of assets requires a few more bells and whistles than
simply transferring files on the internet. Blockchains provide an always-on apparatus that checks
asset registration and ownership in real-time to make sure that only one unique instance of an
asset is transferred (avoiding the double-spending problem, that multiple copies of digital money
might be sent to different parties).
Problem Context: Safeguards for an Emerging Multi-species Society
The transhuman problem context is that humanity is in the process of evolving into a
more intense integration of humans and technology, and safeguards are required for the
productive progression of this trend. So far, the multi-species society can be seen most
prominently in markets and in the workplace.
In financial markets, humans and algorithms coexist side by side. Currently, 55 percent of
U.S. stock trading volume (and 40-70 percent worldwide) is performed by programmatic trades,
and high-frequency trading (HFT) volume has doubled since the 2008 financial crisis.5
Programmatic trading is implicated in flash crashes, an emergent phenomenon in which
automated trading can trigger extremely rapid price declines.6
Since markets are driven by
sentiment, a new class of data science analysis techniques and privacy-protected, remunerated,
information-sharing mechanisms are needed to model markets as a multi-species domain.
Blockchain smart network systems might provide the requisite tools for collective intelligence
gathering and systemic risk modeling to reduce the possibility of large-scale failure such as
financial contagion and collapse.
In the workplace, humans and machines are also starting to cohabitate. As Cowen
heralded in 2013, the best worker for the job may be humans and technology in collaboration.7
Some economists estimate that one half of jobs (47 percent) in mature economies are at risk of
being outsourced to technology in the next two decades.8
The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank
predicts the continued progression of the thirty-year trend of job declines in routine tasks, both
physical and cognitive.9
China, South Korea, and Japan are leading the world in the
implementation of industrial robotics,10
often with one human attending several machines.11
Other sectors are in the process of joining the automation economy, in the areas of supply chain
logistics, smart city monitoring, commercial driving fleet management, and medical imaging.

Solution Objectives: Thriving and Surviving
Given the problem context that the transhuman future depends on evolving into a safe
and empowering multi-species society, there are two focal points: surviving and thriving (Figure
1). Surviving addresses the crucial concerns of physical, cognitive, and emotional safety, and
economic sustenance, as preconditions for launching the broader transhuman agenda of thriving
by exceeding current physical and mental limitations.
Figure 1. Transhuman Objectives and corresponding Blockchain Solutions.
Tier Outcome Blockchain Facilitation
Surviving Physical, cognitive, emotional
safety; economic sustenance
Multi-species treaties enforced with
recourse and reputation
Thriving Exceeding current physical and
mental limitations
Crypto Cloudminds
Cryptoeconomic Smart Networks for Surviving in the Transhuman Future
First considering surviving, blockchains might help facilitate the next steps in society’s
evolution in three primary ways. One is the “good player argument.” This is the idea that mutual
survival interests are aligned by using a common infrastructure. Since human, algorithm, and
machine might all be using the same blockchain smart network systems to access resources,
communicate, obtain information, transact, and otherwise conduct their operations, they all have
the incentive to remain in good reputational standing to use the network, and this could enforce
good player behavior.12
A second future economics concern is sustenance. Using economics as design principles
in blockchain networks might help solve an important outstanding problem, credit assignment,
by having a model for tracking and connecting contribution with remuneration. Remuneration is
often based on asset ownership as opposed to value contribution. Blockchains could remedy this
since the advent of the token economy means a new era of participation in web-based
communities. Whereas Web 1.0 involved the transfer of static information, Web 2.0 (the social
web) created the expectation that website users can interact, like, and engage with content and
other users. Now in Web 3.0 (the crypto web), users expect to participate meaningfully in
economic communities by being remunerated for contributions (such as software code, digital
art, and forum posts), and by being able to vote and access resources.13
The token economy
facilitates this as websites issue their own cryptotoken money supplies (despite emerging
technology volatility, there are over 1945 Ethereum-based projects as of October 201814
).
Blockchains might offer a means of solving the credit assignment problem, and also
facilitate new models of asset ownership that address “future of work” concerns. Blockchain
economies are characterized by open platform business models for large-scale global
participation (e.g. open source software communities with a payments layer) that compete with
closed monopolistic platforms (such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft). As technological
unemployment becomes more prominent in the automation economy (jobs being outsourced to
technology), transitioning outsourced workers to new situations is a key concern.15
With
cooperative ownership models,16
outsourced workers might receive shares in the new automated
means of production in exchange for job loss. However, early Universal Basic Income (UBI)
experiments indicate that unearned “free money” is unpalatable17
since it lacks social contact
reciprocity features. UBI is another form of the credit assignment problem because it has the
same premise that contribution and remuneration should be linked. Blockchain-based Maslow
Smart Contracts might enable individuals to pursue interests and skill development in a

structured way that results in certification and new employment or productive use of capacities
as the endpoint, and instantiates new forms of the social contract.
Blockchains as a Future-class Technology
Blockchains (software the for secure automated transfer of information or assets via the
internet) constitute a robust singularity-class technology for realizing both objectives of
transhuman futures, thriving and surviving. Blockchains offer the full progression of a
sophisticated new technology, running the gamut from “better horse” to “new car” applications
(Figure 2).18
Since internet networks are already in place, value-added layers such as blockchains
might be rapidly adopted. IDC estimates that global spending on blockchain solutions will reach
$9.2 billion in 2021 (from as estimated $2.1 billion in 2018).19
The World Economic Forum
estimates that at least 10 percent of global GDP will be stored in blockchains by 2027.20
Figure 2. Blockchain’s “New Technology” progression.
Surviving
Thriving
Level Core Functionality Applications
1.0 Basic
“Better horse”
Better internet: payments and secure
information transfer
Real-time payments, monetary
and information transactions
(immediate transfer)
2.0 Advanced
“Horseless carriage”
Assets digitized and registered to
blockchains, real-time valuation and
transfer, smart contracts
Financial contracts; legal
agreements; digital identity;
government documents; voting
3.0 Future
“Car”
Large-scale institutional collaboration
technology: superseding governments,
corporations, open-source communities
Cloudminds, automated fleet
management, big health data,
space communication
Blockchain 1.0 can be conceived as a “better internet,” adding features that were not
present in the initial implementation. This functionality includes a payments layer (the ability to
send money and assets) and the possibility of engaging in privacy-protected computing with
confidential transactions and private messaging. Some of the “better horse” applications are real-
time payments and monetary transfer instantaneously on a global basis, automated information
confirmation, and secure messaging.
Blockchain 2.0 is understood as an institutional technology (a replacement or supplement
for brick-and-mortar human-based institutions),21
and as an enterprise software for transitioning
business and government into the digital age. In the future, a substantial portion of the world’s
assets might be registered to digital inventories and transacted with blockchains. There could be
a single set of shared business processes used by multiple parties in industry value chains.22
Some of the envisioned “horseless carriage” applications include financial contracts, legal
agreements, digital identity solutions, government public record repositories, and voting.23
Blockchain 3.0 understands distributed ledgers as a new species of technology with
possibilities that did not previously exist. One implication is the smart network convergence
technology of deep learning chains (integrated blockchain and deep learning functionality).
Some potential “car” applications include crypto cloudminds, automated fleet management, big
health data, asynchronous space communication, and the rapid-prototyping of gaming and
artificial reality environments.24

Crypto Cloudminds for Thriving in the Transhuman Future
Blockchains are equally implicated in the transhuman objectives of surviving and
thriving. Having discussed surviving, the essay now proposes Crypto Cloudminds for thriving, as
a safe expansionary mechanism for exceeding current physical and mental limitations.
A cloudmind is a cloud-based collaboration of human and machine minds (with
safeguards and permissions).25
In this context, mind means some kind of computational
processing power, possibly including decision-making, but not necessarily consciousness. A
cloudmind has processing or thinking capability that is virtual, located in internet databanks or
decentralized networks without having a specific embodiment or physical corporeality.
Cloudminds might be large or small, and have a variety of purposeful and creative goals.
There are three classes of existing cloudminds. These include AI Deep Thinkers (such as
Watson, Watson Health, AlphaGo DeepMind, and NVIDIA DIGITS), collective intelligence
pooled-mind resources (eLabor marketplaces such as Mechanical Turk), and digital selves (such
as CyBeRev and LifeNaut) and digital self entities (such as BINA4826
). Meta-cloudminds might
be deployed as a smart network orchestration mechanism for monitoring existing cloudminds. A
Deep Thinkers Registry could be a protective measure, with cloudminds appearing before the
Computational Ethics Review Board each year for continued licensing. The review board itself
could be comprised of both human and technology-based entities.
The bigger point for the transhumanist expansion is that in the future, cloudminds might
comprise large numbers of minds operating together with human and machine minds in
collaboration. In order to do so, a slate of safety protocols would need to be in place, all of which
might be managed by blockchains. One is guaranteeing that a cloudmind is not a groupmind.
This means that individuals would only permission partial cognitive resources, not their whole
brain and identity to collaborative mind projects. Smart contracts could manage the process.
The premise of transhumanism is exceeding current physical and mental limitations. The
first tier of application is the more obvious and light-weight phases. This could include physical
augmentation for better health, strength, and disease prevention; and improving mental capacities
with smartdrugs, targeted memory excitation, and performance accentuation. However, the safer
and more superficial approaches may only do so much to extend mental capacities. At some
point, a second tier of improvement calls for going beyond the constraint of the current unitary
meatspace packaging of the human brain.
The benefits of collective intelligence have been demonstrated. Working in diverse teams
can lead to improved outcomes and the ability to tackle larger-scale projects.27
The enhanced
evolution of teamwork could be through collaborative mind-power. There could be communities
of human minds, and human and machine minds working together in a Cowen-like future-of-
work progression.
However, the mind is an extremely sensitive frontier, and thus must be shared slowly and
partially in a controlled manner. One first application could be contributing excess processing
cycles and data. Mind@home could be a crowdsourced distributed computing project like
SETI@home and protein Folding@home. Dream@home could assemble collective sleep-
tracking data. The properties of blockchains could be used to control and enforce this
permissioning, and attribute any intellectual property (IP) garnered in the process.
Technically, how blockchains could orchestrate cloudminds is by being the data control
layer in a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) apparatus that is either implanted or wireless.28
Cloudminds could be accessed as a next-generation social networking application, running over
Github or LinkedIn, for example. Blockchain’s relevant features are automated access control of

arbitrarily-many items in an algorithmic data science environment (e.g. monitoring billions of
synapses), producing an audit log, and crediting remuneration (for example, it could become
standard to sell personal sleep data to address research problems in this domain29
).
Blockchain Implementation of Cloudminds for Transhuman Futures
Crypto cloudminds (implementing cloudminds with the safeguards of blockchain technology)
might be used to realize the transhuman program of exceeding current mental limitations.
Cloudmind Computronium: Ideas is the Currency of the Future
The crypto cloudmind vision is that cloudminds might constitute not only an application,
but a next-generation platform for the realization of transhuman futures. Cloudminds could be
architected as a blockchain system in which each network node is a mind (human or otherwise).
All nodes have equal standing (since crypto cloudminds are a decentralized network) and can
provide peer-to-peer (p2p) services to other nodes. The first and foremost peer service is mining:
validating, confirming, and registering transactions, in some sort of competitive consensus-
driven process for an incentivized reward. All participating nodes subsequently recompute and
confirm the validity of new transactions and add them to their copy of the distributed ledger. The
crypto cloudmind is likely to be a multicurrency environment: there could be network security
and remuneration layers in the stack with cryptocurrencies for each. There could be an
algorithmic deep learning layer for optimization with its own native cryptocurrency such as
TensorCoin. However, the crucial top-stack value-creation layer could be denominated in the
prime currency of ideas.
The productivity of crypto cloudminds could be measured in the currency of ideas.
Leaderboards or market charts might track and display the top cloudminds and their competitive
standing, comparing metrics such as the rate, type, and quality of idea generation. (How many
Nobel Prizes did your cloudmind produce?) Economies of the future might be measured by idea
generation, and one could buy idea futures on a cloudmind.
There could be both problem and solution cloudminds. Problem cloudminds could define
the list of open problems in different fields, for example, the Fields MathNet cloudmind and the
Quantum Gravitational Theory cloudmind. Solution cloudminds could attempt to solve known
problems, particularly with an intensity of data science methods. Likewise, there could be affinity
cloudminds that focus on different interest areas such as sustainability, the environment, effective
governance, economic equality, space settlement, and other concerns. The random cloudmind
could be a serendipity-class cloudmind.
Crypto cloudminds are conceptually, an implementation of computronium (a large-scale
dedicated problem-solving computational resource), directed and granularized into specific
problem areas with blockchain cloudminds. Beyond problem-solving, diverse classes of
cloudminds could enable activities such as creative expression, sensory experience, world travel,
and other interests.
Crypto cloudmind nodes could be carbon neutral and economically self-sustaining by
providing a variety of peer-to-peer services beyond basic network security, and transaction
confirmation and logging (mining and ledger hosting). One could be computation markets and
p2p banking services, for example, if one node needs additional computing power to further
explore an idea, adding hot-swappable computing resources for a micropayment or the cost of
computing resources used. Ethereum is already a prototypical computation market, whose virtual
machine state management structure could be implemented as a cloudmind.

Another p2p cloudmind service could be the Yes-and Contract, entering a payment
channel for collaborative idea development. The Yes-and Payment Channel could register the
initial ideabase (analogous to a codebase or database) to a multi-signature address in a
contractually-obligated arrangement. Then, the payment channel would keep track of
brainstorming updates as idea development ensues over a period of time, and at the period end,
close the contract for the net result, with potential payouts and intellectual property registration.
Creativity Contracts could be smart contracts to support the innovation and synthesis of creative
development. Maslow Smart Contracts could be seen in the cloudmind environment too, as an
enhanced future-of-work strategy for the engagement and actualization of human capacities, and
as an antidote to the modern woes of technology addiction.
Practical Considerations: Next Steps for the Implementation of Crypto Cloudminds
Next-generation Social Networks
Next-generation social networks could be the access platform for crypto cloudminds.
Blockchains have been conceived as an enterprise technology, and extending this idea to
consider consumer blockchain applications, one premise is that individuals would be willing to
share more and higher-value information if it were kept private and remunerated.30
This could
lead to a new tier of applications running as an overlay to social networks, unlocking additional
consumer value. The notion is extending “likes” to validated (i.e. not fake) opinions,
recommendations, and referrals, supported by micropayments, for example, in the areas of
personal finance, health, and jobs. The effect could be having a trusted infrastructure in place for
sharing sensitive information, eventually with direct links to the brain. Next-generation social
networks as a secure access platform could be one of the first implementation steps towards
crypto cloudminds.
Blockchain applications could help social network platforms improve their value
proposition to consumers through the simultaneous privacy and transparency properties of
blockchains. The contents of transactions remain private (particularly using confidential
transactions which mask user and recipient address and amount transferred), while also
transparent in knowing that all participants are using the same system. The shared infrastructure
argument holds in that one party does not know how another party is spending its budget, but
that the other party is using the same validated budgeting process. The result is that trust is built
by participating in a shared ruleset environment. This kind of technology-based trust-building
could be crucial to transhuman futures of multi-species societies of human, algorithm, and
machine.
Political and Economic Implications: Geopolitical Reshuffling and Cryptosecession
Smart network technologies such as blockchain (and by implication prototypical
cloudminds), are being implemented unevenly around the world. Early-mover countries are
defining their competitive advantage by investing in blockchain deployments. For example,
Russia instantiated the registration system for its largest domestic airline, S7, in a blockchain
system in 2017,31
and announced aviation refueling smart contracts with Gazprom in 2018.32
It is
not unimaginable that a crypto cold war could ensue as different countries move ahead more
aggressively with blockchain implementations.
Energy independence could be a fulcrum point for power rebalancing. For example,
California is the world’s fifth largest economy, with 33 percent clean electric power at present
and 100 percent legislated for 2045.33
The state could follow Quebec’s lead (having a strong

political power base due to producing 52 percent of the country’s 60 percent energy generation
from hydroelectric power34
) in pressing its weight on the national agenda.
Although the longer-term transhuman economy might be denominated in idea
production, the nearer-term economy might be measured in intangible social goods production,
in addition to traditional material goods production. To the extent that smart network
technologies can generate intangible social goods such as trust,35
and also recognition, dignity,36
and justice,37
this could help instantiate safe transhuman futures.
Crypto cloudminds could ease the transition to transhuman futures as some of the other
potential stakes of widescale blockchain implementation could include social (re)organization
writ large.38
Blockchain as an institutional technology implies that processes of human
interaction currently coordinated by corporations and governments could be relocated to smart
network software. There is a real possibility of cryptosecession (opting for blockchains as a more
expedient alternative to traditional governance and legal structures).39
Risks and Limitations
Two of the biggest potential risks with crypto cloudminds are technical and social,
labeled as the “EMP” and “Hello Skynet” situations. “EMP” is the risk of not considering the
increasing dependence on technology and the lack of offsetting risk mitigation strategies. Having
a response to possible large-scale network failure is necessary, for example disruption resulting
from a natural or malicious electromagnetic pulse (EMP). “Hello Skynet” is the risk of
anticipated backlash from different communities due to an overly technologized experience of
reality, with too much of daily life being controlled by technology. Having a variety of responses
and support resources could be crucial to unifying splintering populations and easing the
transition to the automation economy. This is particularly true in the wake of the contemporary
situation of increasing hours of screentime and decreasing interest in jobs, driving, and dating,40
together with increasing social isolation and suicide rates (up 25% in the U.S. since 1999).41
Conclusion
This essay proposes Transhuman Crypto Cloudminds as a safe way for unleashing
collective human brain and machine processing power in a distributed computing system. The
cloudmind resource could be a new form of smart network supercomputer for tackling larger-
scale problems than have been possible to attempt and solve previously.
There could be two phases in the transhuman future, the surviving and the thriving of a
multi-species society comprised of humans, algorithms, and machines. Blockchains are a new
form of smart network and global computational infrastructure that could be used to facilitate
both phases. Survival and economic sustenance could rely on the blockchain properties of
enforcing good-player behavior, since all parties have the incentive to stay in good reputational
standing to use the smart network infrastructure to conduct their operations. Economic
sustenance might further depend on the cooperative ownership of robotic or automated means of
production and Maslow Smart Contracts for professional and personal development.
For the longer-term transhuman vision of thriving by exceeding current physical and
mental limitations, crypto cloudminds might provide a safe frontier for joining a collaborative
thinking community of human and machine minds. The necessary foundations for crypto
cloudminds are two-fold. First could be using next-generation social networks as a possible
secure access platform for crypto cloudminds. Second could be big data algorithmics as the AI-

driven instantiation of optimized neural processes to control and optimize Brain-Computer
Interfaces (the link between physical brains and internet-based cloudminds).
Crypto cloudminds could be architected as blockchain systems, meaning that each mind
would be a node in the flat-hierarchy distributed computing system. This could enable very-large
scale projects (million-mind plus networks). As such, cloudmind networks could operate via
consensus algorithm with peer nodes providing services to each other. This could include
network security, ledger hosting, transaction confirmation (via mining), computation resources,
and value-added functionality such as Creativity Contracts and Yes-and Payment Channels for
collaborative idea development and intellectual property logging. Smart network field theories
defined by technophysics models might be used to monitor cloudminds.
The potential impact of this work is that proposing the idea of Crypto Cloudminds offers
a specific transhuman vision and path forward with safeguards that supports the future
flourishing of human, algorithm, and machine.
Glossary
Blockchain (distributed ledger) Technology: A blockchain is an immutable, cryptographic
(cryptography-based), distributed (peer-based), consensus-driven ledger. Blockchain (distributed
ledger) technology is a software protocol for the instantaneous transfer of money and other forms
of value (assets, contracts, public records, program states) globally via the internet.
Cloudmind: A cloudmind is a cloud-based collaboration of human and machine minds (with
safeguards and permissions). ‘Mind’ is generally denoting an entity with some capacity for
processing, not the volitionary action and free will of a consciousness agent.
Crypto cloudminds: Crypto cloudminds is the idea of implementing cloudminds with the
safeguards of blockchain technology.
Cryptoeconomics: Cryptoeconomics is an economic transaction paradigm based on
cryptography; more specifically, an economic transaction system implemented in a
cryptography-based software network, using cryptographic hashes (computational proof
mechanisms) as a means of confirming and transferring monetary balances, assets, smart
contracts, or other system states. A key concept is trustless trust, meaning removing as much
human-based trust as possible to make the economic system trustworthy (relocating human-
based trust to cryptography-based trust).
Cryptosecession: Cryptosecession is the idea of employing blockchains as an institutional
technology to opt out of traditional governance and legal structures.
Deep Learning Chains: Deep learning chains are a class of smart network technologies in
which other technologies, blockchain and deep learning, converge as a control technology for
other smart network technologies. Deep learning chains have the properties of secure
automation, audit-log tracking, and validated transaction execution of blockchain, and the object
and pattern recognition technology (IDtech) of deep learning. Deep learning chains might be

used to control other fleet-many internet-connected smart network technologies such as UAVs,
autonomous driving fleets, medical nanorobots, and space-based asteroid mining machines.
Deep Learning Neural Networks: Deep learning neural networks are computer programs that
can identify what an object is; more technically, deep learning is a branch of machine learning
based on a set of algorithms that attempts to model high-level abstractions in data by using
artificial neural network architectures, based on learning multiple levels of representation or
abstraction, such that predictive guesses can be made about new data.
IDtech: IDtech is identification technology, the functionality of object recognition as an in-built
feature in technology. IDtech is similar to FinTech, RegTech, TradeTech, and HealthTech;
technologies that digitize, standardize, and automate operations within their respective domains.
Payment Channel: A payment channel is a contractually-obligated payment structure that
elapses over time, protecting and obligating two parties who need not know and trust each
other.42
The payment channel operates in three steps. First, Party A opens a payment channel
with Party B and posts a pre-paid escrow balance (the escrow deposit is broadcast to the
blockchain, and a corresponding refund transaction for the same amount is signed by both
parties, but not broadcast). Second, Party A consumes a resource (or provides a service such as
programming hours) against the escrow balance, and activity is tracked and updated (in revised
refund transactions that both parties sign but do not broadcast). Third, at the end of the period (or
at any time), the cumulative activity is booked in one net transaction to close the contract. In
addition to the FinTech innovation of parties not knowing each other being able to digitally
contract in a protected manner over time, payment channels might also provide scalability to
blockchains by only logging net transactions.
Smart Contract: A smart contract is a software program registered to a blockchain for
confirmation (time-datestamping provenance), and possibly some form of automated execution.
To be legally-binding as an eContract, smart contracts need to have the four elements of
“regular” contracts: two parties, consideration, and terms.
Smart Networks: Smart networks are intelligent autonomously-operating networks. Exemplar
smart network technologies include blockchain economic networks and deep learning pattern
recognition neural networks.
Technophysics: Technophysics is the application of physics to the study of technology (by
analogy to biophysics and econophysics), particularly using statistical physics, information
theory, and model systems for the purpose of characterizing, monitoring, and controlling smart
network systems in applications of arbitrarily-many fleet item management and system criticality
detection.
Token Economy: The token economy is the situation in which web-based communities issue
their own cryptotoken money supplies. The tokens serve as an accounting system for
coordinating a local economy between members, a tracking system that can be used to link
participative contributions with remuneration (solving the credit assignment problem). In Web

3.0, users expect to participate meaningfully in communities, meaning being remunerated for
contributions, accessing resources, and voting on community decisions.
Web 3.0 (the crypto web): Web 3.0 refers to the idea of cryptoeconomic business models such
as data markets and computation markets running on the “internet’s new pipes” of distributed
network systems, content-addressable file-serving, and IDtech. Web 1.0 (the static web) involved
the transfer of static information and Web 2.0 (the social web) created the expectation that
website users can interact, like, and engage with content and other users. In Web 3.0 (the crypto
web), users expect to participate meaningfully in economic communities by being remunerated
for contributions (such as software code, digital art, and forum posts), and by being able to vote
on decisions and access resources.
References
1
Smith, A. (1776, 2003). The Wealth of Nations. Blacksburg VA: Thrifty Books.
2
Kurzweil, R. (2006). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin Books.
3
Bostrom, N. (2016). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4
Dowd, M. (2017). Elon Musk's Billion-dollar Crusade to Stop the AI Apocalypse. Vanity Fair.
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