We all have dreams in which we believe we are awake. Even when inconsistencies are present, our semi-conscious minds either ignore or cannot detect such inconsistencies in the world presented by our subconscious minds, leading us to determine what we are experiencing is real as opposed to a dream. Putting aside psychedelic studies, Terrence McKenna, and clockwork/machine elves, for the sake of discussion, let’s just assume dreams are generated purely by a physical phenomenon going on in our heads, unique to our particular consciousness & subconsciousness.

Because our dreamtime perception uses the same interface software as our realtime perception, the key distinction between the two states is the source of the stream, i.e. the input. But how do we determine if the origin of the input is internal or external, if both internal & external phenomena are filtered through the same internal processes? This is why simulation theory is so intriguing: because external observation is made via the same method of internal projection as the subconscious generation of a dream, meaning that hypothetically an external source can intercept the hardware inputs of this stream and provide data of its own.

The main distinction between the unique "reality" of dreams & the shared "reality" of reality is the confirmation of this reality with others, who for whatever reason, we are able to recognize as autonomous entities in the shared reality, as opposed to being pseudo-autonomous entities generated within our own internal dream reality. We can abstract a recursive equation of reality R to: input phenomena P, times our senses'/hardware's fidelity of such phenomena/input F, times our conscious mind's understanding of the input C, times our subconscious mind's impression of both the input & our conscious understanding of it S, recursively times itself: R = PFCSR.

Since the recursion exists in both real & dream realities, and since the interface streaming the given input cannot meaningfully determine whether the phenomena is internal or external by itself--leading to the simulation question--our conscious & subconscious minds only truly have the faculties & the context to distinguish between a shared & unique reality, rather than a real & dream reality. And since both the conscious & subconscious minds can be tricked into believing a unique reality is the shared reality, how do we determine the proof of reality to distinguish between the waking state & the dream state?

At some point, our conscious & subconscious minds undergo a proof-of-reality, where based upon the consistency between input-interface-processing recursions, the input feeding into each recursion is shared rather than unique.

Somehow, I may have come up with a description of reality even more convoluted & verbose than Hegel's, but to those who are familiar with how forking & consensus models work in relation to blockchains, the presented abstraction may not sound be so absurd. With a blockchain, all chains are traceable to their respective genesis block-- each successive block is validated via its particular consensus model to ensure that each node is operating the same instance of the chain of blocks, hence blockchain. Any deviation from a validated block can be considered a "fork". So in a sense, every transaction is potentially a fork until it is validated by enough nodes via whichever consensus model that specific blockchain uses, so that it becomes a transaction within a block on the main chain.

In terms of our perception of consciousness & "proof-of-reality", the forking & validation both occur at the rate of neural activity, creating the previously-described input-interface-processing recursion. To reduce this process to blockchain terms, reality is the 'mainnet' and we are each nodes. While we are awake, we validate & process the main chain of the shared reality, which would mean dreaming is a soft fork of the 'mainnet' beginning at the block at which we fell asleep. One could say that the relationship of these two perceived realities is akin to the relationship mainnet versus a local development network, but the unique reality we experience while dreaming can potentially impact our choices & behavior after we wake up. So to better fit the analogy, our unique realities are more similar to Layer 2's, since the output from the side-chains of our unique realities is then fed into the shared reality.

And in terms of the role they play in the blockchain ecosystem, what do Layer 2's solve? Simply put, Layer 2’s are scaling solutions. There are many types of L2's but for the most part they aggregate processing off-chain, which they then insert on-chain in a single transaction or a more efficient series of transactions.

So when we reexamine the dichotomy between shared & unique realities in blockchain terms, if our consciousnesses function as nodes running side-chains-- which each serve to validate the mainnet-- that would mean that our unique experiences within dreams are part of the process in which our collective consciousnesses work together as a network to validate the shared reality.

We can view actions & words spoken by individuals as Layer 1 transactions, with the underlying processes that influence them as Layer 2 processes, which thereby serve to validate those L1 transactions. If the shared reality had a block-scanner, it would be easy to analyze Layer 1, i.e. words and actions, but if we wanted to analyze intent & everything influencing an individual’s internal decision-making processes, we would need to know the validation process unique to their particular L2. And instead of only Polygon, zkSync, Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, and a handful of others, doing so would require auditing roughly 117 billion different methodologies & implementations.

This doesn't solve the question of whether or not our shared reality is real or simulated, but I nonetheless find solace in knowing that regardless of the source of the shared reality, that our unique realities--our dreams--play a role in validating our shared reality, which in turn contextualizes & seeds our unique realities.

In short, proof-of-reality is: "We think, therefore I am", as well as "I think, therefore we are".