Stories are always about people. And people are about only one thing, death. The only thing left for people to do is to decide how to spend their time in this world where they have come without having a choice. Two pills are offered to us; choosing the blue pill represents a conservative, traditional choice, while the red pill symbolizes the acceptance of constant change which is misery, constant newness, and a rejection of the status quo.
The path of the red pill that very few people choose is not comfortable or open. Leaving aside all those institutions, tutelage, and culture established by the traditional has never been as easy as it is thought. Humanity did not transition from a hunter-gatherer culture to an agricultural culture in one day, but experienced centuries of ups and downs. Could it be that the transition to a production model organized as a capitalist unit wage with the Industrial Revolution suddenly disregarded the centuries-old guild system? This story is full of examples that have been tried to be achieved even in Western countries, which are considered successful examples of this transformation, for decades, and in some other corners of the world for over a hundred years.
However, those who choose the red pill still do not sit still. Although their chosen path is often more costly and tiring than the old one, they do not back down. Why would a person prefer the painful paths of the new to the comfort of the old, knowing that almost everyone living on earth will die in a hundred years? Because this is a philosophical decision, choosing the red pill is never an economic decision. Most of the time, it is not even a rational decision. Tell me, why would you establish a republic in 1789, when you could easily create a position for yourself with many medals and ranks by sharing the legacy of the Bourbon dynasty that has continued for two centuries, living in palaces and marrying a lady without any real responsibilities? Choosing the red pill is a decision made emotionally. Sometimes it means being alone and sometimes it means being the other.
The “cult of decentralization” is the alternative chosen by individuals who reject the established “central cult.” This central cult has influenced societal behaviors and cultures through its institutions that were established decades ago. Even though these individuals were born into the central cult and have experienced and internalized many of its characteristics, they still choose the red pill of decentralization. Expecting this decentralized approach, which has become applicable with Blockchain technologies and many other similar technological trends, to establish complete dominance over the existing central status quo would be a futile reading, just like the wrong but widespread belief that humanity invented writing overnight.
The continuous fluctuations of the Blockchain ecosystem, the occasional coming and going of the interest of developers, who are the producers of this technology, and marketers, productists or designers, who we can include in this broad definition, follow quite natural patterns, as can be observed in many historical radical changes that I have given examples of above. In fact, very few of the producers and consumers in this ecosystem have truly adopted decentralization as a philosophical stance and therefore continue to produce and consume these products despite not being mature enough to confront various social and economic challenges.
Perhaps, very few people currently exist in this new ecosystem and therefore we may seem to have no impact compared to much larger corporate networks. However, just as the moon, which is a much smaller entity than the sun, blocks the burning light of the huge sun during a solar eclipse, we too create great impacts with what this small ecosystem of ours reveals. We will grow by reminding those on earth who are suddenly left in darkness in the middle of the day that there is not only the sun but also the moon. As the number of people who have swallowed this red pill increases, the projection of these shadows will also expand. As a result, these ideas will spread and grow stronger as they are told and told like stories.
This is not the story of blockchain, but of those who created and developed it. Until the end of the story is written, no one knows what will happen to the characters.
Many economic problems such as rising inflation at the global level, the gradual decrease in social trust in fiat currencies issued by central authorities, the loss of quality of currencies seen as safe havens, and rising interest rates threaten the world today. On the one hand, humanity is facing economic crises, while on the other hand, it is being shaken by wars, genocides, polarization, migration, and socio-political changes caused by climate change. After the world emerges from the pandemic, it should have focused on problems such as global warming that threaten our planet, but it is being dragged into a crisis by facing many more problems that we have listed above.
The first developers of blockchain technology, which emerged at a time similar to the crisis we are in, put their vision into practice and lit the fuse for a more fair, decentralized, reliable, and sustainable world. After all, the behavior of some people who have chosen the blue pill and have not been able to move away from the centralized cult included in the blockchain ecosystem has revealed the threat of some institutional problems experienced due to the status quo to also infect the blockchain ecosystem.
In short, any solution or approach that practically centralizes the system by moving away from decentralizing the blockchain environment, decentralizing the ownership of the people and individuals, fighting tyranny, abusing democratic means and/or decentralized structures, and not eliminating or even bringing back intermediaries, is entirely opposite to the basic blockchain philosophy.
To stay true to the goal of a fair and equitable internet, it is essential to embrace the "blockchain philosophy" introduced over a decade and a half ago, as if awakening to a new reality. Furthermore, choosing not to manipulate funds by transferring them between different instruments for short-term gains demonstrates a conscious commitment to these values.
Thrasymachus, one of the not-so-well-known but important thinkers of the ancient period who was born in Kadıköy, the neighborhood where I live in Istanbul, has quite famous thoughts on the concept of "justice." He thought that justice only served the interests of those who held power, whether in democracies or autocracies under despotic governments. The inadequacy of technology and other opportunities in the era in which Thrasymachus lived made him think that this hopeless "justice" cycle was unbreakable. However, with technological opportunities such as blockchain and the internet that our century has granted us, we can, albeit slowly, prevent centralized giants who are centers of power from using "justice" in their own favor.
We are obliged to applaud those dedicated to transforming the illusion of "justice" that does not exist in reality into a vision of real "justice" by prioritizing the issues the blockchain ecosystem faces, such as sustainability, scalability, privacy, and financial volatility. All we need to do to become one of them is take this red pill.
I tried to tell you this story with a lot of allegory and adaptation, but this story is just a history.