Death of a Crypto Commonwealth: Tezos’ Failure

Those who give up the essential liberty of privacy to purchase a little temporary safety will get neither liberty nor safety.

Tezos first presented itself in 2014 as the bearer of a radical new ethos that had been purportedly birthed from the cypherpunk and crypto-anarchist ideals and communities over the last decade. It presented the radical idea of a Commonwealth from Cryptography using a third-generation blockchain which can self-amend itself for decentralized governance. Penned under the pseudonym L.M Goodman, the position paper opens with this quote from Proudhon,

“Laissez faire les propri´etaires.[‘Let the owners do it.’]”

Implying that with Tezos’ evolution of digital ledger technology, we could usher in a new age, a Novus Ordo Seclorum [Order of the New Age] where we could use Crypto to protect our identities and wealth; while also creating the conditions for a radical new foundation of digital politics to be birthed into the world.

However, we should be reminded of what else Proudhon had warned us of those who seek power:

“All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.”

With that piece of advice we must take the whole tragic irony of Tezos’ development and what it has become today as something fundamentally different from what was presented in the position and white papers. While the true ideals that are foundational to a Crypto Commonwealth are presented within the papers, they are devoid from the actual project itself. In fact, with the forced tainting of all Tezos’ genesis tokens with the identification of all people, Tezos presents itself as something much more dark and sinister.

A real Crypto Commonwealth would be based upon the majesty of cryptography and its capacity to protect the anonymous under principal, and through application of the code; not unveil the anonymous out of cowardice and compromise towards tyrants. The mutual oath and compact found within crypto, by virtue of its functions to conceal is the fundamental construct of crypto generally and public-key cryptography specifically. If it cannot protect one’s identity it is useless.

The identification all genesis token holders destroys Tezos cryptography a priori distribution. This allows for Tezos’s cryptography to be fundamentally broken by design through identification which profanes it crypto, rendering it worse than useless. At its best Tezos can only offer an impoverished digital commonwealth of subjugation to the same states we are seeking to escape with none of the majesty or empowerment found within cryptography.

Perhaps the ideal of a crypto commonwealth was doomed from the very start once the prospect of the greed and the threats of the state had tainted the whole operation. From the outset Tezos’ evolution from ideal to substance has been nothing more than bourgeoisie comedy playing itself out. The moment L.M Goodman stepped out of the shadows the whole project was doomed to go down hill. There is a reason that Satoshi didn’t do an ICO, nor revel his identity to the world.

Such an evolution for Tezos should have been known with the unintentionally ironic quote from Two Dogmas of Empiricism by Willard van Orman Quine that opens the Tezos white paper:

“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it.”

Here is more from that quote.

“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

Interchangeability salva veritate is meaningless until relativized to a language whose extent is specified in relevant respects.”

As Orman warns at the beginning of his work, we should have known that the reductionism of the ideals of a Crypto Commonwealth would lead to its corruption. And now as we now find in the ominous red ‘amendments’ to the white paper, we realize this creates the article 48 of the constitution of Tezos which will be used to ensure no freedom will come from this affair. The foundation has decided it is sovereign, and we are only subjects to be subjugated; not citizens who can vote on the issue.

This unveils the true nature of this Commonwealth, which proves itself to be of most Hobbesian brutishness. As stated from the ‘amendments’ in the white paper, we can see where the true nature of this project has gone:

Protocol upgrade votes will be much more frequent in the first year in order to allow for rapid iteration. As a security measure, the Tezos foundation will have a veto power expiring after twelve months, until we rule out any kinks in the voting procedure

As Orman warned us, there would be a shift toward pragmatism. Perhaps we should have been more grim upon reading his quote opening the white paper in the first place, and expected something as such.

Salva Veritate, bears the fullness of it meaning when we understand it roughly translated as “with, or by, unharmed truth” meaning that two statement can be used interchangeable and not robbed of their truth. When we see what the original version of Tezos was postulated to be, and its bastardized outcome, we should know that what Tezos was suppose to be, and what it really is, are two very different things.

With that we must look to the forced identification within this new commonwealth of Tezos as nothing more than the kowtowing towards statist power, and profaning of the cryptography, which is suppose to be lex in these systems. This is the proof that the Commonwealth of Tezos is nothing more than a puppet government with impoverished cryptography that will offer no protection from the state, and no refuge from their Stazi. To be identified is to be branded; marked for when the state decided what we are doing is ‘dangerous’ and that we must be stopped.

There is no Novus Ordo Seclorum here, at most a meager change of affairs.

Seek your revolution elsewhere.

The crypto commonwealth of Tezos died with the advent of KYC/AML seeking to capture all people’s identities. By virtue of this, the crypto of Tezos worse than useless, but now despotically guileful.

Perhaps Satoshi was correct with warning us that Bitcoin would only win us a territory of political freedom for a few years. Tezos’ surprise KYC is a clear display to the full breadth to which the crypto space has been captured by statism — both in ideology and application. We must see this closure on the brief opening to the space of freedom that Satoshi provided us with as a direct attack on the rightful freedom which we have created in this space.

From the quotes of Proudhon and Orman, to the keeping L.M Goodman as the author of the Tezos whitepaper, this all bears of the signatures of deepest ironies that could only be found in a parody of lofty ideals unintentionally corrupted by the cowardice and banality of bourgeoisie who forgot the consanguinity of cryptography and the principals to which it is bound. The comedy continues with the position paper bearing warning of just where we find the Tezos project today:

“Core development teams are a potentially dangerous source of centralization. Though users can fork any open source project, that ability offers no protection against an attacker with enough clout to alter the social consensus. Even assuming the likely benevolence of a core development team, it represents a weak point on which an attacker could exercise leverage.

Tezos guards against the vulnerabilities wrought by the source of centralization through radically decentralized protocol forks. It uses its own cryptoledger to let stakeholders coordinate on forks.”

Satoshi was smart enough to realize that the power he created in his new agreement which is the bitcoin blockchain, is the same one that is found in the fact that the genesis block of bitcoin cannot be spent. It is this sacrifice which creates anonymity and allows for all other transactions to generate from, and thus ensuring some degree of anonymity can exist within Bitcoin as a whole system. Anonymity is what allows for the true value of the commonality of wealth within Bitcoin to be established and is also what allows for fungibility to fundamentally exist. These are the very features of freedom that can allow for people to live outside and beyond the wrath of tyrannical state. In a world that is quickly racing into a techno-fascist panopticon, anonymity becomes the most important protection we have order to speak truth-to-power, and protect oneself from the radical violations of our sacred privacy and natural liberties no matter which state we are subjects of.

It cannot be called a cryptoledger when identity is tainted into the genesis block. Panoptic-ledger is more like it.

The position paper ends with this statement:

“While the irony of preventing the fragmentation of cryptocurrencies by releasing a new one does not escape us, Tezos truly aims to be the last cryptocurrency. No matter what innovations other protocols produce, it will be possible for Tezos stakeholders to adopt these innovations.”

Only the free and sovereign decision to create a new commonwealth subject to no political body or organization beyond itself could delivery us Novus Ordo Seclorum that would be the bearer of the title, ‘the last cryptocurrency’ nor would it be capable of bearing the title of Crypto Commonwealth for that matter.

Those who would give up essential liberty of privacy, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Tezos proves itself to be something much more sinister than ‘just another cryptocurrency’ by intentionally subjugating its constituents to laws outside and beneath them, which renders their crypto useless. By profaning cryptography through reveling people’s identities at the genesis block, Tezos ensure that no matter what, individuals will always be within the grasp of the state, and its cryptography will offer no shelter from this fact.

It does not matter what Tezos does moving forward, it will always carry with it this sin. With a tainted genesis block, the virus of statism has abjectly and mortally infected Tezos’ being with a festering that will make it rancid and gangrenous with time. Tezos will be launched as a grotesque still-born, a parody of itself as a demented failure whose ‘crypto’ is birthed under the watchful eyes of forced identification from state agencies who seek to be our masters. As I’ve warned before, it is possible to render cryptography ignorant, idiotic, and mute to itself, and this is what it looks like.

In the words of Harrington from “The Commonwealth of Oceana”:

“For, as no man shall show me a commonwealth born straight that ever became crooked, so no man shall show me a commonwealth born crooked that ever became straight.”

Perhaps it will be possible to use the self-amending feature of Tezos to create a Crypto Commonwealth which can uphold the ideals needed not for an Novus Ordo Seclorum, but rather to allow for, in the original words of Virgil: “Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.[The great order of the ages is born afresh]” From this we may find the secrets that allowed for Aeneas to become the legendary founder of the city of Rome, and the power which allowed our forefathers to create a new beginning in the New World. This ‘new beginning’ was really just a reconstituting of the God-given sacred rights to which we are endowed with and entitled to as human beings, and must constitute once again through sacred oath and union, be it cryptographic or otherwise. Until we have a real commonwealth that holds itself to no power but its own, we will find that there we be no real wealth in common to be found.

A true crypto commonwealth would understand the majesty of cryptography, which offers the infinite promise of the encounter with the Other through anonymity being the great equalizing force for all. Through the totality of the privacy it offers, all voices would be equality be heard, and each would contribute to the growth and splendor of the Commonwealth. It would proudly bear the responsibility of ensuring that its cryptography is never violated by adhering to the protocol with the strictest liturgy in order to verify that the anonymous Other will always be protected, and privacy always afforded. These would be the most basic, and the most humble rights that would be the foundation for the order of the new age, for the Commonwealth destined for our time.

“The instinct to posit ever higher levels of sovereignty reminds one of Adam Weishaupt who infiltrated the Freemasons in the late 18th century and became its leader. His “weapon” was the hoax that there was a secret, higher body of Freemansons, called the Illuminati, which he supposedly represented. The love of hierarchy and secrecy were both strong among the Freemasons, and Weishaupt’s hoax enabled him to win sovereign power as an invader.“

-The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change