Decred X / Part VII — Field Manual A

Its a play of White to 1.nf3 , leading into the Reti Openings.

Many players arent ready for the calculation it presents and have trouble playing moves due to its inherent flexibility. Many times a troubled challenge is presented them as they have a nullified time predicting your next movement, as pawn moves can be hard to evaluate. Top this with the Reti and it leaves a vast array of pawn break available.

The described move is flexible, adaptable, and able to evolve on the chess board. In like manner, Decred has exerted precision type moves in these opening rounds of financial play as permitted by it’s clean code , matched by few, propelling it to do so.

But frankly, we as believers, supporters, developers, and evangelists of Decred, and cryptocurrency in general, are not playing financial chess against mere chess club opponents. We are playing against State actors who have hired the Bobby Fischers of the financial , geopolitical, and scientific realms to help aid in thwarting our freeing financial objective. These Bobby Fischers see our financial move of White to 1.nf3, and accordingly have their next 2 moves mapped out mentally.

The coming of age of sovereign decentralized currency is one that , in my kindest beliefs, will be met with continual struggle. Just as Decred, Bitcoin, and other similar asymmetrical carriers of value have continued to change the financial spectrums of society, the opposition that will be presented to them will continue to change the dynamics of society, specifically to the citizenry that uphold their ethos.

We have yet to see the fruition of contention that will be handed down to solvent value carrying systems such as Decred and Bitcoin. Things systematically tend to get worse before they get better. While Im not attempting to outline a dystopian future for humanity in the near future, I do want to point out the exact words that I penned when starting out the Decred X series:

“Im a realist.”

One typically does not realize the sovereignty that he/she has until that sovereignty begins to be taken away. Likewise, it is usually in the absence of sovereignties, freedoms, and liberties that they are fully embraced.

And so while those who embrace sovereignty lead the charge of decentralized finance, the typical citizenry en mass still pretermits it. While their may still be a mild contempt for the legacy banking system and State driven financial policies, it is still not enough for most to warrant the needed change. For the majority, things will need to continue to get worse before a solvent system is integrated to pliably make them better for most.

What does this look like? How long will it take to transpire?

Predicting certain probabilities in the midst of looming chaos theory is a science that we tend to miss the mark on. The future is evolving and adapting in itself; pinpointing certainty in this is usually a misfired approach. A handful of sci-fi writers, tech visionaries , and applauded individuals over our times have bucked the trend and been able to foresee what most cannot.

I, like most, am not one of these. If anything , I stand a mongrel collector of past history and knowledge in civilizational developments, human traditions, and the philosophies of past Rothbardian and Friedmanite minds to help in plotting future contexts. At least that is my stance in these certain writings.

What does the next 20–30 years look like for self sovereignty, on financial measures, and in terms of ones civil and economic liberties? How can SOV mechanisms like Decred continue to adapt to continue to offer assurance in these liberties?

Again, questions that may be hard to pinpoint exactly. However, by knowing certain particularities of the past you can ascertain a given probability of the future. Here is my guess:

-Cash is Nonexistent

Whether it comes in the form of a full out ban, or we simply see fiat no longer accepted as legal tender, the cash paying society will be displaced.

A growing number of municipalities are already considering 86ing cash at retail stores within their city limits. In the United States alone, these include Philadelphia, New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, NYC, and Washington, D.C. Expect this mentality to eventually catch on, be embraced, and eventually pushed by State governments under the guise of:

• Cash is used for money laundering
• Cash is used for crime
• Cash is used by terrorists

While we have heard these excuses before, specifically within the cryptocurrency communities, we ardently know the real reasoning behind why the State would displace cash:

Cash is still one of the most ardent forms of private transactions on the planet. Its untraceable nature is one of the last remaining virtues it has in regards to the sovereign individual. This is it’s strength to the individual. It also is an antiquated system that no longer is viable for todays forming databases used to collect private information on individuals and their transactions. This is its weakness to the State.

Cash is more challenging to tax, more challenging to monitor, and more challenging to collect.

While we in the crypto realms continue to chime in on how Bitcoin, Decred, and other digital currencies will displace fiat, I ultimately think we are missing the mark.

Crypto won’t displace fiat; the government will displace it with their own hand.

- Government Blockchain Currency Integration

This is already occuring.

State driven blockchains are coming and they are going to be big. My guess is within the next 10–20 years.

Worldwide governments will more than likely not adopt sovereignty driven symmetrical systems of value like Decred or Bitcoin, but rather adopt database ledger tech as a driving point for their digital currencies.

The State’s blockchain databases of the future will make every single individual’s transactions easier to monitor, track, and tax. Financial privacy will be an afterthought in this sphere of operations.

Rather than adhering to distributive properties of blockchain, governments will do what they do best, which is pervert the concept. This will concentrate the power of the ledger even more so into their hands. Authoritarian governmental methods of operation will continue to become the norm.

Expect governments to recruit some of the best and brightest in the developer and blockchain fields to do their bidding, thus leading to….

-Dev Wars

If, and when, State-backed blockchains begin to take precedence, it is likely we will start to see a developers war begin to play out.

In hindsight, we will be looking at the next arms race, this time driven by code.

As government’s begin to recruit and cherry pick developers to formulate and implement the protocols for their centralized databases, on the opposite spectrum we will continue to see others fighting to continue to develop the decentralized vision of blockchain that many of us adhere to.

Database protocols vs Decentralized protocols. Anticipated protocol assaults on decentralized projects should not only be expected , but accepted as a future given. Designed defense against such should already be in play.

Browser wars of the early internet era will more than likely pale in comparison to the magnitude of the maliciousness, overt attacks, and hands that may be played throughout this time of travail between the camps. Recent administration in the United States recently committed $1.2 billion towards developing Quantum computing, a technology that could theoretically crack the underpinning of crypocurrency. China is active in this endeavor as well. Decentralized protocols should plan accordingly.

Also defined as protocol wars, developers will lead the charge and curate the defense.

-Adoption

Adoption of centralized government driven protocols will more than likely supersede that of the private sovereign decentralized alternatives. Adoption by the masses is a given when it is mandated by law, by authoritarian threat, and by the baton.

Centralized digital State currencies will more than likely control the vast flow of money, at least for the short to mid term time frames. To expect the opposite of the mass population is to be naive, as history shows that ‘sheep mentality’ is extremely operable and usually serves as a staple across many societies.

Do not be surprised to watch the large population file in rank to database currencies out of 1) Civil Duty 2) Convenience 3) Fear/Risk Diversion 4) Possible Short Term Incentives. It is not pleasant to think about, but it more than likely is the harsh reality given man’s history with the State.

This is not to say that decentralized protocols will simply vanish or that their own adoption will be obsolete. It will actually be quite the contrary.

-DAO Pockets

As government blockchain protocols are forcefully accepted, expect continued distaste and distrust to grow amongst a small general portion of the population. With this occurance , some percentage of citizenry will continue searching for an alternative to that of the over-reaching hand of the State. With this number of individuals continuing to grow so shall the embracing of the evolving decentralization culture, of which Decred lies right in the middle.

This mental transition from State driven culture to that of decentralized and autonomous is one that renowned coder “Smuggler” has helped outline as transcending from a First Realm to a Second Realm mentality. The Second Realm exists in civil, physical, and economical liberty, free of government control(the driving force of the First Realm). As a percentage of the population continues to section theirselves off to becoming embracive of Decred and other such anonymizing cryptography tech, the ability to experiment with cultural, social, and legal forms will take form.

“If you focus on liberating everyone, you ultimately fail to liberate anyone.”

This experimentation is where innovation within DAO will continue to take place on a magnified scale. As this occurs, Decred and other DAOs will adjunctly find themselves birthing ‘DAO Pockets’, small yet powerfully driven factions of self-liberating and purposeful communities.

The key to adoption of these protocols is in not attempting to convert the entire population to their use cases, rather simply the small handful of individuals who continue to seek strong self liberating principles. If you focus on liberating everyone, you ultimately fail to liberate anyone. We can only help liberate those who desire so for theirselves.

DAO Pockets will exist for both ethical and unethical means. The government will continue to spread the narrative that all such pockets are driven by the unethical desires. Due this, the DAO Pockets of the future will be smeared heavily before any type of wide scale adoption takes place.

The citizenry of DAO Pockets , driven by Second Realm culture, should not let this deter them, as we cannot expect the First Realm to operate any differently than their history has shown thus far. The future will simply require our focus on evolving, innovating, and helping liberate individuals one by one when given the chance.

….To be continued. This concludes part A of “Field Manual”, part of the Decred X series. Field Manual part B is soon to follow.

Disclaimer: The preceding is not intended as investment advice but rather blockchain philosophy and monetary theory.

This article is open source, uncopyrighted, free to use for public domain as anyone may see fit. Attribution, although appreciated, is not required.