TL;DR: jacob’s concept of Hyperstructure not only applies to the blockchain, and there are many human ideas that are hyperstructure that has shaped human history. Blockchain itself can enforce these hyperstructures more clearly and quickly such that peer-to-peer trust is maximized when value is exchanged.
In the article Hyperstructure, jacob argues that the emergence of blockchain has given rise to a new type of infrastructure called “hyperstructure,” with the following properties:
Unstoppable: the protocol cannot be stopped by anyone. It runs for as long as the underlying blockchain exists.
Free: there is a 0% protocol-wide fee and runs exactly at gas cost.
Valuable: accrues value that is accessible and exitable by the owners.
Expansive [fees]: there are built-in incentives for participants in the protocol [to add value to it].
Permissionless: universally accessible and censorship-resistant. Builders and users cannot be deplatformed.
Positive sum: it creates a win-win environment for participants to utilize the same infrastrastructure.
Credibly neutral: the protocol is user-agnostic.
While these properties are obvious, if combined they offer something unique: a transparent and empowering infrastructure that can maintain itself over centries. Due to this robustness, hyperstructure has the opportunity to be “civilizational infrastructure that can outlast our own lifetimes.”
Jacob in the original article envisions hyperstructures to influence our future. However, I found that the history of human civilization is also shaped by hyperstructures. Here are some examples:
Language
Language is probably the most important invention in human history and is the foundation of human thinking and collaboration. It is also a hyperstructure as it has the following properties:
Free: since language is a decentralized communication protocol, it is technically impossible (at least cost-inefficient) to charge people for using a language.
Valuable: everything we gain in society is supported by language, including emotional support, material good, respect & authority, etc.
Expansive fees: languages are updated by widespread cultural products like articles, novels, or memes. While upgrading language, authors of these cultural products could earn tremendous money, fame, and influence.
Permissionless: due to its decentralization, with few exceptions in history, anyone can learn & use any language.
Positive sum: language has a huge network effect and everything human society has created is based on language.
The following two properties of hyperstructure do not apply to any language and need further evaluation:
Unstoppable: some languages can be stopped and there are many languages that were killed by a natural disaster, war, or cultural/political assimilation. However, it’s impossible for anyone to stop English, as it has gained so much momentum, is geographically diverse, and has accrued so much value. I think the unstoppability of language is similar to that of a blockchain: while one government could kill a local blockchain, currently there is no single entity that could terminate Ethereum.
Credibly neutral: There are specific forms of language that are not neutral: some entities create certain forms of language to instill ideologies. However, most languages that are used in a daily, decentralized way are credibly neutral, as the learning and usage are decentralized.
Money
The money here does not refer to a specific form of money, but the notion that you can use something with less practical utility (like a piece of paper) as a medium of exchange. While some forms of money are centralized, I believe money as an abstract idea is decentralized: even if USD, CNY, or BTC collapses, there will be new types of money to emerge and replace them.
The idea of money is also a hyperstructure, as it possesses the essential traits:
Unstoppable: once the concept of money is prevalent, it’s not stoppable by a centralized entity. You can ban USD or CNY, but people will still use some form of money to trade.
Valuable: you can accrue a huge amount of goods/services with a single medium of exchange.
Expansive fee: once there is widely accepted money, people are incentivized to build upon it. By providing lending services, futures/options, and other financial services, financial service providers could earn profit while upgrading the money system.
Positive sum: using money makes the economy more efficient, and thus mike the pie larger for everyone.
The following traits only work for the abstract idea of “money” and some forms of it, like gold & silver, cryptocurrency, etc, but do not work for many centralized forms of money, like USD, CNY, etc.
Free: using money is “free” and in the exchange process itself you don’t need to pay an extra fee.
Permissionless: anyone could participate in a money system as long as they have that money. Once again, here we only talk about the abstract idea of money as a medium of exchange and disregard some centralized forms of money.
Credibly neutral: money is just money. While USD is not neutral, the concept of money and “objective” forms of money like gold/crypto are neutral.
Final thoughts
There are many more hyperstructures in history like capitalism, liberalism, family system, etc, and I believe any cross-national social construct that could support human collaboration on top of it shares some traits with hyperstructure. To some extent, nations & governments are protocols/tokens built on these underlying hyperstructures (blockchains). These hyperstructures enable the basic social coordination, while nations are higher-level constructs that enable more specific endeavors, just like as different DeFi protocols on the same blockchain infrastructure.
As a hyperstructure, how is blockchain different? Firstly, the consensus formation process is quicker. Creating a successful language or monetary system could take centuries, as people have to learn and wholeheartedly accept the protocol. Thanks to cryptography, creating a new blockchain is much more efficient.
Secondly, since some of the historical hyperstructures are based on moral instincts (like money or family system), there is no internal dispute settlement mechanism, and often there is a need for third-party services like courts. Blockchain and smart contracts provide an in-house settlement service and make the whole system more efficient.
There are many unique offerings of blockchain as a hyperstructure, like better programmability, clear profit-accruing system, etc, but it is also more fragile than some of the historical hyperstructures: while language is based on our biological capability and daily interactions, a successful blockchain system is built on the semiconductor supply chain, academic research on cryptographic & computer systems, and global social networks like Twitter & Discord. We should wait to see whether blockchain could create “civilizational infrastructure” that hosts nations & governments, just like language and money did.
Thanks for the great advice & TL;DR of @kzdagoof.
