TL; DR
- People have always been pursuing fair play especially when they’re confronted with the centralization of power.
- Bitcoin brought decentralization to the world and a new community was born.
- As a group of crypto nomads seeking tranquility, culture and home, we’ll build a new form of life.
The Byzantine general wrote a letter. The messenger under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto mailed it to the world.
Decades of growth and achievements have brought the IT industry into the Cloud Computing Era. Behind all that prosperity and glamor, pitfalls gradually reveal themselves. Central authority is extensively eroding the Internet. No justice can survive before intense power manipulation, not even software companies. As some voice is calling for fair play, Blockchain comes to the rescue of this confrontation. Advocates hustle to move further on decentralized encryption.
Humanity Collapses Easily before Authority and Interests
Personal data, having always been tossed aside, has generated huge profits for software companies in recent years. These data are easily accessed or manipulated. If private data does not belong to persons, then how does it justify its name? Users, however, may get overwhelmed by customized services as well as big data delivery by those pseudo “philanthropists”. These lures make sure users linger long enough in the software so that huge traffic fattens the wallets of the companies.
Gamers rake in big fat checks, while users leak out every detail of their privacy. Nothing changes until somebody gets hurt. And that’s when a brand-new community rises among all the distortions and inequalities. They say it loud and clear that individual data and their online trajectories shall be at the hands of that person only. No one else is allowed to steal or exploit the information for profit. That community is what we now call blockchain.
A Letter from Satoshi Nakamoto
The paper A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, elaborating on the architecture of electronic cash systems based on P2P networks, cryptographic techniques, timestamping, blockchain, etc. This decentralized system, running on more secured and justified protocols, pays Bitcoin as reward. That explains the invention of Bitcoin as well as the emergence of the crypto culture in this centralized world.
What is Bitcoin? What is Blockchain? Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency created and distributed on a peer-to-peer basis. Blockchain is the underlying technology Bitcoin operates on. It is a decentralized, trustless database.
The first Bitcoin was dug up in Jan. 2009. Since its creation, 730 thousand blocks have been mined, amounting to a total of 19 million mined Bitcoins, worth over $30,000. Shadowed by the scale of many financial markets, the crypto market is gaining cheering momentum reflected in surging market prices, as emerging public chains and tokens rise to the call of times.
Bitcoin has its flaws in low protocol scalability. This minor defect poses no threat to transaction traffic or market share, but may not satisfy what is required of the crypto boom.
For example, BTC is labeled as the single currency of the Bitcoin internet, whereas users cannot create their own currencies. The stack-based scripting language used in the Bitcoin protocol is not flexible enough for more advanced applications, such as decentralized exchanges(dex).
Ethereum, on the other way, is a public blockchain that amasses the entire ecosystem. This community-run technology advances the blockchain sector to the next stage with more diversity injected into the science of crypto.
A Paradise for Crypto Advocates
Ethereum is a crypto community using blockchain programming language, which enables developers to build and release the next generation of distributed applications through smart contracts. This largest application development platform allows users to initiate complex transactions on various platforms for decentralized blockchain applications(dApps) at their own will, including cryptocurrencies.
Since 2013, Ethereum has witnessed the maturity of EVM. Supported by the ERC 721 and ERC20 protocols, NFT CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties, and 1C0 have made their debut, driving cryptocurrency value to new heights, among which Bitcoin enjoys the highest inflation. The consensus algorithm has upgraded from POW to POS. Eye-popping NFT value against the backdrop of the NFT boom in 2021, propels NFTs to the world stage. DeFi and GameFI have begun to pick up momentum, a major incentive for diversified crypto application scenarios as well as ecology and market expansion. Layer 2 has brought a set of Ethereum scaling solutions. The largest blockchain developer conference opens and closes. In 2022, Bitcoin ranked 10th and Ethereum ranked 34th among Top Assets by Market Cap.
To some extent, the second bull run for the crypto market is led by Ethereum, which has left many leading enterprises far behind.
No one can deny those great achievements made by Ethereum, as its decentralized community is witnessing both unprecedented scale as well as market share. With varied scenarios in place, increasing users are gradually drawn to the crypto market. Beneath that not only lies scalable solutions but also stands the Ethereum community and the science of crypto.
A World of Decentralization
Decentralization well explains the crypto concept that is known to us. As central authority sneaks deep into all levels of the society, decentralized technology emerges as a way out of this social woe. A large community is taking shaping as people are eager to unveil its mystery. This is gonna be a long journey to embark on.
Gathering social groups or organizations of a certain field, a community is an epitome and underlying layer of the macro-society. For a real-life community, the following five elements are essential:
- A group of people living in compact communities;
- Located in a certain region;
- Equipped with service infrastructure;
- With shared cultural background and lifestyle;
- Socially inter-related.
Similarly, a crypto community is the same social network where a bunch of people with shared aspirations and philosophy of work live in. The members build up their own culture and infrastructure. Everyone can find his/her own place in the community.
What’s different is the decentralized autonomous organization(DAO), where all transactions are decided based on the consensus reached among nodes. This mechanism runs in a stable state of its harmonious member interactions, abundant content, and decent values.
Community values reflect collective minds made up of individual wills. Community content underlines core competency realized through the practice of shared values.
Constitution DAO crowd-funded nearly $46 million in cryptocurrency in an attempt to purchase an original copy of the U.S. Constitution. Krause House DAO gathered funds to buy an NBA franchise. Moon DAO raised capital to send a DAO member to outer space. Assange DAO dedicated itself to fighting for the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
These kinds of DAOs are dotted around the world, immersed in their own exceptional amusement.
To be specific, all transactions can be decentralized within communities co-founded by peers with a common vision, with the help of blockchain. Looking at the bigger picture, you will find an entire ecosystem established upon common grounds of the whole community, from infrastructure to application scenarios, from economic base to superstructure.
Cloud native, detailed in the previous article, empowers full-cycle software development, underpinned by clear goals and easy codes. This smart solution, however, harbors centralized factors. That being said, the software is encouraged to run on decentralized platforms. These platforms, developed and run by crypto communities, rely on solutions similar to cloud native, with blockchain serving as its underlying technology.
Widely scattered, community members sometimes gather in flocks just as wild animals do and exhibit certain disciplined behaviors. They are what some may call “flockness”.
Please stay tuned for the next post: the “flockness” 👀
