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Dear readers,
As I mentioned last week, I am working on the formalisation of some key issues covered in the Pegged storyline.
I thought I needed to explain why - in Alias' mind - lotteries are an essential building block of a viable stablecoin protocol. And what it means in opposition to a managerial approach to the challenge impersonated by Lionel Steenberg's convictions.
Please, as ever, feel free to react. Your input is really valued.
Let's dive into it...
Alias sees lotteries and chance-based systems as a fundamentally better way of organizing human interactions than managerial oversight, and this belief stems directly from his view on irrevocability, responsibility, and misanthropy as an economic function.
Alias believes that irrevocability is the foundation of responsibility. Traditional management structures introduce layers of human decision-making, which inevitably lead to:
Institutional bias (those in power shape outcomes to their advantage).
Moral hazard (people act irresponsibly, expecting intervention or correction).
Regulatory capture (managers become gatekeepers, ensuring their own control).
A lottery, however, is final, unbiased, and beyond manipulation. When a result is determined by chance, there is no appeal, no favoritism, no adjustment—only pure irrevocability. This makes it an anti-corruption mechanism in disguise.
"The moment you introduce discretion, you introduce corruption. A lottery, on the other hand, is like a smart contract—what happens, happens. And people adapt accordingly."
In traditional organizations, management is a form of control—it establishes hierarchies, assigns responsibility, and creates artificial scarcity. Managers decide:
Who gets funding.
Who gets a job.
Who is worthy of trust.
Lotteries sidestep this entire process, redistributing outcomes in a way that forces adaptability and lowers the cost of trust.
"Instead of trusting a manager, you trust probability itself. And probability, unlike managers, does not take bribes."
In a managed system, individuals often seek approval, maneuver for position, or wait for orders. This creates dependency on authority. By contrast, in a lottery-based system:
Outcomes are randomized, forcing participants to adapt.
Luck replaces politics, eliminating favoritism.
People plan for uncertainty, rather than expecting stability.
Alias sees this as a feature, not a bug—in a world where people are trained to expect guarantees, lotteries reintroduce personal agency.
"You don’t build resilience by managing people—you build it by forcing them to adapt. And lotteries are adaptation machines."
Alias considers management a delusion—a human attempt to impose predictability on a fundamentally chaotic world. Nature does not manage—it selects randomly. Evolution operates through chance and selection, not committee meetings.
"If the universe does not have a CEO, why should we?"
He sees Pegged’s lottery system as a way to mirror the natural order, while still harnessing randomness for fair distribution. This contrasts sharply with traditional financial allocation, which is always susceptible to bias, control, and manipulation.
Alias sees Pegged’s lottery-stablecoin hybrid as an alternative to managerial control. In the Pegged system:
Lotteries create liquidity, ensuring circulation.
$PEG stability comes from user participation, not from centralized intervention.
PegDAO governs, but only within strict parameters, preventing creeping bureaucracy.
"Management wants to make the world predictable. Lotteries embrace that it isn’t—and build from there."
Alias vs. Steenberg: Management vs. Chance
Steenberg believes in institutional control—humans must be managed to protect them from their own irrationality.
Alias believes in irrevocability and self-responsibility—a system like a lottery enforces discipline without a manager.
Alias does not reject organization—he rejects the illusion of control. He believes that by removing management and replacing it with distributed chance-based incentives, Pegged can resist capture, ensure fair distribution, and remove the need for centralized power.
"A lottery doesn’t ask for your faith—it simply plays out. And that makes it more honest than any system built by men."
