Fractal Commons: Why Blockathon DAO
This post has been published on 25th April 2022 on the Blockathon Mirror publication.
Written by Daniel Bar 丹尼尔，core contributor @ Blockathon DAO
Outline of this longpost:
- Netizens greetings
- Why Blockathon
Truth :: Crypto literacy
Health :: Public good
Wealth :: Rewarding creative expression
- Fractal entrepreneurial ecosystems — Inspiration
Oh hi fellow netizens, if you’ve arrived at this corner of the internet you’d likely know by now that learning how to get involved in the Blockchain and crypto space has become one of the most rewarding and fascinating fields of knowledge one can pursue in a rather multidisciplinary combination of a wide gamut fields such as:
- Cryptography, network architecture, cybersecurity, data science, open source software
- Economics, finance, data analytics, psychology, political science
- Meme culture, creative practices, product design, online culture and communities
Whether you’re interested in being a Blockchain software developer, product and UX designer, investor or entrepreneur, the rate of growth in the Blockchain space is exponential and the upside opportunities have unbounded potential!
The more we learn about the transformative power of crypto, the more it is becoming clear that these technologies will influence every aspect of human society as a direct continuation and an evolution of the internet.
The Blockchain world brings into the digital world increased potency and an ever growing list of simple, elegant yet magical and mind blowing innovations such as public immutable ledgers, free market tokenization, permissionless networks, composable programs, digital native organizations and the list goes on.
However, the learning curve is steep, very steep. This is why we decided to start the Blockathon DAO, Web3 entrepreneurial education Learn2Earn program that is run as Public Good 🐨☯️
The Blockathon DAO is a culmination of knowledge and experience we’ve accumulated since 2017 when we ran the first Blockathon (Blockchain Hackathon) which was a first of it’s kind in the world, since then we’ve organized and held Blockathon events in multiple countries with many different partners.
Where does the motivation for the Blockathon come from?
The Blockathon has become our practiced formulation of empowerment toward a world where freedom and creativity are paramount.
So, why do we Blocakthon?
Truth, Health and Wealth, and in that order, as Balaji says.
Truth:
Pursuits for truths and knowledge are the ultimate form of spiritual, self and world improvement work one can do as an individual and we can do as a society. Hence the Blockathon is provided as a public good program that helps individuals and communities find truth and increase their entrepreneurial and crypto literacy level.
Public blockchains (if working properly) are functioning as a fantastic truth machine by virtue of their immutable ledgers properties, in addition crypto technologies are enabling greater accessibility to free markets with tokenization technologies.
Free markets are a more macro economic style of truth machine as over the long run, they makes sense out of chaos. Even if bad actors manipulate the market for a bit, over long enough period the free market will flush them out because they do not contribute or participate in bottom line value generation, thus corrections are bound to come.
Health:
Caring for one’s health is paramount, but the reason it comes second after Truth is simple: Living a healthy life, but not possessing the knowledge and literacy that equips you to continuously examine and observe reality objectively as best as you can can lead to preventable and devastating outcomes. Imagine leading the life of a healthy thanksgiving turkey not prepared at all for the black swan event that is about to price them out of the life market of the living, hence the pursuits of truth precedes even fundamental necessity such as health.
Assuming we’re living in the constant pursuit for truth then, what would be sufficiently easy to evaluate as a measure of social fabric health level? Obvious individual physical wellbeing is important, but what would be a measurement of health for the society as an organism?
Public Goods is an indicator for the health of the social fabric
Why? well the availability of public goods in a given society can be correlated quite well to the combination of a number of very interesting and important metrics:
- Trust among members of society vs low trust society
- Equity in opportunities vs disparity
- Open mindedness, welcoming pluralism, nuanced thinking vs superficial and reactive binary thinking and overpowering extremism
Some examples for public good initiatives and projects from the physical world:
- Nature reserves
- Roads
- Free / subsidized education
- Clean air and water (commons)
- Playgrounds such as the Grey Lynn pump track made by dad’s who wanted to see children off of screens and play out instead 💚
Often times we see regions with poorer resources provide better public good access than regions with more resources, typically it can be correlates to the quality of the political leadership.
🤗 Good leadership:
Positive sum game where leaders make an effort to build and provide public good infrastructure as best as possible. This in turn supports members of society, good leaders understand efforts can bare short term cost and the benefits would often times be very macroscopic which means it’ll be hard to track and get credit for. However, good leaders are blessed with realistic optimism and innocence to work toward what they believe will improve society as a whole.
😤 Corrupt leadership:
Bad leadership almost always results in negative sum games where leaders will attempt to dominate, hoard resources and deny access to resources from those who need them the most. This scenario typically leads toward Tragedy of the Commonswhere even if the environment of said corrupt leadership is rich with resources, the leadership is hampering local value generation and flows, which in turn leads to a decline rather than prosperity.
Examples for public good in digital world:
- The Internet: (broadly speaking) unlocking long tails: Creative people leverage internet technology to generate value using our common digital environment.
- Public Blockchain: Blockchain networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others are all operating as public good alternative digitally native financial and compute infrastructure.
Wealth
We believe everyone is a uniquely creative and could potentially lead happier life if they’d be live as authentically as possible.
We believe it’s possible to move away from selling your time and skill in exchange for money. Instead everyone deserves a chance to generate value to society in their own unique way and get rewarded as a byproduct.
Participating in the Blockathon DAO is an experience that advances toward truth, health and wealth!
Inspirational fractals of entrepreneurial ecosystems:
As a prolific angel investor with good track record and deep entrepreneurial wisdom, Naval found himself short of time to support the demand from entrepreneurs to get his support as he was mostly a solo investor. That’s why he built a platform that productize the complex early stage venture scene and that’s what AngelList is in essence: Help founders find investors, investors find founders, talent find startups and startups find talent, users find products, products find users.
Naval Ravikant, prolific investor, entrepreneur and thinker
Y-Combinator brought into mainstream the concept of startup accelerators, venture programs that help entrepreneurs accelerate through early stages startup stages. While today there are countless accelerator, back when Paul Graham and his partners first started Y-Combinator, it was not very simple to explain what does an accelerator do. Today many people see the entrepreneurial value of accelerators surpassing that of top MBA programs.
Y-Combinator’s Paul Graham
Public good is native to the crypto world since the big bang of the Bitcoin genesis and well into Ethereum 1.x as well as many other decentralized networks that followed.
While at the computers network level the infrastructure is operating as public good, it’s not quite the case at the social and professional layers where there’s a lot of centralized legacy structures. A pioneering leader and ecosystem is Kevin with the Gitcoin community, they are building, experimenting and funding commons and public good projects.
Kevin Owoki of Gitcoin
Public Good are often so enjoyable because they give us a sense of being welcome without having to ask for an invitation, this is important aspect of the experience of FREEDOM and I believe everyone can experience freedom. Hence my vision for the Blockathon is to create experiences that provide contemporary knowledge and technical literacy to have your own visions and projects ideas and opinions.
OK that’s a fair bit of propaganda there, but, what exactly is the Blockathon DAO?
I’ve written the rundown for what is the Blockathon DAO and how it’s currently operating in the recent post titled “Blockathon DAO, V1” :
Learn more about the Blockathon DAO and join the community!
- Website: Blockathon.xyz
- Twitter: @Blockathon_DAO
- LinkedIn: Blockathon DAO — 区块松 DAO
- Discord: https://discord.com/invite/7MTWjaPzyn
