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"Wen 1B DAU?" is the question thrown out every often during crypto conferences. People in the industry, especially visionary builders are the ones who get so impatient that they think about specific reasons why people aren't using crypto.
The question was also asked during the annual DE-FERENCE. During a panel discussion they say it's the onboarding bottleneck, the user experience, the developer's fault, the philosophy, the infrastructure, is what's holding back mass adoption. While these points are all relevant, I think it misses the bigger picture.
DE-FERENCE is an annual conference held by Decipher, a blockchain club that started in Seoul National University.
First, let's talk about why crypto was created; it was simply because someone thought the suits were stealing money. But why is this important? Because money is what makes life possible. Unless you decide to live in a remote island alone forever, some kind of rule in exchanging value is needed. Now, if rich people are breaking these rules to get even more rich, due to their monopoly over money, then wouldn't you be furious? But why are you furious? Because it is an existential threat, especially when you trusted these institutions for your whole life.
The same goes with the birth of the internet. The ARPANET was the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP, which became the technical foundation of the modern Internet. The ARPANET project was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later renamed DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense for research into networking technologies. The idea was to connect computers at different universities and research centers to share resources and information efficiently.
It is also said that the ARPANET was influenced by the context of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war. The concept of a decentralized network, which could reroute communications in case of certain nodes being destroyed, was influenced by the need for resilience in the face of potential military attacks.
Basically, the internet we use everyday was created because some people needed to share information efficiently, while it provided a secure communications system in light of total annihilation—an existential threat.
But we have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war—a war against algorithms, screen time, dopamine addiction, and deepfakes. The recent announcement of Sora from OpenAI took the internet by storm. We are seeing videos of such quality that distinguishing them from reality is almost impossible. Considering that there are grandmas who can't tell if GTA5 is real or not, these AI-generated videos will likely influence elections, disrupt entire industries, and be presented as evidence during trials. We are witnessing the collapse of the world we once knew as reality. The very fabric of society is being torn apart.
Sure, video hosting platforms like YouTube will come up with remedies to prevent these videos to be used for nefarious purposes, but is it feasible to filter all of them out? Hell, they had no clue what was happening to child-friendly content until it was reported all over the internet. It is simply impossible to play cat and mouse forever when open-source models are gaining more traction. The development and deployment of these models will be so rapid, a single entity will not be able to catch up.
Under the assumption that we cannot rely on a single entity while we still need a way to filter and punish people who create misleading content on the internet, one option is to incentivize random people to play cat and mouse instead.
Let's say YouTube pays out people who flag videos made by AI with their custom software, and there are people who also validate if these flagged videos are indeed created with AI? Let's go further with this one: what if we only allow accounts that are proved to human to post, and have people who deposit a certain amount of money to validate these videos were not made with AI, and when they break the rules their money will be forfeited?
Yes I am describing a Proof-of-Stake mechanism where validators will provide "Proof of Reality" to earn rewards. And yes this is only a vague idea, but I believe that it is inevitable that blockchain technology will be needed to apply these type of incentive systems because we have a long tail problem in AI.
Simply put, there is so much data in this world that centralized entities will not be able to track down everything, thus a dual-sided market is needed to address this issue. The dynamics of these dual-sided markets can address issues in-demand while innovation can be shared. Furthermore, for these markets to operate in maximum efficiency, it is required that the markets are autonomous and composable. Upgradable smart contracts which code is open to everyone will be used to host all types of activities in the market including governance and rewards. Read more from my previous article.
My prediction is that blockchain or crypto doesn't need to be pushed for mass adoption.
It is inevitable.
Just look at what Sam Altman did with Worldcoin. He created a system where people can prove they are human beings which data, the IrisCode, is hosted on a blockchain. Once you prove your humanity, you get a World ID and get to reap the sweet benefits of universal basic income. The catch here is that we have a system, World ID, that is composable for us to use in times like this.
Combining this identification scheme with the above dual-sided market I described above might look like this:
Proof of humanity is required for users to post on YouTube
Videos posted on YouTube will be examined by "Detectors"
Detectors flag videos that are created with AI and provide proof
Detectors who successfully flag videos created with novel/advanced AI models will be extra rewarded
Validators will create a consensus on the provided proof and validate the Detector's work
Validators signal YouTube to slash the user account associated to its respective World ID, which you can only acquire through providing proof of humanity (your eyeball scans)
Of course for this idea to actually work there should be much more consideration in the details. My point is, I believe that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are invaluable because they provide the grounds for incentivized systems to work in an autonomous and composable nature. And if we are seeing the emergence of hyperreal AI-generated videos, then the search for PMF is not needed. We are the PMF.
Still early™️
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