“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give” — Winston Churchill
The values expressed in Lane’s post make me optimistic for the future of Ethereum. It’s true potential is not reflected in the current state of the Ethereum blockchain but in the current state of the Ethereum community.
So many smart & passionate people in a crazy mind meld of computer science, law, cryptography, economics, history and political science.
Who instead of merely grumbling at the decaying institutions around them are rising to the challenge and daring to experiment with new ways of coordinating society on a global scale. New ways that will be more transparent, more resistant to corruption, less vulnerable to rent seeking, and in a continual state of improvement with the best people with the best ideas constantly bubbling to the surface.
Of course, there is so much work to do before any of the above is more than a day dream. If blockchain is the TCPIP of value transfer, it’s 1994 and the Internet of Value revolution is just beginning. What the Internet did for communication the Internet of Value will do for value transfer, except this time the protocol layer itself will be able to bring buyers and sellers together in an endless variety of dis-intermediated global marketplaces.
My company TabooKey is betting on a Cambrian explosion of innovation as a new generation of hackers gets their hands on open source building blocks for creating designer virtual nations with economies that are permission-less, trust-minimized, and facilitated with cheap smart contract enabled automation.
It’s very easy for naysayers to point out that very little of this is real yet. They’re right. But if you want to work with a mature platform try coming back in 5–10 years. By then many of the warts will have been smoothed over by the pioneers on the edge of this strange new land.
For those who like getting their hands dirty and can stomach uncertainty, there is plenty of work to do. Anyone actually trying to solve real problems using the platform in its current state runs into a minefield of issues including an immature software stack, the difficulty of writing correct contracts, scaling limitations, and a gauntlet of on-boarding & user experience challenges.
As long as we hold on to our values and sense of purpose, we’ll continue making progress towards the big vision of remaking society. Sometimes a foot, sometimes an inch, but always forward.
“Those who have a why can bare any how” — Victor Frankl
Which is why what worried me the most last year were not the many technical challenges but rather the erosion of values and loss of focus as “get rich quick” jammed our collective consciousness. Suddenly money seemed to be growing on trees and many people who should have known better were buying into the delusion that we had somehow stumbled into a strange new world that allowed value to be captured before it was created.
“There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it” — Cicero
