New crypto-primitive: Mimicables
＊Author’s note: I work on Unframework project, the framework for Dapps developers and that utilizes mimicables. To stay up-to-date, please follow us here on medium and twitter. More information keeps coming!
A lot of people think decentralization needs a killer app to get widely spread and adopted by masses. Just like iPhone which everybody wants because others have it. I agree, but wait. How about to make something even better? Mimicables are the protocols which enable people and things to get new functions by mimicking others. They can easily have what others have.
Mimicables are protocols which enable people and things to get new functions by mimicking others.
Currently, mimicables (formerly called decentralized interfaces) get more traction. A project based on mimicables won the prize in the recent #ETHBuenosAires hackathon. Also, mimicables started being used by Userfeeds project and other teams.
Let’s talk about the history of mimicables for a while. I was designing a concept of mimicables (decentralized interfaces) at the beginning of 2018. The concept was presented to people from Ethereum community in Feb 2018, before and during #ETHDenver hackathon (see Resources below).
At that time, my motivation was a strong believe that only greater competition of ideas will lead to better services, economy and society. Bringing ideas to live is very hard nowadays. As a result, it lowers their competition and slows down the progress of technologies. It will change — mimicables finally give power to ideas.
What are mimicables?
＊Author’s note: Decentralized interfaces, multiform memes or crypto-mimicables? These all are the words that can be used to call this new crypto-primitive. Finally, I mainly use a name mimicables now as they seem to be a subset of crypto-composables.
Mimicables are ideas or concepts expressed in a way that they become immediately useful and usable for others. This is actually the most general description of mimicables’ purpose and benefits. Let’s look at it closer.
Technically, mimicables are pieces of information that have a particular meaning and functionality. They are linked to an identity of users and may describe users’ attributes, skills or needs. Users self-define and express themselves by creating a new mimicable or linking to existing ones. Resulting, users’ identities are usable in the global context. Any app existing in the world can interpret user’s mimicables and render his/her services and information.
Let’s say I want to teach English. Do I have to register anywhere or code a website to offer my skills? With mimicables, not anymore! With one click, I just link myself to an existing “English teaching” skill. The skill which other English teachers have already linked to before and apps understand. The apps can then render my offer wherever useful. …Still boring? How about getting new skills like tango dance for your cryptokitty (UltipleX project)? Just click once and you can do anything!
No more standards
The exact format of mimicables (to guarantee usability and usefulness for others) is not given. People can write whatever protocol they want. It sounds funny, but the same information can be expressed in various ways. User’s hunger can be expressed as a function written in Javascript, or as a meme…
…or as structured data…
… or just in natural language.
Actually, it is hard to predict the winning format in advance. Yes, you read it well! It’s not a bug, it is one of the most powerful features of mimicables — we do not have to know or set the rules in advance. We are facing the complex and complicated world which is hard to predict. Every new standard just puts more constraints on what we can see, process or calculate.
“We don’t have to know or set the rules in advance” is the new black. Every new standard just puts more constraints on what we can see, process or calculate.
Getting rid of standards means we allow society, developers and software tools to self-organize. Internet will become one “living organism” that can flexibly react to the ever changing needs in the real world.
Adoption instead of reinventing the wheel
Basic function of mimicables is… yes, they can be adopted by others! It is beneficial when an entity wants to express a fact (or a functionality) which was already expressed by someone before. In this case, an existing mimicable is simply linked to the entity.
Why is it so powerful? Nowadays, we can see the adoption of ideas and successful behaviour only in families, communities and organizations: Kids learn from parents, people in communities and organizations learn from each other and adopt successful behaviour.
Mimicables can express any attribute of anything. It can be also understood as multiform memes. You can share not only your feelings, but also useful and machine readable information.
However, we do not have a decentralized internet infrastructure which can scale this proven habits up to the global level. Mimicables give the learning ability to the things on the internet. As a result, adopting will enable useful services to be spread over the world with the speed of light. Also, the era of reinventing the wheel is over. Programming the same functionalities again and again is not needed anymore. Instead, things can adopt new functions with a single click.
New paradigm in software development
Mimicables bring the change in development paradigm from ruling the world with standards to observing the world and helping with whatever needed.
Not making standards and protocols but observing the world is the new black.
In the current centralized or decentralized platforms, competition of ideas is limited. Imagine, there is over 7 billion people on this planet. But how many of them have a chance to contribute to the IT world with significant ideas?
Most people with ideas just have to follow developers of existing internet services and standards. Neither centralization nor current way of decentralization both change this situation. The main reason is that both these approaches use the same kind of protocols which are centralized around apps. These protocols describe functionalities of apps and behaviour of users inside of apps.
As a result, when a user uses functions of an app, all created interactions and statements are understandable only among the app but not to other apps and platforms.
In contrast, mimicables are protocols that are not centralized around apps but centralized around users. As I mentioned, mimicables are created even by users themselves.
They describe behaviour, skills, roles and needs of a single user, not an app.
This will turn the things upside down. Users can share new ideas and their expressions, then developers follow and react to it.
In the current system, users seek for apps and solutions. With mimicables, it becomes opposite — softwares are invited to solve users’ issues.
Mimicables give hints to developers what kinds of data are worth to process and how. Developers react to new kinds of mimicables with new software agents. These agents interpret mimicables to user interfaces and suggest solutions for discovered needs.
The format of mimicables is not defined. However, a success of particular mimicables depends only on how understandable for apps and how useful for users they are. Mimicables are one of the necessary building blocks. They will help to build a flexible and decentralized internet that will be able to solve everchanging issues of the today’s world.
Stay in touch
References
Decentralized interfaces proposal on Rebooting Web of Trust, Mar 2018: https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring2018/blob/master/topics-and-advance-readings/decentralized-interfaces.md
Draft on mimicables (called entity protocols at that time) presented to Ethereum community in Feb 2018, before #ETHDenver Hackathon: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a9LbEO4wjKWXUmwiu0rzxcq1v4oCa5HvG5Cr_azv4C0/edit?usp=sharing
Very first public notes on Decentralized interfaces (protocols centralized around users):
UltipleX project: https://devpost.com/software/ultiplex
UltipleX project presentation on ETHBuenosAires: https://youtu.be/mxFrq_kGUFU?t=14m
Userfeeds project: http://userfeeds.io
