Nye's Digital Lab is a weekly scribble on creativity at the intersection of AI & Distributed Systems.

This week I'm wondering how we can trust more, considering the technical, but focusing more on the neighbor next door.

Here's a fun one for the nerds like me.

It's the year 1453, and you're commanding one of several Byzantine armies surrounding the walls of Constantinople. Your army, along with those of your fellow generals, have the city completely encircled! Victory seems within reach, but only if all of you attack simultaneously.

Attack alone, and your army will be slaughtered.

Fail to attack when others do, and the entire campaign crumbles.

Let's also say you can only communicate with your fellow generals by sending messengers through enemy territory.

Do you trust your messengers?

Some of these messengers might be captured or killed. But more than that, you suspect that some of your fellow generals might be traitors! When a messenger arrives with orders to "attack at dawn," how do you know if it's genuine? How do you coordinate an organization without trust?

I wish I was smart enough to come up with this little ditty. This "Byzantine Generals Problem" was actually imagined by computer scientists Leslie Lamport, Robert Shostak, and Marshall Pease in 1982¹. It illustrates one of the most fundamental problems in any cooperative system:

How do you achieve agreement when trust is incomplete and communication is unreliable?

Without a reliable way to ensure all generals will act together, the rational choice becomes "do nothing." (Well, hello bureaucracy!) The walls of Constantinople remain unbreached not because the city is too strong, but because the attacking forces cannot trust each other enough to coordinate their strength.

This concept extends far beyond medieval warfare. Every time we interact with strangers online, vote in elections, transfer money, or even decide which restaurant to try based on reviews, we're essentially playing a version of this game. How do we coordinate with people we don't know personally? How do we trust information we can't independently verify?

Our government has been built on the reliance of a trusted actor. But what happens when this leader becomes the bottleneck, extracting fees, imposing delays, or worse, becoming corrupted, fascist or authoritarian? (Asking for a friend)

If you look past the laser eyes and the aggressive hatred of banking systems, there is a possible technical solution within the writing of an unknown hacker who called himself "Satoshi Nakamoto."

You're probably guessing already that I am referring to a paper written over a decade ago: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."² At its core, this wasn't just a proposal for digital money; it was a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem.

I know it's hard to look past, but for a moment, let's forget about the currency. I see bitcoin as the first of a new form of "network philosophy." Instead of trying to eliminate untrustworthy actors, what if there were a network where it doesn't matter if some participants are malicious?

The architecture of Bitcoin, called the "blockchain," creates what cryptographers actually call "Byzantine fault tolerance," (named for the fun little exercise I wrote about above). The network can function correctly even when a large percentage of participants are trying to cheat or disrupt the system.

The process for validation in decentralized systems transforms the trust problem entirely.

Instead of having to trust a bank, a government, or any central authority, users only need to trust mathematics and the assumption that the majority of the network wants the system to work properly. Man, do we love calculus!

Nakamoto's vision extended beyond the "cringy cryptocurrency bros" and HODL. In the Bitcoin whitepaper's conclusion, there's a memorable statement about human cooperation: "We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust." This vision wasn't just about money. This was a vision about reimagining how humans coordinate at scale without hierarchical control.

The implications of this ripple outward into every domain where massive coordination matters.

Decentralized networks can now enable peer-to-peer energy trading, processing power sharing, or open source software development³. Neighbors can sell solar power directly to each other without utility companies as intermediaries. Artists can sell directly to fans without record labels. Researchers can share data without institutional gatekeepers.

But I think the philosophy of decentralization, outside of the blockchains and the technical marvels, can be applied to any organization where you need to get things done. By focusing not on the system, but on the relationships between humans, you can create real operational value.

Blockchains are cool and all, bro, but something crucial gets lost when we focus solely on the technological solution. The Byzantine Generals Problem and blockchain technology address trust at the network system level, but they don't necessarily create the kind of trust that makes human interactions meaningful and productive.

There's a difference between mathematical verification and genuine human connection, between cryptographic proof and earned reputation.

There had to be a time when traditional markets actually worked. It was our hubris and obsession with scaling that tried to expand them through impersonal mega-bureaucracies. Medieval guilds, local merchants, and craftspeople built their businesses on reputation and relationships that developed over years or decades⁴. When a blacksmith made tools for farmers, both parties knew they'd interact repeatedly over time. This created incentives for quality, honesty, and mutual care. The blacksmith's reputation was his most valuable asset; the farmer's word was his bond.

Trust was earned.

When you form a personalized and direct connection with someone, it doesn't matter what the title of that person is. It only matters if you feel you can trust them with the most important aspects of your business or life. These one-to-one personalized interactions weren't inefficient systems that needed to be modernized away.

They still work!

The problem came when we tried to scale these relationships through hierarchical institutions that stripped away the personal accountability and the long-term thinking that made them work. I believe that core capitalism still works; it's just the McDonald-ization of the super scaling that screwed the whole damn thing up.

Modern organizations often treat trust as a luxury they can't afford rather than the fundamental infrastructure that makes excellent work possible⁵. Employees are monitored, measured, and incentivized through complex systems designed to prevent the need for trust.

Customers become data points rather than relationships. Suppliers are evaluated primarily on cost rather than partnership potential. Nurses are valued by how many patients they see as opposed to personal connections formed. The result is a race to the bottom where everyone optimizes for short-term metrics while long-term value goes out the window.

But peer-to-peer networks, whether technological or social, offer a sustainable path⁶. When we approach each interaction as an opportunity to build lasting trust rather than extract immediate value, and when you truly trust the person you are working with, that's when the cool things become possible.

Teams become more creative when they trust each other enough to share wild ideas without fear of judgment. Customers become advocates when they trust that companies genuinely care about their long-term success. Suppliers become partners when they trust that good work will be recognized and rewarded⁷.

The most successful organizations today understand this⁸. They invest heavily in culture, relationships, and long-term thinking not because it's nice, but because it unlocks human potential that hierarchical control systems can't access. They create environments where people feel safe to take intelligent risks, admit mistakes, and collaborate across boundaries.

When people trust that their contributions matter and that they'll be treated fairly over time, they bring their full creativity and commitment to the work.

Honestly, I don't know if the blockchain is the way forward. I suspect there may be value in the mathematical reliability of decentralized systems, but only if we pair it with the human wisdom of relationship-based trust. Yes, we need technical tools that make large-scale coordination possible⁹. But we cannot do it by sacrificing the human-scale relationships that make work meaningful.

The Byzantine Generals Problem is a fancy analogy to demonstrate why trust matters; blockchain technology showed us that we might be able to achieve it at scale technically; but now comes the hard part...

We need to remember how to build it between humans.

The most powerful networks create abundant opportunities for people to connect and contribute in ways that benefit everyone involved¹⁰. Building networks of genuine trust isn't just good business. I think it's essential in the age of AI.

Thanks for reading. I do this every week. If you vibe to the ideas I express, consider subscribing or sharing with friends. We'll see you next time!

1. Lamport, L., Shostak, R., & Pease, M. (1982). The Byzantine Generals Problem. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems.

   https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/byz.pdf

2. Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

   https://www.academia.edu/5230212/Bitcoin_A_Peer_to_Peer_Electronic_Cash_System

3. Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press.

   https://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf

4. Ogilvie, S. (2014). The Economics of Guilds. Journal of Economic Perspectives.

   https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fjep.28.4.169

5. Dirks, K. T., & Ferrin, D. L. (2022). Trust Within the Workplace: A Review of Two Waves of Research and a Glimpse of the Third. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.

Nye Warburton is a creative technologist and network collaborator from Savannah, Georgia. This essay was emergently written from a summer of research on decentralized systems in a personal knowledge base in Obsidian. It was edited and refined using Llama 4.0 and finalized with Claude Sonnet 4.0. Images were done with Gemini Nano Banana and Stable Diffusion.

For more information visit https://nyewarburton.com

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