“ is the future, and is bullshit” —
The quote summarizes a common attitude that strikes me as both humorous and censorious. I might have said something similar in early days of . Five years ago I , “Whatever the case, do not invest in an alt market merely because you are sad from missing out on ,” which adequately captured my dislike for alt-coins. My views are now different. I am more interested in adopting beyond usage as a simple currency, tolerant of any resulting alt-coin. Things change.
The world has always battled censorship, but in the last five years, the digital world has . is likely to save the day, not . When gave us financial censorship resistance, it also gave us a mechanism for . Though this mechanism wasn’t ideal, it continues to inspire others like and .
developers know the difficultly of creating content services using the protocol (try building this very publishing service on top of ). It is practically impossible without compromises and workarounds. Here, enthusiasts will argue on technology solutions, but few will argue on the importance of free speech. So, how do we build better content platforms that protect free speech? There are two schools of thought: 1) create a second layer solution or 2) create a new, more amenable protocol. To the maximalist, the latter is blasphemy.
gave us a basic money implementation, but further extensions are painful and awkward. When presented with a new use case, maximalists either wield as the proverbial hammer in “with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” or they dismiss the use case entirely. Empirically, this hammer hasn’t accomplished much other than simple payments — often unable to meet needs in today’s economy. For example, the protocol doesn’t support recurring pay, a financial staple in modern digital services. Quite a bummer. Don’t worry, my dear reader, there is no shortage of maximalists to the rescue.
Blockchains Have Legitimacy Outside bitcoin
Technology is often the liberator, not the product. The CPU over AMD, Intel, or Texas Instruments. The Printing Press over Gutenberg, The Oxford Gazette, or Penguin. Language over English, Arabic, or Chinese. over , , or EOSIO. The maximalist is no more than a brand-loyal consumer, no better than geeks debating Apple over Microsoft.
The cornerstone of a successful money is confidence. Because alternative chains might tarnish confidence in , some maximalists feel threatened. You surely can’t have currencies haphazardly springing up to satisfy every whim. not!? At times alternative blockchains are redundant and farfetched, but other times they are necessary. I still chuckle to myself when I think of , but I never chuckle at the compelling case for blockchains like and EOSIO. Some chains are legitimate. Society is in need of decentralization apart from money.
“The moment becomes the only choice…the level of corruption and abuse of power that we’re going to see in the community is going to require us to build something to disrupt it.” —
Maximalism Is A Distraction
maximalism is a distraction. A well-organized titled “Why Matters” makes arguments in favor of the one-coin, unitarian paradise of maximalism. The article goes so far as to urgency that “we as a society have ONE chance at this, and if we dilute our impact by fucking around on other crap, we lose time & energy (at best), and at worst; we lose.” Really? ONE chance? I better agree in full, lest society loses this supposed battle.
“Why Matters” was irresistible to me, and though I spent time immersing myself within the author’s mindset, one can only go so far. I’ve read from maximalists before, but never like this. This is an attempt to prove maximalism. The article introduces a “societal stack” concept, later used to assert the primacy of . While I initially found the “societal stack” interesting, after a few seconds of consideration, the analytical framework seems engineered to restrict thought.
The stack has a curious design. The author first borrows from the idea of “shared fictions” such as kings, religion, corporations, laws, nations, human rights, and race — even money. The next step is to fill the category of Society with all “shared fictions,” but with a sleight of hand, leave out money — an admitted “shared fiction.” This is a specious step done with little justification. The final move is to arrange the diagram so that Money is positioned under Society, giving rise to the conclusion: the bedrock of society is linguistic communication + money.
Aside from a natural endowment of language, we are steered towards a blank slate view of humanity where all is built upon language and money. Forget the mirror neurons which inform our sense of . Forget the evolutionary roots informing our behaviors of monogamy. We can dismiss these connections and toss everything into the societal multitude. Is it possible that society is predicated on other properties inherent to human nature? No, no. Money is the only pillar here, conveniently categorized outside of Society — no further consideration required. As such, the analytical conclusion is that , a money implementation, is all that matters. Hard to argue with the diagram. Case closed. Checkmate.
Blockchain Tokens Can Differ From bitcoin
The author states that is “a monetary phenomenon. Not a technological one. This is where most people get it wrong at the outset.” But the author never considers that maybe alternate blockchains are not aiming to be a “monetary phenomenon.” Perhaps this is incomprehensible due to limitations of the “societal stack.”
When describing those who are not satisfied with performance or protocol and who “set out to do it faster, or perhaps give it more features”, the author says, “they miss the entire point of what gives its ‘money-ness’ !!” Once again, we have an example of a maximalist overlooking the possibility that modifications might go beyond ’s “money-ness.”
An honest inventory of alternate chains and their corresponding coins is too wild a concept for the average maximalist. ’s , ETH, is more valued as a commodity — something with utility as it functions like “gas” within a network. are allotments of network bandwidth and CPU. These value propositions are quite different from . The author seems to believe alternative blockchains all seek to capture ’s essence, and hence fail by not being — a fine tautology.
A maximalist position is often less to do with and more to do with the personality of maximalism. It is the same personality of unwavering loyalty to a sports team or nation. They speak in a language of superlative and exigency (and occasionally show us simplified diagrams). maximalism is only one of many distinct tribes, each with identical calls to justification.
Be wary. The maximalist is immune from reflection or self-questioning. If I were as tribal and inflammatory, I might end this by saying maximalists are the biggest threat to crypto , but that simply isn’t true. The truth is maximalists are inconsequential as we do not need their permission to build and explore a future.
“This is why I’m often called a maximalist, but I don’t care” —
About the Author
Britt Kim is a Y Combinator alumnus and founder of Patreos. He co-founded DataRank, which was acquired by Simply Measured, Inc. in 2015. He has been deeply involved in technologies since 2013.
Published at Thu, 04 Apr 2019 06:13:33 +0000
