In the first few years after Bitcoin’s creation, an idea was presented in both conventional and social media that the network allowed for anonymous transactions. This was a belief held by some Bitcoin users, as well as those who were simply curious about the technology. The idea was propelled by its use in illicit circles, namely those who frequented Silk Road, an infamous black market network, back in October 2013.

However, this idea collapsed dramatically when law enforcement agencies were able to use Bitcoin addresses and transactions to locate individuals involved in these illicit activities. It was a clear signal that Bitcoin was not, in fact, anonymous, but rather pseudonymous. And since then, Bitcoin, and most other cryptocurrencies, have not been perceived as such.

The reaction to this depended on people’s understanding of how Bitcoin worked. Anyone who read the Bitcoin whitepaper likely knew that such a thing was a possibility. However, users who gained their insights almost exclusively from the media, or who were passive in their involvement with the ecosystem, may have been blown away by the revelation that transactions can be monitored and pinned to certain individuals.

Since law enforcement’s successful blocking of Silk Road, it has been rare to come across anybody who claims that the crypto industry implies anonymity. It effectively cut the concept out of major discussions. To some extent, this is a good thing, as it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. Not only this, but most permissionless blockchains actually utilize public ledgers, which seems to be a concept that is against the notion of anonymity.

From that point onwards, anonymity became excluded from blockchain discourse, being viewed more as a concept that was accidentally connected to the field by the media, rather than one that truly belonged there. You could even argue that the abandoning of anonymity-discourse helped to provide legitimacy to the industry, leading to giants like Coinbase and Circle gaining prominence in centralized financial spaces such as the traditional stock exchange. It was almost as if the killing of this discourse back in 2013 helped it to mature and fit in.

But… is this the truth? Was anonymity really a concept that was mistakenly tied to blockchain tech? Or, is it actually a notion that deserves to be embraced, analyzed, and placed within the larger embodiment of the industry’s core and nature? Let’s try to unpack this idea.

Understanding Anonymity in the Context of Blockchain

Anonymity is a concept that has been shunned for several decades, with governments speaking of it in a way that suggests it is wrong to seek it. It is often conflated with the desire to do something unsound, immoral, or illegal, rather than as a human right. It is hard to map this specific brand of disdain for the concept, but in the West, it became more widespread to think this way after 9/11.

It makes sense, on the world stage, why many people in the blockchain space may have had the desire to push away anonymity from the field so that further adoption and acceptance could happen globally. However, it might not be so easy to truly rid the field of the concept.

Anonymity From a Developer Stance

Anonymity might not exist automatically when people create Bitcoin addresses or perform transactions, but it does run through the network in a different way. While we generally refer to Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as a pseudonym, the fact that we do not have a clear indication or any proof of who they are means the author is still anonymous. A name that points to no real person is not a useful identifier.

Considering Satoshi Nakamoto has never explicitly revealed themselves, it appears that this concealment was entirely intentional. And this, alone, indicates that privacy of this type is a part of the blockchain space (at least on a conceptual level). It might feel trivial, but this idea of not broadcasting project creators has echoed through to the current day. There are many networks and developments that belong to unknown people. The most popular non-Bitcoin example would be the creators of the Board Apes Yacht Club, perhaps the most famous NFT project nowadays.

While we now know who they are, due to a media exposé, this was not their intention. They had tried to work without revealing their true identities– and considering their rise to fame and fortune occurred during this concealment suggests that there is a cultural and ideological acceptance of anonymity within the industry that still exists to this day. Another major project with anonymous developers that has gained prominence is SushiSwap. This is a decentralized exchange whose creators are hidden behind pseudonyms.

The fact that there is a tolerance for building projects in this space without revealing identifying information is extremely fascinating. It is a sociological phenomenon that is rare to see in other fields and sectors (barring perhaps the arts). At its core, there appears to be an openness from the blockchain industry toward concealment. This cannot be ignored, largely because it is so hard to find in other professional spaces.

Anonymity From a Network Stance

Along with this, there is still a huge desire for anonymous blockchains to exist. It may not be the most lucrative, and it may not receive the best press, but Monero is one of the most important and prolific blockchains to have ever graced this field. Released in 2014, Monero acts as a deeply powerful thorn in the world of blockchain tech. It is often described as the coin that people thought Bitcoin was– a network offering fully anonymous addresses, wallets, and transactions.

The time of its release may raise eyebrows for some, considering it arose one year after Silk Road closed down, but make no mistake, Monero’s roots are a little older than this. Its origin can be traced back to late 2012. In December of that year, a whitepaper named CryptoNote v 1.0 was published by Nicolas van Saberhagen, a character who has proven as hard to track down as Satoshi Nakamoto, making them practically anonymous. This whitepaper (and especially the sequel, v 2.0), contains some of the fundamental ideas that eventually evolved into Monero. Note that this is not the founder of Monero, but could be considered a grandparent of it.

In fact, you could even say that anonymity discourse existed before this whitepaper, with Satoshi themself speaking positively about the notion of privacy-based transactions and addresses back in 2010. This is important because it shows that, even in the early days of the industry, there was a push for digital privacy, not only in the form of founders staying hidden, but also as a method of allowing users to be hidden, too. And best of all, these discussions were being had by network pioneers.

Unfortunately, Monero, and other privacy coins, are often viewed unfavorably by governments, although this is no surprise. This knock-on effect can often lead to them being delisted or banned from certain exchanges, making them harder to acquire than economic leaders like Bitcoin and Ethereum (despite Satoshi and Vitalik speaking favorably about blockchain privacy).

Thankfully, despite this, there is a greater push for privacy features to be implemented into the industry, further normalizing them. For instance, additional blockchain layers which incorporate zero-knowledge proofs are being pushed for in the Ethereum community at the moment. Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic process where there is a “prover,” that can prove to another party, the “verifier,” that they know a value (or a statement is true), without conveying any information apart from the fact that they know the value (or the statement is true). In highly simplistic terms, it is a way of revealing to somebody that you know a secret without revealing the secret itself.

This concept has been around for some time, with Zcash, one of the biggest privacy coins on the market, using it as their primary method of offering anonymity. However, the technology is gaining more and more traction as the days go by.

Why Does Any of This Matter?

The blockchain industry is typically presented as a financial development, or an arm of the FinTech space. These are both true, but they do not encompass the magnitude of the field. This industry is also a socio-economic and political movement powered by a collection of ideologies. And when it is viewed like this, it becomes important to identify and mark what these ideological stances and streaks are if we want to fully understand its trajectory, telos, and shape.

The point I want to make in this piece is that anonymity is one of the defining ideological elements of the blockchain space; the reason this is important is because it helps us to understand the makeup of the industry, and understand what its values are.

This space is going through a strange time. It is trying to achieve its goal of global adoption, but the process of being anointed a mainstream status is calling into question many of the ideas that it stands for and is intertwined with. Privacy and anonymity are one of those ideas that it is grappling with as it tries to fulfill its aim on the world stage. If we are not clear on what its cornerstone features and themes are, then over time, it could become disfigured and reformatted to become something else. It is important to remember, and highlight, anonymity as this is one of its defining traits, and one of the reasons why early projects were developed, and early adopters jumped on board.

In other words, it is a necessary element of the industry. It should not be forgotten.

Let’s highlight some important questions regarding intellectual property and digital fashion. Some of these are at the bleeding edge of both law and fashion, and so these questions will have no definitive answers.

Digital Garments and Copyright Protection

Just like with physical fashion, intellectual property is a hot topic in the virtual world. Perhaps more so, as digital assets are much easier to copy than physical goods. But would digital fashion get the same protections as its physical counterparts? For instance, would digital garments get the same copyright treatment as physical garments do in the UK under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988? Or would another act or legal precedent be better suited?

What about copyrighting specific outfits? The law on this is quite sketchy when it comes to physical fashion, let alone digital. One of the biggest hurdles that comes with the copyrighting of clothes is that you must prove to the courts that your attire is not utilitarian in nature. This is because the legal system generally prevents people from protecting any aspect of utility, as utility has inherent value and should be open for all to use. The courts do not want to stop people from living an easier and more efficient life.

As clothes are needed in the physical world, they are often counted as utilitarian, making copyright harder. Although, there are still some copyright protections available. The case of Brandir International, Inc. v. Cascade Pacific Lumber Co found that if a garment has aesthetic features that are separate from its utility, and express the creator’s artistic ideas, then those elements can be copyrighted.

The question is, does any of this apply to digital clothes? You could certainly make an argument that digital body adornment is necessary (and therefore utility-focused) as it helps us stand out from each other, but would the courts view it like this? Would the courts even view digital clothes as clothes?

As to whether an outfit can be copyrighted, now that is a much trickier question. I have been trying to find a case (in any country) that explores the possibility of protecting the wearing of specific items of clothing together, and I have sadly not found one yet. In the physical world, this may sound unimportant, but it may actually be more significant and pressing on the digital plane as our attire is one of the very few ways we can differentiate ourselves in the metaverse and be perceived as unique. So, perhaps outfits and people’s wardrobes need their own special protections in a legal setting.

From Physical to Digital

What about protections related to copying physical garments and replicating them in a digital format? For protection of this sort to exist, it would require the legal world to recognize a symbiosis between the physical world and the metaverse. Perhaps the legal world would have to imagine them on a similar plane, so that their legal protections carry over, too.

Or, perhaps it would actually become easier to protect against digital copies of physical clothes because the legal world may not recognize the utility of digital pieces. If that is the case, then the legal system would have no other option but to focus on aesthetics and artistry, removing the largest barrier lying between clothesmakers and legal rights.

Digital Clothes and the Likeness of Individuals

We have mentioned digital clothes as a means of expressing uniqueness within the metaverse. This takes us fascinatingly close to the legal debate around protecting a person's likeness.

Ever wonder why we see so many ads that feature people who look or represent Albert Einstein? It is not only because he is a household name, but because the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was actually granted the rights to Einstein’s likeness through his will, and then used that as a springboard for renting out his image. This institution is the only body that is allowed to represent Einstein, and if anybody else wants to use him on a piece of clothing or a product or an ad of their own, they must be granted a license.

These are known as personality or publicity rights, and they are an extremely complicated and ethically dense area in intellectual property laws.

You might ask what does this have to do with digital fashion? The answer is that as clothing is one of the very view ways we can express our individuality and uniqueness in the metaverse, the specific outfits we wear could be tantamount to our likeness. They might be the only way we can express ourselves. And so, the question is: should we be able to apply publicity or personality laws to the wearing or combining of certain signature clothes?

Patenting Important Concepts

And this is only the start. Digital fashion is as much a tech field as it is a creative one, and so there are a wealth of wild and boundary-pushing ideas that may deserve to be patented. The question then shifts to trying to figure out which ideas should be granted patents, and which ideas are so important to the human experience that they should not be limited to one company.

For instance, it is not unheard of for patents to get disallowed if they are believed to hinder our human rights. This is especially prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry where companies try to patent new cures and medicines. But it is not limited to this; a document published by the UN discusses how patents can impact people's right to access their own cultural heritage and enjoy the arts. In that sense, perhaps if a patent in the digital fashion space is going to have a revolutionary effect on how people appreciate both themselves and the world around them, it should be stopped.

Not only this, but the web3 and wider cypherpunk space often foster heated debates about whether intellectual property rights should even exist at all. This might sound strange as most people are open to the notion that original ideas should belong to their creators, but there is also a strong argument for considering all ideas as part of the public domain. Cypherpunks communities are usually anti-hierarchy, so they often also make the argument that intellectual property rights allow powerful corporations to hoard ideas and even steal them from less advantaged locations.

Final Words

These are just a handful ethical of questions and topics within digital fashion and intellectual property. Hopefully, this provides an insight into the sheer breadth and nature of this space.

This series is a showcase of individuals who are striving for positive social and ethical change in the blockchain and web3 space. The idea behind this project is to shed light on the insightful developments within this industry, and to promote overall flourishing within the wider community. This series will be a collection of interviews, led by thought leaders who are instigating such activity.

My guest today is Asad Anwer. He is a computer scientist with a focus on user experience and product design, who imbues his work with both his creative passions and his knowledge of psychology. He is the co-founder of ByteCorp, an AI consultancy company that has close ties to the field of web3. He is also a friend of mine.

In this interview, I asked Asad to provide insights on a myriad of areas, where he gave his intellectual input, as well as delved into ethical questions that are connected to the fields relevant to him.

I understand that you recently completed a Product Psychology Masterclass. How do you apply your knowledge of psychology to the field of user experience?

The connection has always been there. The first course I did that was related to design was called Human-Computer Interaction. Within the course, there is a Venn diagram that can explain how this connection is conceptualized. One circle involves engineering, one circle involves design, and a third circle involves psychology and behavioral science. And so human-computer interaction embodies all of these.

The importance has been highlighted to me specifically within the course I took. There are over 100 cognitive biases and psychological principles that are (and can be) applied in design to create a greater experience for humans. At the core of this, it must be understood that your designs need to be human-centric. If you are designing for humans, then you are bound to study how we behave and how we think.

The more you understand that, the more credibility you have, and you can create more impressive tools. To give an example of how psychological ideas can be applied to design, we can take a look at Hicks Law, which is the rule that the more options you give the user, the longer it will take for the user to make a decision. We all have experience of this, either with software, or in other circumstances. A common way this is experienced is when people go to a restaurant and are given a menu with a lot of listings.

This sounds so simple when it is said out loud, but it is not thought about by everybody. And this is just one of those cognitive principles or ideas that need to be considered. When it comes to the ethics of design, it is important to remember these as they can be used to fabricate or elicit certain experiences in a user which they might not want to do, or to create a response that the user might not have intended. This was discussed within the course I was in, where there was a recognition that we should not be using these principles to create such unethical designs or experiences.

This needs to be considered more often, because people highly, highly, under-emphasize the influence of design on human behavior. How we interact with our phones or our computers or other devices has a huge impact on how we think and how we make decisions, so it is important that we consider just how influential product designers can be on the psychology of the end user. It is necessary that you are mindful of the decisions you are making when you design something.

There is a great amount of responsibility involved when you are designing something, and it must definitely be considered. There can be an empathy gap between some designers and their user base, but this should not exist, because designers should recognize what they are doing. I would also like to give a huge shout Growth.design and their founders as their case studies on design principles have been extremely useful. Plus, they are not afraid to call out big names in the tech world who are using unethical design practices, or dark UX patterns, to get certain responses. They are making a huge impact.

What is the role of aesthetics in user experience design? To what extent do you believe the beauty of something is important to its utility?

There is definitely a connection between aesthetics and user experience. There is one psychological effect known as the aesthetic useability effect, which is basically the idea that people tend to perceive designs with great aesthetics as more intuitive and easier to use.

There are several aspects that people take in when they are using something, but the first is the visceral aspect, which is essentially the first thing that pops into your mind after seeing it. If something is visually appealing at first glance then it can have an immense effect on how people interact with it. This is by no means the only factor or the primary factor, but the way something looks plays a huge role in how people perceive the usability and ease of something. Aesthetics can also affect mood, so it makes sense to give people a pleasant experience when using a product by making their user experience look and feel good, too. Otherwise it would be unfair to people.

I understand that you and BtyeCorp have been working in the automated vehicle space for a while. Have you heard much about the debate surrounding the “trolly problem” regarding AVs? As an overview, this is essentially the ethical problem of where an automated vehicle finds itself in a position where it would potentially harm somebody (or multiple people) regardless of where it goes. The question then is then to decide who it will choose to potentially harm or kill. When working in this industry, have you found that the trolly problem is discussed much? And do you have any insights yourself?

There is a lot of discussion about automation and electric vehicles, but from my experience this question is not being talked about as much as it should. This is a very serious question, and it is a very necessary one for us to all be exploring as automated vehicles are getting more and more commonplace.

Now that I think about it, this is the sort of question that is designed to provoke thought, as I do not think this is the type of problem that has a solution. There is no right answer. We cannot even begin to truly quantify the harm that could be caused or lives that are saved, because each person has their own universe of thought and so the loss of one is still deeply important. We can try and measure them against the number of people involved, or how old they are, or whether they are parents or what their jobs are, but these discussions never solve the problem. And this is what is great about it as it definitely creates a thought-provoking scenario for us to all consider.

If only philosophy and philosophical discussions were black and white; life would be so much simpler! But sadly (I don’t know why exactly I’m saying sadly), all the course of life has to exist in this grey. And I think, so does the answer to this problem.

The world of tech is filled with so-called “dark UX” patterns. What do you think is the best way to combat these UXs from being created? Do UX devs need to be encouraged to think more ethically about their creations?

This is definitely a big question. The two areas of my studies that have given me insights into this topic are my course on product psychology, courses from the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF), and a documentary called The Social Dilemma. In the documentary, there were several discussions raised about how social media affects the way we interact and think– as I was watching it I was thinking to myself “it’s a design problem, it’s a design problem”. And this is definitely the case. There are a LOT of big companies and projects that are utilizing these dark UX designs and it is causing problems.

There was this case study I came across where it showed how Amazon is using design to make people buy more than they need. Another example is how LinkedIn was fined $13 million for their dark patterns. However, nowadays we refer to them as dishonest and deceptive design. If you check out deceptive.design, you can find a whole hall of shame where they show companies that are making people do things that they would never have wanted to do.

I think one possible solution to this would be to educate designers on the consequences and the depth of the harm they can cause when they create these designs. Even at the lighter end of the spectrum where companies make you sign for cookie policies can cause huge problems. Many sites do not even let you see the website unless you say yes. Some places do not stop you from seeing the site, but they might block a lot of it out or make it harder.

If I am in a state of selective focus, so I have something that I want to do and I’m trying to simply do that, then I am going to ignore a lot of things, such as reading what I am agreeing to when it comes to cookies. I will just continue, accept, and move on because I am busy. But the agreement to use cookies for some services can be very dangerous and can encourage you to agree to a lot of things that you never normally would. The people who create these designs know this and are very smart with it. It could have been done in a more humane way, but they choose not to.

Companies need to be upfront and they need to be transparent about it. This is why the lack of empathy is so dangerous, as it leads to tricking users into doing things they do not want. It is similar to somebody pretending to be your friend or have your back, when in reality they are trying to take things from you or steal from you. Places need to be upfront about what they are doing so we can stay informed.

We make movies about potential robot uprisings like iRobot or The Terminator, where we imagine futures where machines hurt us or control us. But in the current day, we actually have machines that do control and hurt us and they are much more insidious than these ideas we commonly associate with. We spend so much time using devices and going on programs that already control us.

People need to realize this, and realize that if things are wrong by design, then they need to speak up. The designers and developers need to speak up. If a company like Instagram notices that people are spending hours on end on their platform, then somebody in the company needs to try and stop it. They want us on those sites for as long as possible so they can shove ads down us and make more revenue from us. But why can’t they just draw a line and say that a certain amount of revenue is enough for them to survive, and then make the effort to get us to stop spending so long on these platforms so that we can be human and go and do something else?

Netflix does it. Even though they also break some design rules in their favor, they do ask you “are you still watching?” That still tells you “okay, maybe it has been a while that I’ve been on this, so perhaps I should consider doing something else”. Even something small like that can be enough to nudge a person to simply wake up and recognize that their life is not just staring at a screen.

The implications of these companies applying these deceptive designs are huge. It distances us from our lives and stops us from seeing life for what it is. It encourages us to say “well, maybe I do not have much of a life, but at least I have 5000 likes”. But this is so wrong. They trained us to spend our lives on these services and then to make using these services integrated into our goals.

It is not supposed to be like this.

And now so many of those that make these social media sites and other applications no longer care that the situation has gotten this bad because they want to simply push their ads to you and make their revenue. People need to understand that if you are able to use a product or service for free, then you are the product. They are making money off of you by using you. Something cannot be a human-centric design if it is using you like this and if it is not using methods of allowing humans to actually be human.

It might be hard now to stop some of these companies, but what we need to do as people is be more mindful of how we interact with these applications and see if we can mitigate some of this behavior for ourselves. In our free time, we can work on our growth individually and keep a distance.

Are there any interesting insights you have had about the current wave of AI designed for consumers (ChatGPT, Midjourny, etc) in terms of UX and product design?

First off, I think that the world of AI, specifically ChatGPT and Midjourney is amazing. This is the kind of stuff that makes us truly believe in the technology, and makes us understand how significant this field is. This is not the same as the older technologies that we saw in the past where we had an AI trying to perform small tasks and sometimes getting it right, such as assessing whether an image contains a cat or a dog, and only occasionally getting the correct answer. That stuff is kinda impressive, but it is nothing like the stuff we see right now with the new wave of AI.

And it is just the start. People said in the past that previous technologies were just the start, but now it feels like the field has really started and that this is the real beginning.

There is a lot of fear with these technologies surrounding certain jobs and careers. I remember coming across an article that argued that AI would replace artists. Artists?! Seriously? This is something that I totally disagree with. If you say that an AI model is going to replace artists, then what is art in your perception? How do you conceive art? What do you think when you see or experience a piece of art?

It is all around you. It has no rules at all. This is one of the fundamental ideas separating art and design. In design, there are certain rules that are involved that you must adhere to. But with art, there is total subjectivity. With that subjectivity, for me, there has to be a person. There has to be a consciousness. For me this is what makes art meaningful. It is about perceiving those different perspectives. You can even look at a piece of art as something that you like when you first experience it, and in a few months, you can look at it completely differently because that is how quickly your life can affect your view of art.

And I know that what some models like Midjouney are coming up with is derived from some truly amazing artists, but it is only deriving actual meaning from what you are telling it and ascribing to it.

What these AI models create is not subjective by itself. It follows rules. The response to the output can be given subjective if you give it to different people. But that original meaning that you find in human art, that original meaning that must have been in Starry Night, that must have been in the Mona Lisa, is just not there. Even if it comes up with something that looks like those works of art, I will always be thinking at the back of my mind about how it is not human and so it does not have that original meaning behind it.

This is the same with writing. There was this general response some people had to ChatGPT which was to question why we would ever need copywriters or content writers, but this is not an argument! You would always need writers. You would always need someone with specialized knowledge that AI cannot achieve yet. For instance, you are an amazing writer, an AI cannot replace that. Instead, we should be talking collectively about how we can utilize these AI models to help aid us and make our lives easier.

Unless there is something very, very, very repetitive, involving manual labor, there cannot be an AI replacement. AI cannot replace the act of writing or making something profound. Even if there is a lot of data accessible, a human will still always be able to come up with something an AI cannot.

This should not be viewed as a fight. We should be looking at how we can use AI for our work to get better or easier. We should not be thinking about what professions are not going to be around, we should be thinking about how they can help those professions and careers.

Sticking with AI, there is a question about the way these AI models present themselves to the public, and how that may be causing a level of anxiety with some artists. A perfect example of this is MidJourney, where people write prompts by prefixing them with the word “Imagine” in them. What are your thoughts on that?

When we talk about design for models like this, where you are dealing with many types of audiences and people, we should take an exact approach. We should say things, and call things, as they are. It is not right for a word like this to be used if it is taking data and inputs and using them to create an output.

And it cannot be justified by saying that it only worries one audience; artists. These models use the work of these artists, and so their opinions and their feelings are important. This needs to be made right. With what I know about design, and my own experience, I can immediately see why this would create so much anxiety among artists. If I was working on something like this I would research hard to find out what words and language could be used to reduce this anxiety.

I have a slightly different example that connects to this. There is a company that sells a lot of artwork, which has recently set up a section on their website for selling AI artwork. And they are more expensive than the works of humans. Why? That is not fair. You need to accredit every artist’s idea that was used to create that image and you need to treat artists with the respect they deserve. We need to understand the importance of respecting and remembering our audiences.

Connected to this discussion of AI in the future, there is one big concern I have, which might actually be a fear from inside me, which is to do with not being told whether we are talking to an actual human being or whether we are talking to an AI. I don’t mind the conclusion that I am talking to an AI, but I would always need to know whether I am or not. I think, for me as a human being, I would need to know so I can consider whether I am talking to something which has data on the whole world, or whether I am speaking to one human being. In some cases, I see this as more important than what is being said.

This series is a showcase of individuals who are striving for positive social and ethical change in the blockchain and web3 space. The idea behind this project is to shed light on the insightful developments within this industry, and to promote overall flourishing within the wider community.

This series will be a collection of interviews, led by thought leaders who are instigating such activity. My first guest is Mike Peck, Ed. D. He is the co-founder of Ed3 DAO, an education-focused DAO aimed at fostering innovation. He is also on the board for the Center for Research and Innovation. Additionally, Mike is a major component of the upcoming Ed3 Unconference, where like-minded people will virtually meet up and share ideas and beliefs on decentralized education.

In our interview, Mike discussed the aims and challenges of educational DAOs, and discussed how the space explores self-sovereignty.

You are a proud member of the Ed3 community. What does Ed3 mean to you?

Ed3 is a meme, and the meaning behind it is still emergent, but we have all seen the power of memes and what they can do, and so we are all focused on how it will conceptually transform and take shape. I would say that Ed3 is a reflection of the shifts that are occurring within our technology that are allowing for pedagogical changes– meaning there are new ways to teach and learn. So really, Ed3 is an opportunity to explore these changes that are allowing us to move from the classical structures of the past and shift things towards the learner/individual. We want to think about how we can help focus on the individual and help them grow, in a way that has not been happening in other (traditional) methods.

The Ed3 community is all about bringing together innovative educators. This expands beyond schools and learning centres, as there are teachers and innovators in this space everywhere. It is open and inclusive, and recognises there are people with educational experience in all aspects of life.

Ed3 has a different focus from other educational sectors. Whereas traditional spaces would focus on things like raising scores and raising reading (which is definitely very important), Ed3 places a level of importance on autonomy and the personal learner experience. This is different from most other education sectors that have never been about focusing on the individual and their educational journey. There is an encouragement of uniqueness and creativity when focusing on learning in Ed3.

It helps to understand it better by examining Ed3 against a backdrop of previous times in education.

• Ed1 was very much talking and delivering to the student.

• Ed2 was much more “give-and-take” where students and teachers would occasionally speak between each other.

• Ed3 is all about agency.

We are looking at how the power balance is changing. We are moving past the teacher being the gatekeeper of the knowledge, towards a more open system. The power is shifting and we are thinking more holistically about education now. What we envision is the shift of power continuing to the individual– just like in Web3. And what that looks like is where learners are increasingly in charge of their own decisions. They gain more agency and power because it is their lives, and we are preparing them for what their lives and goals may be about.

Could you explain what the Ed3 DAO is?

Our big mission is to provide a space where we can have educators learn about, and onboard into, web3. There are two benefits that come with that. The first is that we want to give teachers the skills they need so they can teach others about the space. Web3 is a pretty tough area to navigate, and it can be scary and overwhelming. We wanted to provide a space where people can learn about it in a safe manner without having to worry about how it works.

Our focus is on educators. But there is a recognition that it will be the students who will really lead this and move it from zero-to-one. But the quickest way to do that is through the educators as they are sitting face-to-face with multiple students at a time.

The second benefit is that we give teachers skills to help them engage in this space, because web3 desperately needs the help of educators. Traditionally, educators go through schools and these systems and learn a great deal of knowledge on a wide-range of topics and concepts, but they often feel they are stuck in a box, where they cannot use this knowledge elsewhere. Or at least the others outside the industry think they can only work in a school. But this is not true, because these skills are extremely necessary and portable to a wide range of topics. Tech and web3 is a huge place that can happen.

For example, teachers and educators are well-versed in community-building. This is something that can seriously help any DAO and web3 project (even outside the education sector). This is a type of specialized knowledge that could help this space flourish.

Essentially, Ed3 DAO is a launchpad for the tech and education sector, where both web3 will benefit by the inclusion of educators who can help guide and shape the space, and education will benefit from developers and those well-versed in tech who can build the best tools to positively affect their students.

There is an education problem in web3, both in quality and in scope. This is not to criticise the space, as it is definitely still new. This is more so a point that there are not enough skilled and knowledgeable people in the area to help push the space and make it flourish.

As an example, we have recently heard that Starbucks wants to get involved with web3 by creating NFTs. This means that a large number of people will be introduced to web3 for the first time through them. But this is extremely important because it must be recognised that the philosophical ideas that underpin what they are doing will be permeating into the consumer, and so there must be care and education to make sure that this is handled correctly. This is also what Ed3 DAO is helping to push towards.

A lot of people focus on the tech, but web3 is not about the tech. Neither is education. What we are trying to do is make it clear that these spaces are about the people. The tech is the tool, the people are what makes it important. That is what we are trying to explain to the world/space.

What do you think somebody should know before they join an educational DAO?

All educational DAOs are different, so there might not be one specific thing a person should know. But I would say that people should think about what they aim to get out of the experience. People should know their personal “why”. Joining these web3 DAOs and communities focused on education brings about a certain level of agency, which really puts the ball in each person’s court. You get to decide when you engage, how often you engage, and what you engage in. So knowing that beforehand is key.

Another thing is that people should be very conscious of their bandwidth, because this space is very prone to burn-out. I’ll speak for myself, but those who are heading into this frontier are probably pre-disposed to being curious. This can be an amazing thing, but you need guardrails because otherwise, it can be easy to lose time and focus.

If you are comfortable with these ideas/concepts, then you are going to have an extremely rewarding experience here.

What is the role of autonomy and sovereignty when it comes to web3 educational projects?

I think it is important to consider the place where everybody is coming from. They could be considered guardrails, but they are much more defined than that. People have their “lanes” and everybody must stick to those. We call those silos in education. Math has its silo. Science has its silo. Etc. Part of the role of web3 projects and communities is to help people unlearn what they have learned from traditional education. If somebody is struggling to think beyond the current structures in place, then we need to help unwind them so they can be ready to engage in a different and more autonomous type of experience.

And so on-ramping is key. So we try to get people to recognise what they know and then put that to the side, so we can get them prepared for a level of education that involves more self-sovereignty. Some of this gets tied into biases. If you are a teacher who has experienced a lot of success from the traditional method of doing things, then you might struggle to understand a new system where there is more student-autonomy. We need to explain that it is not the teacher’s fault that the current systems are built in this way, and that a change to that is not questioning their abilities… And we can help them rethink how they look at their classrooms.

What is the biggest challenge that educators face when moving to blockchain and web3 technologies?

As far as challenges go, I would say the mindsets of people who get involved is important to understand. People need to be ready to guide their own education and understand the importance of self-sovereignty.

Another key aspect is that of values-alignment. What I mean by that is right now, our educational system doesn’t really value web3 and blockchain tech. And so trying to get a teacher to put aside what they are doing and what their livelihood depends on is hard. And that is of course not their fault. We need to find ways to of explaining how important this tech and this field is, and how it can help them and their students. It is about telling them how valuable this space can be, and then convincing them of this. And not only that, but also finding common ground on which to build things. And there is a lot of common ground.

For instance, digital citizenship has been a big push in the last decade. Critical thinking, community building, and communication skills, and creativity are also huge areas that overlap between education and tech. These are some examples of common-ground for things we can build on. There are challenges but we are already approaching solutions. And that is what we are trying to do.

I received an unusual email. The name of the address was strange, and the contents seemed peculiar, too. The recipient said they had found me through my ethics and fashion writing in the web3 space, and that they wanted me to cover a story for them.

However, there were two crucial caveats. Firstly, the person who messaged me said they would not be revealing their true identity. This unfazed me, as the web3 space is filled with people who avoid using government names online (just look at how the Bored Apes team initially hid their identities).

The second caveat was more interesting. They told me that the information they wanted to give was “extremely sensitive and very possibly life-threatening”, and so they were only willing to communicate via PGP encryption or via VPN-backed virtual webcams.

Naturally, this intrigued me. Although it also worried me. The only information this person had given me was that they had a story they wanted me to tell that related to my industry, and that it was sensitive.

I replied to them using PGP and asked what the story pertained to, and we got to talking. Firstly only through messages, but later through webcams, although I never saw their physical form– only a virtual rendering of their avatar.

They told me that they wanted to discuss their relationship with the digital fashion and web3 space, and what I soon learned was that they were under the Witness Protection Scheme in their respective country, and that they had been for a number of decades.

The story they wanted me to tell was one that related to their own digital identity.

Unsafe Identities

The person I spoke to, who went by her chosen pseudonym of s82, had been placed on the Witness Protection Scheme through no fault of their own. They told me they had “no criminal history or background” and that their enrolment was purely due to the people they knew and the things they had seen. Regardless, this led the police to perceive they were in danger. As a result, they were relocated to a remote part of the country, and given a new identity and documentation.

From then onwards, s82 has lived in fear of violence. Not only from the criminals who instigated their relocation, but even from the police as she describes their treatment of her as “grossly negligent and degrading”. In essence, the police mishandled the extremely delicate experience of witness protection, and did the “bare minimum” to protect s82 on a physiological and psychological level.

As a result, she is now deeply unsure of her identity, and has been left feeling like a “non-person”. She tells me she had “minimal involvement in the identity” she was given, leaving her feeling non-existent and constantly questioning the nature of her reality.

“ My experience on the scheme has been extremely traumatic, as it has forced me to conceal my identity, which has left me voiceless and in many ways faceless. Figuring out who I am is a daily job. For decades I have been dissociated from who I am and unable to clear picture myself”

Crafting a New Self

I asked s82 how she has dealt with the new identity given to her, to which I saw her virtual avatar re-position itself. You see, while I never saw s82’s physical form, her digital avatar was mapped to her own body, and so when she moved in the real world, her body virtual self did, too.

She went on to explain the torment she has felt since her new identity was forced upon her, to which she went into detail about how tormenting it was to assume a new person.

“I cannot stress how literal I am being when I say my original identity was destroyed. My concept of self was burned to the ground. And the replacement I was given never fitted right. I had practically no involvement in the identity I was given, and so it never felt like mine.”

To put it simply, she never did truly adjust to the identity thrust upon her. It has never felt like hers. So, as a means of gaining some autonomy over herself, she chose to build her own identity.

“The identity I was given was not mine. I never grew into it like you do as a child, and I had no hand in crafting it. So I had to go about creating something new.”

That was when she began to refer to herself online as s82, a name I am told relates to a specific legal provision involved in her case. Creating an online pseudonym gave her the ability to gain some mastery over her identity, and take matters into her own hands.

The name was a purely virtual one, used in niche online circles and underground digital hangouts. The reason for this being that she never wanted to draw too much attention to herself as she was worried for her own safety. This meant she had to tread extremely cautiously when communicating online, ensuring that her privacy was intact.

Web3 as a Saving Grace

While s82 had been speaking in online circles for some time before the web3 space, it wasn’t until its explosive rise that she began to feel more comfortable. In particular, this was because the industry had brought with it a revised view on the nature of privacy.

It is quite common for web3 projects to have pseudonymous or fully anonymous developers, founders, and even influencers attached to them. The most famous example of this would with Bored Apes.

This instilled s82 with hope, as it set the ground for people with hidden identities to exert themselves in digital spaces and broadcast their ideas.

Before web3, anonymity and pseudonymity were hardly ever placed in a positive light. The idea that somebody could (or need to) hide their identity was seen as little more than a security problem. Despite the right to a private life being mentioned explicitly in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, it was often treated as a problem to be solved, instead of a core feature of human life.

“The rise of the pseudonymous founder may be scary to some, but for me it has created a safe haven.”

It gave her hope that she could express herself and speak on virtual platforms without immediately being met with scrutiny.

“If there are other people concealing their identities, and they still able to get heard, then I can, too.”

Digital Fashion and Autonomy

The reason s82 contacted me was that she wanted to shed light on a fringe case where the digital fashion world is able to enrich somebody’s life. As somebody who has been genuinely unable to connect with the world due to external dangers, the ability to express herself from a safe virtual setting is immense.

While web3 allowed me to feel comfortable using a separate identity, it wasn’t until the digital fashion industry took off that I felt able to actively craft my own identity.

It allowed her to rebuild her identity, not only via a name, but via her aesthetic. In our meeting, I noticed her avatar was wearing highly vibrant and outlandish clothing. She told me reason for that was to compensate for the fact that she is unable to dress in this way in physicality.

s82 is a recluse. She rarely leaves her home, and when she does she dresses in muted colours. The physical space around her does not feel like it has any connection to her, and so she has no desire to express herself within it. Her self-expression happens practically exclusively online.

And since the digital fashion space took off, her self-expression has magnified tremendously.

Digital clothing helped me to start again, again. Only this time, I was an active participant in my identity. Via encrypted messages, Monero transactions, and a lot of soul-searching, I have been able to build a very specific wardrobe of digital clothes, accessories, and masks that I believe represent who I am.

The important point to note is that s82’s concept of self is greatly aided by the aesthetics of the clothes she virtually wears. It helps her to stand out and gain a semblance of uniqueness and individuality that she lost during the relocation and transition into her new self.

Accentuating the Impossible

I was intrigued to know more about her wardrobe and her style. On first impressions, her avatar (which is a humanoid figure with a minimalist face) is well-dressed and colour coordinated, with vibrant greens, yellows, and purples.

“I am constantly on the search for new digital clothing, often picking some of the more vibrant and unusual pieces that look like they defy physics. I go for these pieces as a way of compensating for the fact that I do not feel able to be vibrant in the physical world. On the rare occasions I leave my home, I dress in muted colours. But when I’m online, I’m dressed in the most colourful, contour-altering, and visually consuming outfits available.

I also choose physics-defying pieces because I think they are a great representation of things that should not exist. I feel a connection because I feel like I am defying the odds to exist in this world, same as these clothes.”

Waiting for the right Metaverse

Currently, when people think of digital fashion, they think of it in relation to the metaverse. But this is not the only way this medium can exist. s82 was clear to me that she is not to be found on any metaverse right now. She said she is waiting for the right place that upholds the right ideals– autonomy, self-sovereignty, decentralization, and community ownership.

“So, of course, you won’t find me on META”.

This means that her digital clothing is only ever really seen via webcam meetups such as the one I had. Some digital clothes can be overlayed onto people’s real photographs, but as s82 must conceal her identity, she does not opt for this method.

Her clothes are only ever seen on her 3D rendered avatar; an avatar that was designed by a friend of hers who she met within the cypherpunk space.

Aesthetics as a Driver for Thought Leadership

I wanted to circle back to something s82 mentioned earlier. She noted that the pro-pseudonymity landscape of web3 had given her the ability to exert herself comfortably. I was interested to know if that had any relation to her interest in digital fashion.

She replied “Yes!” and explained how her ability to craft a unique aesthetic and visual style meant that she could connect easier with people in the online communities she occupied. It allowed people to associate her name with a visual ideology: one of “radical-non-physicality”. The fact people could associate her with clothes that would collapse the world of physics if they existed in this reality meant that people were viewing her as also being somebody who was existing outside of the norms and laws of this world.

While s82 does not defy physics, the fact that she has been able to develop a voice and form global bonds is something that should be impossible given her unique circumstances.

“Through this, I have been able to speak more freely about my own concerns regarding identity and selfhood, which in turn has made me feel more comfortable about who I am and who I have crafted myself to be in such adversity”.

The Underlying Message

Before we finished up, I asked s82 what she hoped to achieve with this interview. Her response was that she wanted the world to know about the “ethical importance” of the digital fashion space.

“It is being too easily dismissed as a gimmick and an empty industry, but digital fashion has given me the ability to feel more like a real person than any real clothing ever has. I understand my predicament to be a rare one, but if the industry is helping just a handful of people feel more sound and healthy, then it has automatically proven its worth.

The limitless nature of this new frontier has made her “physically limited life feel significantly less restricted”.

Digital clothing, web3, and blockchain technology have allowed her to live richer than she initially thought was possible while under the Witness Protection Scheme.

The web3 space is generally thought of as a purely STEM-driven endeavour, involving very little critical discourse from the humanities. As a result, many outsiders dismiss this field as a cold and highly calculated environment where hard evidence and results come first, and ethical and social ideas have less significance.

This is, of course, false.

The notion of web3 is SO much more than a technology stack, it is a full-blown socio-technological ideology, fitted with its own ideals, goals, trajectory, and telos.

And throughout all of this runs a healthy dose of ethical discourse. As a web3 ethicist, it is my duty to accentuate these elements, and bring light to complications and concepts that need more moral consideration. With that in mind, let’s explore three areas in this space that I believe have a very strong ethical core driving them.

Decentralized Education

There are people online who are working to create a more welcoming and open educational system. They are doing this by creating educational institutions that are decentralized in nature, meaning that they do not have the same hierarchical structures as traditional schools and universities. These would usually be run in the form of a DAO.

A decentralized education network places the needs of the student first, making the experience driven by (and tailored to) the people who enrol on the courses. This means the students lead the curriculum, the methods of learning, the discourse, and overall the methods they are assessed by.

The reason these networks exist is because people are becoming aware that traditional education is faulty, and that it is limited by strict curriculums and rigid hierarchies. People want an alternative that is more people-centric and open to change.

It is still early days for this sector, so it is hard to say how these will compare to centralized education centres, but if they work then they could become a powerful and well-regarded alternative to the status quo.

Proof-of-Personhood

Proof-of-personhood blockchains are networks that are able to provide one vote per person, as opposed to other blockchains that allow people to gain votes by staking more money or buying better crypto-mining tools. The aim is to build a system that cannot be exploited by those who have the most money, making them plutocracy resistant. This is necessary if we ever want blockchain tech to allow for fair voting that incentives all users from all economic backgrounds.

The way proof-of-personhood blockchains work is that they grant voting rights to people who they deem to be genuine people (and not bots or duplicate accounts). As they are decentralized, they also do this without the need for anybody to provide compromising data such as photo IDs or other bank statements.

One company I’m working with, called Idena, is a proof-of-personhood blockchain that handles this by having validators complete simple common-sense tests that are designed to be easy for humans but hard for computers.

One interesting outcome of blockchains like this is that they can then be used to distribute universal basic income (UBI). This is because a set amount of money can be given to every account without there being any means-testing or weighting in any way, and because nobody can have more than one account that means nobody will be able to cheat the system.

Decentralized Science

With a new interest in the field of science (particularly health and biology) due to the pandemic, there has been a push for experiments and studies to be conducted that are in the public interest. The only problem is that most studies only get funded by centralized corporations or universities– it is not the norm for the community to raise money for specific studies. Usually, a company only funds research if they think it will be helpful to them on an economic level, and that in itself creates a conflict of interest where research is only ever conducted when it will improve the profit margins of those who raised money for it.

Decentralized science aims to fix this by making community-led funding easier. This means that people can raise money for the research that they deem important, even if it does not have an economic incentive. Not only this, but the decentralized science space also helps to track the progress of a research piece, and monitor how certain experiments are handled and how certain data is logged. It essentially makes the world of science more visible to the general public, removing any smoke and mirrors that prevent the average person from engaging.

[The following is a direct copy of my own report on the state of digital fashion in the metaverse].

The relationship between digital fashion and the metaverse is plain to see. The metaverse is how we virtually congregate in an immersive space, and digital fashion is how we adorn ourselves when inside those spaces. But what is less clear is the relationship between these two concepts and NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

My intention is to shed light on this, and explain why digital fashion NFTs will be the lynchpin of a successful metaverse.

The Aim of This Text

• To explain the significance of NFTs in the digital fashion and metaverse landscape.

• To examine how fashion houses can capitalise on the human desire to feel unique in the digital world.

• To give insight into how the fashion industry will function in the metaverse.

Who Is This Book For?

• Fashion houses and designers who are looking to navigate the metaverse landscape

• People in the web3 space who want greater insights into human behaviour.

• Artists and creators who are looking to branch out into digital fashion.

Fashioning Our Identity

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: fashion is all about identity. Who we are determines what we wear, and what we wear has an effect on who we are. We build our outfits as a means of representing who we consider ourselves to be, and who we want the world to see us as. Fashion is the marriage between our aesthetic desires and our own conception of self. It is a way for us to incorporate artistry into our very identity.

Oftentimes, when we are attracted to a piece of clothes, it is because we think it helps represent us on an inward level. This happens because, sadly, the way look in the mirror does not reflect the way we feel. Our emotions, our beliefs, and our thoughts are not physically reflected back to us, and so we feel the pressure to apply clothes and accessories to help close this gap. This disparity between how we look and how we feel is explored by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

The Need for Uniqueness

Perhaps the most fascinating need that clothes helps us to satisfy is that of uniqueness. The sociologists Birga Mareen Schumpe and Hans-Peter Erb note in their 2015 paper that:

“[H]umans do not only strive for belongingness, they also want to feel special and distinct from others. This motive is called the Need for Uniqueness [NfU]. The term describes the human desire to feel different from others”

This means that, not only do people want their clothes to reflect who they are, but they want their clothes to help them stand out from others. This does not necessarily mean everybody wants outlandish and vibrant outfits, but it does mean they need a means of separating themselves from everybody else. And not only this, but they need to know that others think of them in this way as well.

In other words, people want to look as unique as they feel.

We can pinpoint this desire on the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, locating it at the very top, where self-actualisation rests.

Maslow defined self-actualisation as

“[S]elf-fulfilment, self-expression, working out of one’s own fundamental personality, the fulfilment of its potentialities, the use of its capacities, the tendency to be the most that one is capable of being”.

NfU fits within the concept of self-actualisation because it relates directly to self-expression. If somebody is worried they are blending in with the crowd, or that they are unable to differentiate themselves from their peers, then they are unable to reach their full potential and flourish as a distinct being.

But Maslow’s Model Is Wrong

This model is inaccurate. While Maslow is correct about the importance of self-actualisation, he has misunderstood its placement in the model. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs places it at the top, arguing that all other needs must be satiated before somebody can tackle self-actualisation.

This is an inherently classist view of human flourishing, as it suggests that many working-class individuals can never self-actualise as they are always locked in the “safety needs” rung of the pyramid, due to financial pressures. This is because “safety needs” includes safe housing, food, heating, and a lack of medical worries or concerns.

This is not to say safety needs are unimportant, or that self-actualisation is not (significantly) harder when there are financial/medical/safety concerns. But rather, it is unfair to say that a person cannot self-actualise unless these other aspects are satisfied. If this were true, then it would be impossible to find artists, visionaries, intellectuals, academics, experts, and trend-setters who live in poverty… And anybody who has grown up in poverty knows this is far from the truth.

Let us switch to a slightly different model…

The Indigenous Perspective

It is nowadays understood that Maslow appropriated his hierarchy of needs from the indigenous communities he studied. However, their model was slightly different, placing self-actualisation at the bottom of the pyramid, explaining that our self-expression and flourishing is necessary before other goals (such as community actualisation) can even be considered. Here, safety needs, physiological needs and others segments in Maslow’s version of the hierarchy would get equal weighting with self-actualisation.

This alternative way of thinking may align more with the human experience, as it closely considers the necessity for self-expression and confidence before somebody can become an active and passionate participant in society. Most importantly, it explains that the Need for Uniqueness is a primary desire that needs to be satisfied.

Nobody is (Automatically) Unique in the Metaverse

In the physical world, we automatically assume that the people we interact with are unique individuals. We may often fear that we blend in with others or that our true identity does not shine on a visual level, but regardless, we all essentially assume one-another is distinctly different in some way. This is a given — we treat most people as distinct as we instinctively know there are no copies of people in this reality. So, everybody is taken at face-value to be a unique person. Nobody looks, sounds, or feels 100% the same.

But the same cannot be said online.

When we interact with people in a virtual realm, we do not get to see them wholly. We are all acutely aware that a person can create a duplicate account (meaning there is two of them electronically). Not only this, but with the recent developments in AI, we are all rightfully sceptical that the people we interact with online are actually elaborate bots. Who hasn’t used a live-chat for customer service only to question whether they are speaking to an algorithm or to a real person? With recent studies showing that humanizing bots gives a better customer experience, this scepticism is bound to grow once we reach the metaverse.

The problem is made worse because, when you enter an online setting (such a metaverse), you are usually given a uniform, cookie-cutter body. Your body will begin looking the same as practically every other body. You may be able to modify it in some ways, but the physical human form is infinitely unique, whereas an electronic form will always be limited in the ways somebody can change it.

The internet has a way of systematizing people. Most online communication feels the same, as you use the same apps for a multitude of things. Messaging your friend does not feel much different from messaging your boss or messaging your mother, and part of this is because we use the same apps to do them all. The tone never really changes. The same will happen on the metaverse.

Let’s Recap the Issues Explored:

1. Online settings make us seem uniform to others, as we are limited in how unique we can make our avatars (compared to how unique we look in physicality).

2. With the ability to create duplicate online accounts, uniqueness is not automatically assumed.

3. With the prevalence of human-mimicking bots, people will always be sceptical of who they are interacting with.

The Need for Uniqueness is More Important than Ever in the Metaverse

This paints a damning picture. If people cannot feel unique within the metaverse, then they will simply leave it. They will disengage and merely return to the physical world, abandoning this new frontier. The NfU is non-negotiable, (same with other elements of self-actualisation). If we cannot be understood and treated as distinct, then our sense of self will be tarnished and bruised, causing us to retreat.

So, how do we solve this issue?

NFTs: The Currency of Uniqueness

Individuality is hard to exude in the metaverse. With the prevalence of bots, and the ability for people to own multiple social accounts on the same platform, we all instinctively go into online communications with a little scepticism. And if we do not have the right tools at our disposal to stand out from the crowd, then there is little reason for us to stay within metaverse spaces.

This is where NFTs step in.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are perfect for the metaverse because they allow people to prove their uniqueness by displaying digital objects that cannot be copied or duplicated. This might sound inaccurate, as we all know that pictorial NFTs can simply be CMD-C/CMD-V’d, but doing this is a little harder in the metaverse than it is on a web2 site. Any metaverse that supports NFTs would also support anti-copying measures. Think of Twitter’s hexagon feature, only a little stricter and more immersive. However, the metaverse is not a website, and so your actions can be limited in many ways, and simply copying and pasting is one of them.

In other words, NFTs allow people to prove their uniqueness in the metaverse.

This technology gives people the confidence to build outfits and wardrobes comprised of digital fashion NFTs, with the full knowledge that they own something unique, and that others can verify their uniqueness by checking the data attached to their attire.

It might not sound like much, but remember, the need to both feel unique and be perceived as unique is detrimental to human flourishing.

Not only this, but if we view the Need for Uniqueness as an aspect of self-actualisation, then it is needed before people can even begin to engage with communities, as community actualisation is the next rung on the indigenous pyramid.

Therefore, this also makes it essential for the formation of DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations) and other digital community projects.

To go one step further…

Digital Fashion NFTs will be the bedrock for creating a truly virtual culture, one that is both healthy and ever-lasting.

What Does This Mean For Fashion Houses?

The metaverse is the new frontier in reality. The COVID pandemic, along with recent developments in tech, have triggered an appetite for immersive and virtual spaces. The details for how this will work are still being ironed out on a global scale, but what is certain is that people will crave uniqueness when they enter these environments.

The role of the fashion house is to satiate that craving and provide people with a means of feeling unique. Just as clothes help us to craft our identity in physicality, they too will be needed to craft our identity in the digital world. Only now, the stakes are higher as uniqueness is not a given.

As a blockchain researcher and fashion theorist, I predict that the demand for digital clothing NFTs will be rampant and ever-growing alongside the growth of this new metaverse era. Mere digital clothes will not be enough, as they cannot be verified to be unique– the demand for virtual clothing will become (primarily) exclusively NFT-based.

In 1882, Fredrich Nietzsche wrote the Parable of the Madman, where he infamously proclaimed that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

The meaning of this, often overused, phrase is that the idea that a unified concept of morality, social construction, and especially religion has dissolved. The madman has recognized that the society he lives in is in the process of losing the very thing that holds it together. Bear in mind, at the time when Nieztchse was writing, practically everybody took for granted the idea that civilization was held together by the notion of God– a higher being where all our positive attributes derive from.

When the madman says that “we have killed” God, he means that the human race has successfully de-coupled itself from the idea God, and is slowly drifting away from the notion of a higher being. This was triggered by developments in science, altered philosophical views, and changes instigated by The Enlightenment Period. While The Age of Reason definitely predates Nietzsche’s work, its effects were felt for a deeply extended time, and are still being felt to this day. In particular, this period brought about a wave of secularism. This might sound relatively insignificant, but it was not so much that religion was stopping to matter, but rather that the things that we often attached to religion were stopping to matter, too. For instance, morality: the historian of philosophy Stephen Gaukroger has noted that “[i]t was generally assumed in the 17th century that religion provided the unique basis for morality, and that without religion, there could be no morality”.

Another major factor that gets lost when religion is lost is that of community. In the past, churches were commonly used as third places, which are places other than home and work, where people feel a sense of belonging. The loss of religious communities also means that people may face diminished health, as they have been linked to far greater mental and physical health.

And so, when Fredrich Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead, what he was really saying is that the core bindings of life at that time were falling apart, leaving the people to live in a reality that is far less interlocked and attached than it used to be.

Something similar is happening again, only this time it does not relate to religion…

The Lives and Deaths of 2008

In 2008, the world faced the largest economic fallout since The Great Depression. The reasons behind this are unimportant, save for the fact that it was triggered by banks, governments, and other corporate and centralized bodies. Not only did these organizations instigate the financial crisis, but the public was deftly aware of this, as it was public knowledge. This was arguably the first instance during peacetime where the world was so outrightly exposed to, and conscious, of the greed, arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence of the corporations that rule over them. Note also, this was not some abstract concept that had no effect on the average person (such as when the stock market fluctuates). This crisis caused the loss of a significant amount of elderly people’s pensions. Some of the most vulnerable people in our world were left penniless by the figures at the top.

Bear in mind, banks and governments rule the world. We all know this, and we are all taught to have faith that they have our best interests at heart. To see these institutions fail their citizens so openly and unapologetically was cataclysmic. It opened peoples’ eyes up to the current shape of the world.

Something else happened in 2008: the Bitcoin whitepaper was published. Within it, a system was laid out that showed people how to create, manage, store, and distribute wealth in a way that entirely sidestepped the corporate villains who spread poverty around the globe. It gave people hope that they could escape the Bosch-esque economic landscape that 2008 had become.

These two events dealt a blow to the financial world. One that I argue was fatal. In fact, I believe the 2008 financial crisis, along with the birth of Bitcoin, caused the death of fiat as we know it.

The All-Mighty Dollar has Fallen

This statement might sound outlandish, considering that practically everybody uses fiat cash, and every government, bank, and company functions primarily on fiat. But remember, when Nietzsche wrote that God is dead, religion was still a major part of everyday life– and still even is to this day. Nietzsche was not saying that the idea of God would be eradicated or even placed on a backburner, he was saying that the significance of God as a grand, unified concept was no longer there.

With this in mind, I believe the grand unifying idea of a centralized and government-controlled form of money is simply no longer present. Fiat definitely still exists, and will definitely exist for the foreseeable future. But the general public is no longer under the illusion that fiat can ever be the core of our financial world. People are fearful that another financial crisis will occur, and they are fearful that it will be triggered by the very institutions that rule over us.

That type of fear never disappeared. Thirteen years later, and that fear is still strongly held. A 2021 poll found that 48% of people who understand what the US Federal Reserve is, do not trust it. With the rate of inflation climbing, and the COVID-19 pandemic being mismanaged, the general public has lost faith in the corporations that hold us together.

The All-Mighty Dollar is looking less mighty than ever before. It is no coincidence that during this time, the cryptocurrency industry has broken records throughout the years of the pandemic. As public trust in fiat dwindles, it appears that interest in crypto rises.

But What Comes Next?

People often misalign Nietzsche as being a proud advocate of atheism. They see his scornful critiques of religion and jump to the conclusion that he is actively trying to eradicate religion from the world. But this is not true. While Nietzsche was perhaps the most important critic of religion, he was never exactly pro-atheism. In fact, Nietzsche was afraid of the loss of religion. For him, the death of God was the death of society as we knew it, and he never wanted that.

Nietzsche was concerned about what the next stage in human life would look like. The death of God means we must now find our own values, our own communities, and our own moral compasses. This is a battle that will be felt in both the heart of each country, and in the heart of each person. We must build our own ideals.

A good way of illustrating this is with Gil Scott-Heron’s famous song: “The Revolution will not Be Televised”. In one sense, the revolution will not be televised because it will occur underground, away from centralized media, only to bubble and bubble and explode into the mainstream, where it will take over and further consume the media. But in another sense, the revolution will not be televised because it will happen internally, within each individual who recognizes injustice and aligns themselves with their own conception of justice.

But revolutions are not friendly, and changes like the ones discussed here do not come pleasantly. The death of fiat is the death of the financial custodian. The middle-man has been murdered. The people are now figuring out how to control their own wealth, meaning they are learning how to imbue and empower themselves with the powers that the state is often so used to. And sadly, in the process, people are learning just how hard it is to control your own wealth. When you manage all your money, you are the only one to blame when things go awry. There is no intermediary out there who will fix things: it’s all on you. That’s terrifying, but the death of fiat has meant that we must all march forward, as centralized forces can go awry, too.

Final Words

The question of what comes next is a tough one. The simple answer is that the world will move further towards economic autonomy, de-coupling itself from the banks. But the tougher answer is that many people will find themselves damaged by this de-coupling and autonomy, leaving behind scars. We have been taught for countless generations to hand our money over to somebody else, for they would know what to do with it. When our money fully touches our own hands, we are lost. It’s not our fault; we’ve never been told what to do.

Not only this, but the seismic wealth inequality and moral displacement of the world means that there are vicious and harmful bodies in the water, ready to exploit us wherever they can. Just recently, Solana’s Wormhole protocol was hacked, leaving the crypto world a little shaken. Situations like this may be much, much smaller than a global economic crisis, but without centralized institutions, they were much more commonplace.

We are leaving behind a concept so widespread that it was there in ancient Rome: centralized and government minted money. The transition to something else will be tough, fraught, and uncomfortable. But ever since 2008, the world is awake to the harm that our institutions can cause us. And so, we must march forward!

One of the most common questions in the Web3 space is also one of its most fundamental: “what exactly is it?”

Is it is a type of technology? Is it a new protocol? Is it an idea?

Here, I will give my perspective on what web3 is, from a more conceptual and theoretical perspective. I will not be referring so much to the tools that encompass it, so much as I will be focusing on the ideological drivers behind it. The aim is to give people a genuine overview of what web3 means.

A New Wave of the Web

Beyond anything else, Web3 is a sociological concept. It is the idea that our online activity and behaviour should function in a way that involves no intermediaries or middlemen. It is the belief that humans deserve to congregate freely, and that they should have autonomy over all that they do digitally.

At the heart of this, is the notion of decentralization. This is because people who believe in web3 believe that centralized bodies cannot be trusted to have our best interests, and cannot be trusted to give us the autonomy we deserve. With this in mind, web3 is often viewed as the death of the platform. Projects like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft often exert their influence on the web through their centralized control of the online platforms that we use. The web3 community, however, consider this to be problematic as centralized controllers can never be trusted to care about us. This is prevalent through the consistent selling of our data, ethical scandals, and dark UX patterns.

As a result, this is why blockchain technology has become synonymous with web3– blockchains allow for decentralized online systems to exist; therefore, they are seen as the antidote to our platform overlords.

Trust and Trustlessness

The notion of trust plays a huge role in web3. The space is deeply aware of how fraught the idea of trust really is. Our current systems (digital, financial, and otherwise) are built on trust. When somebody trusts you, doors open for you. But trust can be a tricky thing to attain, especially when you are part of a marginalized group. It is no surprise that centralized loans are harder to get in the West for minorities than they are for white individuals.

Decentralized loans on the other hand…. Now, they’re much easier to get. That’s because with decentralization comes trustlessness. Blockchains do not (always) require trust, meaning that they do not judge with prejudice. This gives people a greater chance of getting a leg up in the space. As a result, this has (in some ways) created a more friendly atmosphere in the industry, where people involved in web3 are far more open to making connections and meeting new people than people in other industries are. I have seen this first hard myself– some of the best connections I made in this industry have been total strangers who I reached out to on a whim (and vice versa). With that in mind, community building is a huge factor. People in this industry believe the best way to congregate is to reach out to one another and form ecosystems without platforms, where hierarchies cannot exist as everybody has equal power.

Self-Sovereignty Above All

The core of web3 is that of self-sovereignty. People in the industry are disinterested in getting engulfed by platforms, or being judged by centralized institutions. They are focused on providing tools for freedom and flourishing. Web3 is all about allowing people to act without having to look over their shoulder at larger corporations who wish them to act in certain ways or give up certain controls. It is about making everybody an island, but building bridges between each island, so we can visit each other without losing a sense of self.

Final Words

The issue with understanding web3 is that many people begin by looking at the technology, but the technology is merely a vehicle. It is the ideological passion that is in the driver’s seat, making everything happen. To gain a greater insight into this, I recommend also checking out my article on Web2, 9/11, and digital feudalism, which goes into the history of the online world.

In recent months, there has been an influx of developers and thinkers who are on a mission to bring decentralized technology to the educational field. This is extremely exciting as the world of education is often viewed through a centralized lens, where teachers, schools, universities, and governments are in charge of how curriculums form, how exams are marked, and how degrees and certificates are distributed. To see the blockchain and web3 space tackle this is truly fascinating.

With this in mind, I have decided to write an overview of some of the philosophers of education who I find particularly interesting, and who I think might be good for people in this space to keep in mind.

John Dewey — Social & Democratic Education

John Dewey is by far the most famous philosopher on this list. He is a highly influential philosopher who has had a lasting effect on how teaching is handled in this day and age.

It would take far too long to explore all of Dewey’s ideas when it comes to education, but the one that stands out for me is how he views learning centres as having a responsibility to socially orient their pupils. In particular, one of Dewey’s core beliefs about education is that it must foster democratic activity, teaching students that they can (and must) exercise their democratic abilities. In his words: “Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous”.

Dewey believed that students should be instilled with an acute awareness of their place in the social and political landscape, and how they can use their own influence and opinions to change the world in the way they best see fit. This means that schools must work towards showing pupils how to command themselves around others, as interpersonal relationships are the bedrock of any society. We see this through how schools encourage group work, often by telling us that we will need to learn how to work as a team when we grow up.

I imagine Dewey would love the idea of an educational DAO, as these are institutions that not only encourage students to vote on decisions, but require them to vote. Within DAOs, students are given a voice. This is important as Dewey would argue that voting within an educational institution would foster students to vote more in other parts of their lives. Voting promotes individual power, which is huge for Dewey.

To further align with Dewey’s ideas on education, it may even be best for DAOs to not only teach the subjects they (and their students are interested in), but to also focus on how to successfully onboard students into such an organisation where they learn how to congregate and position themselves within a largely unstructured social environment. Remember, true DAOs have no hierarchies, and so there are no real authority figures– everybody is equal. This means DAOs may need to focus on explaining to students how they should go about communicating and interacting with others. It sounds easy in theory, but DAOs can be daunting for the simple fact that they do not have a social structure, which is very much unlike practically every other institution in the West. Usually, we can appeal to authority when we are confused, but DAOs remove that option. There is no real way around this, other than to show students that they do not need to follow the authority of anybody other than the autonomous organisation as a whole, along with their own individual beliefs and intentions.

Sanford Goldberg — Epistemology of Trust

Sanford Goldberg is a philosopher who focuses on language, mind, and epistemology (which can be loosely defined as the study of knowledge). Within a 2013 essay, Goldberg examined the problem of trust within the education system.

He examines an obvious, yet often ignored issue with the way learning works. He asks: how do we convince students to trust their teachers, whilst encouraging them to challenge their teacher’s claims?

Getting students to trust a teacher is not too hard (in a centralized system), as they can use their own academic and educational achievements as a means of proving their worth. I remember my Law of Evidence tutor introducing herself by listing off the number of PhDs she had; it may have been a little brazen, but it definitely got us to trust her.

However, if teachers are trusted to the point where they are never questioned, then we create a problem where the students mindlessly parrot their teacher’s claims, feeling unworthy of disputing or independently thinking. This can become especially problematic if those teachers hold beliefs or preconceived ideas that are harmful or simply wrong.

Goldberg focuses his essay on the education of young children, as they are often deeply dependent on their teachers. Although, this can also be a problem at the university level, as many fresh students become in awe of their tutors.

The issue raised in this essay is particularly thorny when it comes to DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), as educators can often naturally take on the role of an authority figure, either because they think their knowledge is needed within the space, or because the students themselves look to them for guidance.

Goldberg argues that the best solution for this is to guide young students into intellectual (or epistemic) autonomy by providing them with slightly tougher and tougher informational resources, with the aim of allowing them to build their own critical skills. This means that when students read and comprehend these documents, they will gain their own understanding of them, which they can use to challenge the beliefs of their teachers.

Of course, this answer is designed for centralized educational centres. So, how can we take Goldberg’s work and reconstruct it for DAO-based education? I believe the best way would be to welcome a plurality of opinions arising from teachers. It may begin by encouraging anybody who wishes to educate others to offer their knowledge to other learners, whilst also encouraging those educators to refute their own ideas, or at least point them in the direction of alternative and contradictory thoughts.

For people to know other ideas and beliefs exist, and that those can also be backed up by accredited and passionate individuals, is an extremely important thing– it helps prevent the construction of an echo chamber. I saw something similar to this actually happen in my Jurisprudence (philosophy of law) class. We had two tutors throughout the module, and neither exactly saw eye-to-eye. This meant that we were given a more well-rounded understanding of the topics that were being taught. There was also a time in my Analytic Philosophy module when our professor casually pointed us towards an essay by another professor who had written it with the aim of refuting our own tutor’s PhD.

Goldberg’s essay focuses on very young children, where it might be damaging to suggest that their teachers could be wrong, but DAOs usually have adults in them, and this issue of epistemic autonomy can be resolved by letting academic doubt enter the space.

Kiymet Selvi — Phenomenology of Education

Kıymet Selvi is a Doctor of Educational Sciences, with most of her work focusing on learning, pedagogy (teaching), and curriculum development. She has also examined the educational world from a phenomenological perspective throughout her career.

Phenomenology is a tough word to define, but it is generally considered to be the branch of philosophy focused on studying experience, and in particular the experience of being something. It is also referred to as the study of perception. It is about the subjective and inward experiences of each individual, and how each individual familiarises themselves with such experiences and perceptions.

Selvi is a major proponent of phenomenology in the educational process. Experience is arguably the beginning of all learning, as learning cannot exist without perception or experience. Everything we learn is processed through our own very subjective lens– we can never escape our own perceptions.

However, despite this, it is not exactly common to hear educational centres or systems speak about subjective experience as the beginning of any learning process. Phenomenology is often unconsidered in an educational setting.

Selvi states that “The phenomenological approach in education is very important for self-individualization and self-development” as it fosters our own desire to discover and create (and discover through creativity). It also inherently views students individually as it places their own experiences on a pedestal. It is very different from simply teaching students by parroting information to them.

Selvi notes that formal education places the institutional intentions of the educations centres at the forefront, oftentimes dismissing each student’s own desires and intentions. For a phenomenological approach to education, we would need each student to feel able to explore their own intentions. Here, you will see that like Goldberg, Selvi focuses on fostering autonomy as well.

In fact, Selvi even touches on a similar issue to Goldberg– within one of her essays, she notes that when students follow the plans of institutions, they dampen their own ability to question and explore their own ideas and opinions, as their surroundings teach them they are unimportant.

One method this issue can be reduced within a DAO is by giving students the ability to vote on what they would like within a curriculum. This gives students a voice, and allows them to better command their own educational experiences. This is not a complete solution, however, as it still focuses on the dominant ideas within a community, rather than the individual intentions of each student, but it moves the needle closer to student-guided learning than any formal education currently does.

In this sense, the best option might be for there to be many, many educational DAOs in existence, so that learners can find the ones that align with their intentions most, and then use their influence via voting power to alter and tweak the curriculum as much as they can.

Final Words

The educational arm of web3 is just starting out. It will be deeply fascinating to see how decentralized education will function in the months and years to come, and how it will influence our more formal and centralized educational institutions.

These are just a small handful of philosophers of education who are worth exploring. In reality, this branch of philosophy has a long and rich history dating back to Socrates (arguably one of the first philosophers of education). However, I believe beginning with the ideas of these three individuals discussed will give a good basis for anybody building an educational DAO.

The NFT industry is a confusing place. Practically all of the popular projects in the space blur the line between artistry and investment, leading to a market so deeply construed of speculation, that it is hard to see where the true value lies. It is both an exciting and a terrifying off-shoot fo the crypto space.

Right now, people are still trying to figure out just how revolutionary NFTs are, and where exactly they fit in our society. Are they a genius invention, a dangerous and reckless tool, or perhaps both? How are these pieces of code going to affect our social fabric?

This article is going to focus specifically on Bored Apes, the most well-known and infamous NFT project depicting some of the most detailed yet deliberately cartoonish illustrations I’ve ever laid my eyes on. In particular, I will be focusing on an upcoming milestone on the project’s most recent roadmap– the Miami Clubhouse (IRL).

Little is known about what BAYC have in mind, but the general thinking is that the organization will be opening a physical location where people can gain entry (or perhaps get special perks) with their Bored Ape NFTs. It will be a place where Bored Ape owners can congregate, break bread, and socialize.

For all intents and purposes, we can assume this is a Third Place for these people.

Understanding Third Places

A third place is commonly defined as a location where you feel a sense of belonging other than your home and your place of work. Third places generally take the form of churches, after-school clubs, university societies, gyms, and pubs.

The sociologist, Ramon Oldenburg, and behavioural scientist, Dennis Brissett, have explained that third places are so important because they provide people with a “measure of their sense of wholeness and distinctiveness”, and added they “provide opportunities for important experiences and relationships”. In other words, they satiate people’s social needs in a way other places cannot.

Sadly however, Oldenburg and Brissett noted that third places have become more and more scarce in American life. They stated that:

“The range of available arenas for social participation has narrowed to the point that for many people life has come to offer a very restrictive two-stop
model of daily existence. The office… and the home, joined by the ordeal of commuting, tend to absorb people’s time and interest.”

Over time, the third place has been eroded. The two-stop model, as they call it, has entirely taken over, with most people flitting between work and home and rarely straying to another location for long enough to call it a place of belonging.

The reasons for such a disappearance are hard to pinpoint, but I am willing to argue it is largely a symptom of economic changes. Working-class individuals are not able to take as much time to rest as they used to, as inflation keeps increasing while wages stagnate, leaving them to fill their free time up with more work. When they are finally out of work, they are left with less disposable cash than their ancestors, so they have less interest in being sociable in places like pubs or coffee shops (or even churches where donations are encouraged). I’d argue, too, that this has affected the middle-classes, as they are often also economically struggling, but in less obvious ways than the working-class.

Oldenburg and Brissett suggest that some of this erosion comes from negative media representation, where third places were often viewed as escapist tools people would frequent so they could get away from their lives. Films and TV shows often describe third places as locations where people are mischievous and unbecoming, often shirking their familial responsibilities and trying to forget their stressful work lives.

But this is an unfair representation, as third places are primarily used as a means of filling a social hole that family and work simply cannot. Most things that happen in third places are innocent, as people are there primarily for gaining more depth and reach within their social circles. They are better understood as “enabling” people to engage in work and home better, as they help to orient individuals “to make deliberate use of their society in accordance with their own purposes”, rather than a form of escapism. Essentially, they help people to frame their lives and gain perspective.

It is hard to explain what exactly makes third places so significant, as I have never actually belonged to one myself, so I cannot provide you with personal examples or anecdotes. But I do not need to belong to one to understand what sounds appealing about them. I certainly felt the urge to enter third places when I was at university, joining a handful of societies purely to make friends. However, everybody seemed stressed and awkward (myself included), and they never managed to feel like a truly connected place I could flourish within.

The BAYC Miami Clubhouse

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the upcoming clubhouse in Miami that the Bored Ape Yayct Club is building. As said before, there is very little info available right now, but we can take a strong guess that Ape owners will either be granted exclusive access or exclusive perks.

One thing that’s for certain is that this clubhouse is being designed to be a third-place designed specifically for these Bored Ape owners, built to make them feel socially comfortable. The clubhouse is in the perfect position to create a space where these NFT owners can congregate and feel a sense of wholeness and belonging. This is because, not only will the place (probably) be designed to reflect these NFTs, but the inherent exclusivity oozing from the place will appeal to the types of individuals who enjoy Bored Apes.

Now, the first official mention of the clubhouse was made on September 21st 2021, the date when the updated roadmap was released. By that time, Bored Apes had already been doing well commercially, with the cheapest Ape being priced at $238,829.00 (or 74 ETH). It is hard to say whether the announcement of the clubhouse has helped with sales, but from looking at Twitter activity, members of the BAYC all seem very excited by this. And I mean, VERY excited.

Despite the clubhouse being somewhat buried in the illustration of the roadmap, it has still managed to capture the imagination of its userbase. Arguably, it is more popular than some of BAYC’s other, more money-oriented, plans for the future.

Impoverished Social Experiences

It is not hard to understand what makes the clubhouse such an enticing prospect. People want a place where they can calmly and mutually connect with others who share common interests. There is nothing wrong with this at all. The issue, however, arises when we come to realise that this desire for the clubhouse is being fueled almost entirely by people’s already impoverished and shriveled social lives. The clubhouse is only appealing as a third place to people who do not already have their own third place. Otherwise, their social needs would mostly be satiated.

Modern living has conditioned people into limiting their own social spaces to the point where connectivity can only be justified if there is an economic factor involved. Remember, this is not some free-to-enter third place, but rather a gateway with a minimum $270,000 admission fee. Part of the appeal is not only that the place will be designed to appeal to Bored Ape owners, or even the exclusivity. The appeal also comes from how it puts the cost of these NFTs to use. It is a return on investment, but even better, the cost gives users good reason to go out of their way to congregate with others.

It gives them a pass to make friends.

If it is not clear yet, this is a deeply fraught and damning take on Western living. But it’s about to get so, so much worse.

The Upcoming Clubhouse Economy

As more details get revealed about the BAYC clubhouse in Miami, expect to see more people buying these NFTs specifically so they can enter this space. People are going to spend a minimum of six figures so they can simply call this location their own. Most people’s social landscapes are so empty and barren that they can easily justify the cost if it means they can reignite their lives. Depending on a person’s loneliness, this may even be a small price to pay for the promise it suggests.

Expect exclusive physical spaces to become the norm in the NFT world. I believe this is far from the first clubhouse we will see in the industry. Not only do physical spaces encourage people to hold onto their NFTs indefinitely, but they inspire the minds of lonely individuals who crave the connectivity we all deserve. Bear in mind, for the prices they go at, most blue-chip NFTs match luxury fashion houses, which have been shown to retain their customer base and stir attraction by offering exclusive experiences.

Final Words

The BAYC clubhouse is exciting for all the reasons that make it depressing. Realistically, nobody should need such a space like this to exist, as we should all have our own personalized third places, yet the fact it is gaining such traction is a sign the West is definitely socially deficient. Keep an eye out for how this becomes an unfortunate trendsetter in the industry, instigating other NFT projects to do the same.

In 1999, the pioneering User Experience designer Darcy DiNucci published her seminal text, Fragmented Future. Within it, she described the internet of the 90s as a “proof of concept” which was “only an embryo of the Web to come”.

She argued that while the internet of that time was a fascinating thing, it essentially acted as more of a prototype than anything else. It acted as a glimpse into the future. Back then, websites were static pages, filled predominantly with text, and containing almost zero interactive features. Some chatrooms existed, although they were limited, unregulated, and slow. E-commerce was beginning, but most people were too weary to partake. And perhaps most importantly, it was a nightmare to actually post your own content, meaning most people were stuck consuming other people’s information without ever submitting their own.

This is the Web 1.0 era– the birthplace of the modern internet. It was sluggish, dull, and digitally brutalist in its design. It was functional, and that was all it was expected to be.

Fragmented Future is also the first place where the term “Web 2.0” appears in literature. In very broad strokes, DiNucci describes Web 2.0 as the era in which the internet would truly come into its own. It would be a place where people could freely and autonomously communicate, post content, and engage with one another. Not only this, but it would be a place where technology would be at the forefront– while Web 1.0 was essentially just a way of displaying information, Web 2.0 would be intertwined with a plethora of technological advances, creating more meaningful and awe-inspiring experiences.

DiNucci was highly optimistic about the future of the internet, and she was right about a lot of her predictions. But after the Twin Towers crashed, along with the “dot com market”, two events that are more related than they seem, that level of optimism dried up in the West.

The concept of Web 2.0 survived past 2001, but that hope and positivity of a freely connected world had been extinguished. The next time the term “Web 2.0” would be used with any significance was by Tim O’Reilly, who launched an entire conference in its name in 2004. However, O’Reilly’s concept of this era featured a new concept: platforming.

While O’Reilly seemed to agree with DiNucci that connectivity should be at the forefront of the internet, the idea of freeness and autonomy had been sacrificed in exchange for ease of use. In a 2005 document, he calls the new era of the internet “The Web as Platform”. He describes it as a place where connectivity, communication, and content would all occur through third parties that would facilitate such activity. The platform was revered as the best way to onboard users, instigate engagement, and reach out to the everyday person.

O’Reilly’s vision of a Web 2.0 was one primarily focused on centralized bodies building platforms for the end-user. His document does briefly mention decentralization, and throughout it, there is an undertone of autonomy, but it is merely an undertone, as at the time he had not constructed a solid system of thought on how user-governance can be built into a global framework.

His ideas are surely still optimistic, but not in the way DiNucci’s were. The tragedies occurring in 2001 pushed the Western world to rush towards pragmatic online solutions headfirst, worrying little about how things would turn out in the years to come.

O’Reilly’s vision of the web was swiftly adopted by the world, and within just a brief few years, platforms became the dominant force on the internet. Before we knew it, the web was terraformed by the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple (known as the Big Five). Despite all being from relatively humble beginnings, these titans gained a stronghold of the internet, all under the guise of providing necessary tools for social empowerment and content creation via the all-mighty platform.

Our New Feudal Overlords

Tim O’Reilly’s internet became an architectural blueprint for the highly centralized electronic experience we are exposed to every single day. With platforms reigning supreme, the end-user finds themselves in a constant state of subjection by centralized bodies who tightly control the platforms we engage with.

Platforms became our home: we use them to write notes, make personal content, and save our own data via cloud options.

Platforms became our work: influencers, content creators, artists, investors, and marketers make their money through their online activity.

Platforms became our leisure: the virtual spaces we use to speak to friends and congregate with others are just cogs in these centralized machines.

And in many cases, our home, work, and leisure are all owned by the same corporations. Or, are at least built on their frameworks. Not only is this wildly dystopian, but it resembles a certain defunct political and economic system found in antiquity: feudalism.

Finding a solid definition of feudalism can be tough, as there are often academic debates surrounding whether it is primarily a political system, an economic model, or a social phenomenon. However, most definitions of feudalism revolve around a disproportionately imbalanced relationship between the individual and the beings that own the places they reside. It is a system where the person who owns your land often also owns your place of work, as well as the places you go for leisure. It is where landlords truly are lords.

Under a feudal society, a landlord would oftentimes own your home, your farm, the marketplaces, and even the pubs and churches you would spend time at. This is especially true in European countries. In other words, there were no reasonable means of escaping them.

In a feudal society, you had no other choice but to revolve your life around your overlord, and disobeying them or doing something forbidden by them would place your home in disrepute.

This is very much similar to how The Big Five have constructed the online world, bringing forth a type of “digital feudalism”, a term used by Danish professor and political scientist, Jakob Linaa Jensen. The term is used to describe a system where our internet activity is controlled by overlords who we must essentially obey if we wish to engage in life as much as possible.

Under digital feudalism, you may not risk losing your home, but you could risk losing your mind.

Our digital overlords have the command and control to limit or halt our ability to socialize and communicate with the world, which is a necessity for positive mental health.

In such a computerized age, socializing online is the norm, with most people doing so with both their friends and with strangers. Not only this, but online content creation is nowadays the standard for exerting yourself and showing the world who you are and what you believe in. But feudal tech lords can limit your ability to do so to a tremendous degree.

Bear in mind, platforms generally limit abusive and anti-social users (an arguably forgivable and even a good thing they can do, and one that is essentially an extension of enforcing a Hobbsian-style social contract). But these are not the only people who face their wrath. Many times, the price you must pay to engage with these platformed digital spaces is to give up your data. Sometimes this may happen by providing your real name and your phone number, and sometimes it might be more insidious, forcing you to give up heaps and heaps of personal data in exchange for entrance. Oftentimes, this does not happen through a conscious signing away of rights, but more so through covert methods taken by the platform overlords themselves, where they slyly harvest data and then sell it or use it themselves. The most famous example of this is with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a political science organization that used personal data handed by Facebook as a means of swaying political votes and poisoning the political discourse around the world.

If you want to use Facebook, and others like it, you subjugate yourself to this, whether they say so or not. It is the price you pay to set up an account (or you could say to rent out a space for your profile). Note that regardless of whether you use Facebook for work (such as your own business), to relax (by playing games on its platform), or by socializing, you must pay this price no matter what.

The All-Mightly Engagement

But it gets worse. Not only do you pay with your data, but the platform overlords of the Web 2.0 era demand something more from you: engagement.

Jakob Linaa Jensen notes “[w]hen Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook think that everything should be shared, it is because sharing is the lifeblood of the company.” All platforms of the current era live off a healthy diet of both personal data, and direct engagement from their subjects. They demand that we distribute likes, hearts, claps, duets, upvotes, reposts, retweets, and of course, create our own content.

One particularly harmful example of this is Reddit. Many subreddits (including some of the ones run directly by Reddit itself) demand users have a certain amount of “karma”, or upvotes, before they can engage in certain spaces. In other words, you must create content in some other places before you are allowed to enter others.

Platforms like TikTok encourage engagement in a very different way. They force you to begin liking content, otherwise, your feed will never become personalized, and so you will never receive the content you desire. If you do not engage with the platform, then you will never find your community, for you are at the mercy of the algorithm to show it to you. This is why more active TikTok users have more personalized feeds, where they find more people who represent themselves and who share similar experiences to them.

These new feudal lords hold the keys to your communities.

When it comes to encouraging content creation, it gets even darker. Places like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have learned how to tap into the human psyche and have found methods of encouraging us to post our own content. Everybody likes to know that others like what they’re doing. Approval is a big part of socializing. The Web 2.0 era is deeply aware of this, and so they use it as a tool to coerce us into posting our own images, videos, and texts. The likes and reactions we receive are then used to craft hierarchies within our groups, where those who have more “social proof” are viewed more favorably than others.

Sometimes, companies even provide more tools to those who are more active on their platforms. For a long time on Instagram, only verified users could post links inside their stories (the idea of “verification” is deeply problematic, but I believe it deserves its own separate discussion). Then, Instagram expanded this function to users who had 10,000+ followers. In other words, if you wanted to easily redirect people to other places online, you had to prove to the platform that you were worthy of such a feature. It is only recently that users can add their own links now regardless of their activity.

Feudalism, Privacy, and Security

As I explained earlier, the foundation of this neo-feudalist digital world was instigated by the rampant pessimism of 2001. Not only did the bursting of the dot com bubble make the internet feel barren and broken, but 9/11 had brought a stain to Western imaginativeness that the new millennium promised us.

9/11 had such a large social effect on the West, that it dampened a great many activities. One commonly discussed example is how airports became unpleasant due to increased security measures; so tight in fact they have led to a very common fear of the TSA and similar organizations.

These measures spread to the internet, too. Most famously, the Patriot Act, passed 45 days after September 11, gave the US government the special power of surveilling ordinary citizens’ online activity, including financial activities.

While the Patroit Act has always been problematic, it has always received a relatively substantial amount of support within the country. This is because surveillance became a substitute for security, which in turn made privacy a dirty word.

This ideological component of Western living seeped into the Web 2.0 era, where platforms also got involved in surveying. Some of this happened due to government pressure– there is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to social media platforms and their involvement in criminal investigations. But what I find most interesting is how this trend of government surveillance set the tone for inspiring The Big Five to do the same themselves.

The Patriot Act, and other similar laws which took place around the world around the same time set a certain rule: that spying is okay now. Many of these laws received some level of support from the public, which taught our tech overlords that they could do the same without too much backlash.

It empowered them to disempower us.

Mass spying was deemed commonplace, as people accepted that governments were going to do it regardless. And so, what does it matter if another organization does it too? It primed the public up to make the agreement to let themselves get spied on by tech companies in exchange for entering social, personal, and work spaces. This, in turn, gave platforms enough “food” and resources to continue growing their empires.

Essentially, the West’s reaction to 9/11 gave rise to our current feudal situation. It pushed us to fear the individual, and favour central bodies, and this, in turn, caused us to lose our autonomy.

Killing the Feudal Beast

In the words of Janelle Monae, from her album, Dirty Computer, “You fucked the world up now, we’ll fuck it all back down”. We may still be under the thumb of digital feudalism, but there is no saying it will always be like this. We are most certainly able to instigate change and usher in something freer.

The kernel of digital feudalism is centralization.

Faceless, centralized corporations run our platforms. The leaders of these virtual lands are so distant from us that we cannot initiate an audience no matter what. We’re left disenfranchised and used.

The answer to this nightmare is to decentralize and distribute power, clawing it away from the platform overlords and spreading it through the public. It sounds hard, but it’s entirely possible. In fact, this is what I believe Web 3.0 is all about.

Web 3.0 is the newest era of online activity, a term popularized by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood. One of the core tenets of this new movement is that it takes us away from the platformed digital world and empowers us with decentralized tools that allow us to gain more autonomy and ownership whilst still connecting, communicating, and sharing content online.

It is as much an ideology as it is a technological epoch. The new wave of the web is focused on dissolving the platform overlords and giving us user-owned networks where we can engage with one another on our own terms. It is emphatically peer-2-peer, with minimal middlemen or intermediaries.

Final Words

Instead of people creating communities within the current Web 2.0 platforms we know so well, we need to begin community-building within a digital commons, or a space that is owned by nobody. To do this, we need to take ourselves off these platforms and move our activities over to decentralized third places that are distributed so widely that they cannot be majority-owned by anybody. This is what decentralized autonomous organizations (or DAOs) are all about.

DAOs are a huge part of the blockchain community for the simple reason that they give all stakeholders a voice; something you never see on a platform like Facebook or Google. DAOs are about empowerment.

Right now, DAOs are used almost exclusively by the blockchain space, but this is merely because Web 3.0 is being born from this industry. Give it some time, and when we fully transform into the Web 3.0 age, I strongly believe DAOs will be an instrumental feature of our online activities. They are the perfect antidote to our platformed hellscape of the web we have become to accustomed to.

I’ve spent many years carving a freelance career within the blockchain space. In the beginning, I got my clients from Upwork, but eventually, I made it out of those murky waters and started getting clients via head-hunting and recommendations.

I figured I’d write a few insights I’ve picked up on while making my way through this cutting-edge landscape. These are not tips or guidelines for any new and upcoming freelancers, but more so observations on what I’ve seen in my experience.

Bull markets are a circus

I’ve been a freelance writer in this industry during several bull markets, and I’ve noticed that each one feels wild.

Every time one arrives, I find myself getting headhunted by numerous companies, and potential clients are always more willing to pay my rates without negotiating. A lot of money (and optimism) goes around during a bull market. It can be a fantastic way to propel your career and make new connections.

Working with blockchain-based companies during these times is always exciting as they always have a lot of moving parts and side-projects they are trying to launch. Plus, there is always a sense of eagerness from all parties as the threat of the bull market ending is constantly looming.

These can be stressful times, but usually, there is a LOT of money to be made here, even if you don’t directly invest in any coins and tokens.

You will be judged on your investments

One interview question I regularly get asked by clients is what I invest in (if anything). At the start of my career, I assumed this was more of a small chit-chat type of query, but as I got more experienced, I learned that this is actually a supremely important question, and your answer will determine how your clients view you.

When presented with this question, it’s best not to lie (although it is extremely reasonable to simply refuse to answer if as you’d rather keep your investments under wraps), as you could get caught out on it later on which could erode any professional trust. What I do is usually just list two or three of the coins I’m most invested in.

Tip: you will be judged for investing in stuff like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Bitcoin clones/forks. You might also get judged for investing in XRP, as many view it as an enemy of the crypto industry as it works so closely with centralized organizations and banks.

(Btw I don’t invest in any of these coins).

If you mainly invest in smaller, or lesser-known coins and tokens, then tread carefully because it can sometimes come across like you’re trying to shill them. I’ve learned this from experience myself.

Safe bets would be to say you invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero, as these are three of the most highly praised crypto projects in the field.

It’s a strange interview question, because it can oftentimes seem deceptively innocent, and yet it can be the most important question you’ll get asked during the recruitment process.

Bear markets will eat into your finances

Bear markets are tough for most crypto traders, but if your career is within this industry, then they can significantly damage your cash-flow. During bear markets, I retain fewer clients. And during dreaded “crypto winters” (or extended bear markets) I am lucky to have two clients at all.

Prepare for these times. Network your ass off, and make sure you’re saving up, because bear markets can rip a hole through your professional life.

The industry is heavily ideology-driven

The blockchain field may essentially be a cousin of FinTech, but in many ways it does not act like it. Unlike most other technological and economic fields, the blockchain sphere places a huge focus on ideological thinking.

I think this is natural, as Bitcoin was created as a direct reaction to the 2007 Financial Crisis, coming to life just one year after the atrocity. Even after all those years, the industry is still filled to the brim with figures who are driven by their own ideological ties.

You will find clients and peers who fervently support ideas such as decentralization, privacy, anti-authoritarianism, economic equality, socialism, libertarianism (so much libertarianism…), and occasionally anarchism. There are also a lot of people who get into heated debates trying to argue what “Satoshi’s true vision” is, and what types of cryptographic principles are most robust.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it certainly makes the industry passionate. But it can make for strange business relationships. I’ve worked with people before who agree with things that are very different from where my moral and ideological compass lies, and sometimes that can be tough. This is especially the case when I’m given free rein to pick and choose the subjects I write about. It makes some client-freelancer relations fraught and confusing.

This industry moves at a far slower pace than it thinks it does

Despite this being a relatively new and extremely experimental industry, its progress still comes at a slow pace. This is for three reasons:

1. Sometimes businesses need to wait for the technology to catch up with their ideas. Some clients and companies have genius ideas, which are certainly theoretically possible, but that have never been done before. This means they need to spend a lot of time researching and buildings the tools they are planning to use.

2. Ideological differences cause in-fighting. Just look at the Ethereum team. Of its many, many, co-founders, Vitalik is only one from the original team who stayed. The rest left, with some even starting their own rival blockchains. Ethereum’s work environment is clearly an odd place, as even to this day there are disputes at its top level of developers. This significantly slows down progress.

3. Bear markets cause apathy, and lead to funds drying up. Founders and creators get dissolutioned during bear markets, and many slow down on their work or even call it quits. And with the lack of money circulating in the field during those time, it makes external funding as hard as getting blood from a stone.

If you’re reliable, then you can make it here

If I had to guess, I’d say the blockchain industry is filled with an equal amount of highly professional, and highly unprofessional people. This is an industry that used to heavily play into the idea that it was an alternative to the old, stuffy, and bureaucratic ways of traditional finance. And while this has helped it to appeal to a younger and more economically skeptical demographic, it has also caused it to attract a lot of people who have a low work ethic.

I learned this quickly when I found out that many clients favored working with me largely because I could hit my deadlines. Don’t get me wrong, they liked my writing style, but a good few clients were impressed with the simple fact that I did my work on time and regularly communicated with them. It’s a small thing, but in this industry, it's also a rare thing.

Final words

Considering the youth of the blockchain sphere, there is still a ton of room for newcomers to build a career here, even if you don’t have programming or development experience. Non-technical jobs (such as the ones I take on) will always be in demand.

This is an unusual industry, but it is a fascinating and genuinely fun one to be in. I constantly look forward to seeing what’s going to come of it in the years to follow.

The crypto landscape is filled with a myriad of experimental, or at least fringe, economic concepts. There are many projects that employ deflationary protocols, issue elastic supply tokens that change their circulation to reflect their demand, and offer non-collateralized loans lasting for mere seconds.

This is not inherently a problem. In fact, it is a strength of the industry. The fact such ideas exist, and are given breathing-room to develop, is why blockchain technology is at the bleeding edge of FinTech. But these ideas do require some examination. It goes without saying ideas like the ones listed go against standard economic practices (the likes of which are taught at universities and repeated by governments on a consistent basis).

This is not to say these are bad ideas, but considering how they go against the grain, it is worth critically analyzing these ideas, and exploring why they are so revolutionary, and what their pitfalls may be.

Now, I will not be examing either the merits or the pitfalls of any specific economic practices found in the crypto industry. I, unfortunately, do not have the knowledge to do so. What I will be doing instead, is answering one specific question:

Is it ethical to develop crypto projects that utilize experimental or unusual economic ideas?

This might seem like an odd question, so I’ll break it down.

The reason I have framed this as a moral question is because the crypto industry is made up of a significant amount of working-class and low-economic investors. This is especially true in the UK where a huge quantity of retail investors have a yearly income of below £20,000.

All financial activity is moral activity, as money is a survival tool. This is especially the case for low-economic individuals who do not have the privilage of frivolous spending.

The financial status of investors is significant because, if a project is utilizing an experimental economic practice, then there might be a higher chance of failure. It is hard to examine just how likely a project is of failing, and whether such failure would truly arise from its experimental features, but I believe it is fair to say the act of being experimental does increase its chances of falling apart.

For instance, Ethereum has recently set its deflationary protocols in motion. We have never seen such a big currency become deflationary before, and so we have no true statistics of studies on how deflation will affect the nature of the coin on a sociological level. The general theory is that Ethereum will continue to rise in price as it is now about to get more and more scarce. This might be true, and this might happen, but realistically we do not know because it is experimental, and so we have no concrete data to rely on for this.

Deflation is usually avoided by governments and central banks as it is often associated with recessions. It goes without saying that recessions lead to deaths; a study by the Bank of International Settlements found a correlation between mortality rates and countries in recessions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mortality rates have also been linked to other recessions in the past.

You might read this and think “no cryptocurrency is widespread enough to trigger a recession by itself”. And you would be right… for now.

In previous years, the crypto industry was its own self-contained, niche, geeky underbelly of FinTech. It was a community of innovative developers and ambitious investors. But that changed this year, when El Salvador elevated Bitcoin to legal tender status. This is the first time a cryptocurrency has been given the same rights and footing as a fiat currency.

What if the same happened with Ethereum? Panama hinted at the possibility. If a country was to adopt Ethereum, would it be instigating a future recession? The realistic answer is nobody knows, because cryptocurrencies do not function in the same way as fiat does, so we have no data on the matter. The standard economic canon suggests this is the case, as economists are often trained to scorn and fear deflation.

I do not have the economic skill-set to examine the likelihood of this outcome. My point, more so, is that economic practices of cryptocurrency projects have real-world consequences, and so they should be examined from a moralistic perspective.

My current discussion appears to be arguing that experimental economic practices in crypto are not ethical, as they can lead to disaster. But this is not exactly my position.

Bear in mind, even standard and highly conservative economic practices can lead to downsides. For instance, a steady upward trend of inflation is aimed for by most countries, and yet, this also causes harm to low economic individuals, as their cost of living rises while their wages stagnate.

In other words, it is not that common economic practices are good, it is that we have no idea whether experimental practices are better or worse (and they could be much much worse).

When you are playing with people’s money, you need to be extremely careful. Especially when people are living cheque-to-cheque.

So to answer the question I posed, I would say: experimental economic practices are not exactly unethical, but the severity of harm incurred by these practices increases when low-economic individuals are exposed to them, as they need all their money for survival.

Some might read this and say:

If this is the case, then why don’t low-income people just avoid experimental crypto projects?

This is the wrong question to ask. This is no different than asking “why do poor people gamble?” I hope my audience notices immediately that this is an offensive question to ask, but for the sake of humoring everybody, I will briefly examine it.

People living cheque-to-cheque, hand-to-mouth, or on the breadline are in a constant state of stress. They can never relax. They can never rest. They are constantly fighting against hunger, cold, and homelessness. If they have children, they are also fighting for their child’s individual flourishing. So, if somebody in these conditions comes across the possibility of winning large quantities of money, most will be at least a little enticed, and many will partake. Because, if they win, they can finally live comfortably. If they win, they can finally rest. It does not matter what the odds are, and whether it is clear that success is a slim chance, poverty is torture, and so people will do anything to escape it, including gamble.

So no, we cannot expect low-economic individuals to simply opt-out of experimental crypto projects. We cannot expect them to opt-out of any investment options, just like we cannot expect anybody to opt out.

Some people dislike comparing investing to gambling, and I can almost understand why. To some extent, research helps with investing, more so than some forms of gambling such as roulette and slot machines. But make no mistake, research can help with gambling, too– serious gamblers who engage in sports bets and horse racing usually conduct heavy research. Poker players spend a great deal of time researching their opponents and studying their own expressions and playstyles.

Just as the highly knowledgable and well-informed sports gambler can lose their bet, so can the highly knowledgable and well-informed investor. This is because, while research is useful, life throws an indeterminate number of curveballs.

Nonetheless, knowledge is still power. Knowledge still increases the chances of success. It is still preferable to come to the trading floor armed with information and data, rather than with nothing. This is why technical analysis exists.

Speaking of technical analysis, there is a lot of debate surrounding whether it actually works. The general consensus is that TA is not so much a successful predictive framework, but more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It works only because investors are all taught to treat certain signs in the same way. In this sense, you could call it a type of language, where all traders communicate globally via market data, with such data only being intelligible so long as everybody in the market agrees it is intelligible.

As a sidenote, this is why cryptocurrency technical analysis is still frowned upon. Crypto has a disproportionately high number of retail traders, and this means not everybody who enters the market speaks the same language as professional traders, so the charts cannot be read with the same precision as traditional fields like stocks and bonds.

Limited success with technical analysis means traders have less knowledge to arm themselves with. If they are investing in experimental projects, then they have even less knowledge, as there will be no economic textbooks they can dip into to explain the nature of the scenario.

Should experimentation be avoided in economics?

It certainly looks like that’s my argument. However, this is not what I believe. I am economically open-minded, and I am a crypto enthusiast, so I am very much for to pushing financial boundaries.

What I am arguing, more so, is that projects that use experimental practices should handle their activity with care, as the people getting involved will have less information to aid them than with other projects, and a large quantity of those people will fall within a low economic bracket, meaning their investments are more serious on a moral level as they can lead to greater risk of harm.

Should we limit experiments to wealthier people?

That would solve one problem, certainly! But it raises another. The idea of locking experiments away, only to be used by wealthy people, goes against the ethos behind the crypto industry. Cryptocurrency has always been about giving the masses the ability to be their own financial custodians. It is about providing widespread autonomy.

That means we cannot discourage low-income people from engaging in any aspect of this technology, because this technology is built by them, and for them.

Plus, it is impossible to lock people away from investing in crypto. It is decentralized and (largely) ungovernable. So this is not even a theoretical solution.

How do we look after low-economic individuals when they invest in experimental crypto projects?

Now, this is the right question to ask!

Low-economic people will always engage with crypto, and that should not be a problem. We just need to figure out how we should care for them (as an industry).

Here, I am going to take a deontological position, or a position focused on the notion of duty and obligation.

I believe it is the duty of crypto developers to research what they are making, and if they come to the conclusion that it is experimental (meaning it goes against standard economic ideas), then they must inform their potential users of this as directly, explicitly, and emphatically as they can.

This is also known as informed consent, and it is at the heart of medical ethics regarding human experiments. When doctors and academics experiment on human subjects, they are duty-bound to offer as much information to the subjects as possible before they consent to the experiments at hand.

It is an extension of the ancient legal principle Volenti non fit injuria, meaning, “to a willing person, no injury is incurred”.

If somebody is informed of what could happen to them, and it is explained in fair and reasonable means, then it significantly reduces the chances of that person being exploited.

The reason doctors are duty-bound to seeking informed consent, and why I believe crypto developers should seek it, too, is that humans should not be used as a means to an end, as they have intrinsic value, and so they should be respected as their own autonomous selves, outside of any gains or successes that may come from these experiments.

It does not matter whether the experiments can help cure cancer, if you do not get informed consent from your subjects, then what you are doing is unethical, as it treats one person as having diminished value to others.

This is known as the categorical imperative, and it was created by the philosopher and ethicist Immanuel Kant. In simplistic terms, it is the idea that you should only act in a way that you think would be permissible if everybody acted similarly.

(there is a lot more to it than that, but for the purposes of this discussion, a minimalist definition will be sufficient).

In other words, you should treat everybody how you would want to be treated. Just because something is helping many people, if one person is being hurt by it, then it is not morally permissible. In the words of the Preacher Soloman Burke, “none of us are free, if one of us is chained”.

It might seem odd to compare a medical experiment with an economic experiment, but the reason I do so is because they can both incur harm, and that harm can be significantly mitigated by being open and honest with participants.

The information presented must be done so in a fair and reasonable way

Somebody can only consent to something if they truly understand what is being asked of them. This is the crux of how informed consent works. This means, if you’re running a medical experiment on somebody who is illiterate, you cannot attain consent by presenting written documents.

Some people think this is the only complication that comes with informed consent, but this is a mistake. Even if you have a literate and highly educated person, if you explain something in terminology and vocabulary they are not used to, then they cannot give informed consent either.

Additionally, if you mislead the participants of an experiment and try to present an argument that side-effects are actually positives, then you are presenting a flawed notion of the situation, and therefore informed consent still cannot be attained.

For instance, if you are running a medical experiment that has a side-effect of participants possibly growing an extra ear on their arm, you cannot present this finding to them by saying “as a side-effect, you may gain better hearing”.

This might sound like a weird scenario to build, but something similar happens quite regularly in the blockchain industry. Without naming names, there are some projects that use their experimental features as a positive, exploiting side-effects as marketing strategies.

You need to be direct and open about the potential for harm. This is the only way to ethically deploy experimental features into the crypto industry. People need to know the risks, and they need those risks to be conveyed directly as risks, not as a marketing trick or an incentive.

Final Words

It’s funny. I actually love experimental crypto projects. It was this type of cutting-edge energy that drew me to the industry in the first place, and it is this energy that keeps me here. But the reality is that I only like experimentation when I know I’m entering an experiment. I do not enjoy entering a seemingly sound project, only to find they are using some unorthodox and highly unusual practices.

I also don’t like when a project tries to sell itself under the guise of experimentation. Experimentation is great, but experimentation is risky, and risks should be presented as matters of fact, not as adverts. A project should have its own merits, lying outside this.

I am excited to see how the crypto industry grows, and I’m also excited to see how its experiments seep into the traditional financial world. I just hope, along the way, developers and teams understand the burden and duty they have to be as informative as possible.

The crypto industry is in a strange phase right now. For the past five years, small communities have arisen with the clear desire to push, shill, and outwardly support their favourite crypto projects as hard as they possibly can. People constantly try to pit different coins against each other, hoping that rivals to their favourite ones will eventually wither and die. For instance, not a day goes by without somebody discussing what will be the ultimate Ethereum killer, or what will finally topple Bitcoin.

This line of thinking might feel helpful at the time, but ultimately this causes more harm than good. There is nothing wrong with wanting to support an idea that you believe in, but when your support manifests in battling against other (very similar) ideas, that is nothing more than tribalism, plain and simple.

And it tears the community apart.

What exactly is tribalism?

“Tribalism” is a tough word to navigate, particularly because of its origin. As the Social Scientist Archie Mafeje notes, the word itself was largely used as a “catch-all” term that European anthropologists used to describe any society located within Africa. While the word itself might not automatically be derogatory, the fact that White researchers were so trigger-happy with its usage when studying African communities means that it can be hard to locate a proper understanding of the word.

A common definition of a “tribe” is “any group of people which is distinguished, by its members and by others, on the basis of cultural-regional criteria” (provided by Canadian Anthropologist Philip Gulliver). Although, when we usually speak about “tribalism” nowadays we are not speaking about physical tribes.

The term “tribalism” is mostly used to describe a collective of people who find themselves bound by a concept that they have a strong, positive, emotive response to.

Marshall D. Sahlins describes “tribalism” as “consisting of segmentary lineage (kinship binding tribe members together), social structure (tribe members’ perceived sense of unison), sense of community (tribe members’ ability to harmonically coexist), and defense of the tribe (tribe members’ emotionally charged enmity toward opposing tribes).”

Here, we have a criteria we can work with. Tribalism consists of:

1. Segmentary lineage

2. Social structure

3. Sense of community

4. defense of a tribe

Let’s analyse these ideas.

What is segmentary lineage?

This is where groups of people are held together by shared values. The term is usually applied to small units of people, specifically families. When Sahlins used this term, they were referring to people who had a blood relationship between each other, but we can interpret it differently. Harry A. Taute and Jeremy Sierra note that segmentary lineage can exist outside of blood bonds, being substituted by other forms of generations, or where things are referred to as being family members. As an example, they note that:

“[M]arketers may discern segmentary lineage in the Apple brand as users of Apple II, Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and more recently the iPad. In the Latin or postmodern view, this dimension may capture the linking value of the brand, the common bond members feel beyond the use of the product”.

Looking to cryptocurrency brands, segmentary lineage arises from developers providing progress reports and roadmaps. Followers of a project can use roadmaps as a means of tracking how early they are when it comes to the success of a project, with the roadmap playing an active role in binding followers by showing them what stage of the project they are at and where the project is aiming towards.

Take Ethereum’s roadmap for example. The developers chose to give their milestones these grandiose and enigmatic names: Olympia, Byzantium, Serenity, etc.

Tezos does this with their roadmap: Athens, Babylon, Carthage, Delphi, Edo, Florence…

They are building a legacy, and it is helping to form bonds with their users.

Segmentary lineage can also arise from any other form of technological or conceptual change. Ethereum’s switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake is a huge technological change that has ignited its fanbase to the point of pandemonia.

Bitcoin has its own example of this, although it was less coordinated. Bitcoin miners may have a segmentary lineage based on the type of technology they use to mine. The change from CPU mining to ASIC mining is a huge technological shift that has bound its community in physicality.

What is a social structure?

This is the connectivity that people feel within a collective. It is very similar to a sense of community (discussed below), but there is more emphasis on a supposed hierarchy or construction of the social environment.

The crypto and blockchain world definitely has a distinct social structure. Developers and architects take the helm, with fans often eager to learn more about these people and defend them online if they feel they are being attacked. For instance, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, is revered as the model of a perfect crypto developer. An even more fascinating example would be how people view the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, with many crypto fans consistently arguing and defending what “Satoshi’s true vision” is.

There are other figures in the blockchain community who seem to have some perceived authority. Miners, validators, and node runners are seen favourably due to their actions in maintaining a community’s blockchain.

Retail investors who have sunk large quantities of money into a specific blockchain also appear to have some significance within the social structure (so long as they are not institutional investors, as centralized institutions are ideologically opposed to decentralization and most cryptocurrency projects).

What is a sense of community?

This is where supporters of a specific idea find themselves sharing similar characteristics, encouraging them to unify and communicate.

This is actually a huge part of contemporary marketing. “Community Marketing” (which is where a company fosters and develops a relationship with its customers in a way that encourages those customers to communicate amongst themselves) has been found to significantly help spread the word for a business and increase revenue.

This is why even the smallest and newest cryptocurrency projects will urge you to join their Telegram and their Discord. They want to bring you into the fold, and they want a sense of belonging to emerge within you.

Let me add, there is nothing inherently wrong with such a feeling. Communities are helpful for our well-being. A paper in the Journal of Community Psychology found that “quality of life is [positively] affected by sense of community”.

This sense of community is also strengthened by the fact that practically all members of that community will not only share the same ideas, but their shared values will be also be enshrined in finance, as they will have put money into their respective projects. This means that not only do they feel a sense of belonging through the sharing of thoughts but also through the sharing of successes and losses.

What is a “defense of a tribe”?

This is described as:

“[W]hen in competition for resources or under threat, there is a tribal massing effect, where tribal members will band together to oppose a stronger tribe or to take advantage of another weaker tribe”.

In the crypto sphere, this is where one collective of people constantly pit their project against other projects that serve a similar purpose, automatically viewing them as rivals. It is seen constantly with blockchain ecosystem projects such as Cardano, Polkadot, and Polygon fans consistently fighting between each other.

Why is any of this a problem?

You might be reading this and wondering what exactly the problem is with this type of tribalism. After all, what’s so bad about having an active community that supports the same project as you? It helps the project grow, and it improves member’s chances of making more profits on their earnings.

The issue, unfortunately, arises when looking at the crypto industry as a whole. This form of tribalism is such a successful means of building an active fanbase that many projects try their best to foster it, having little regard for their supposed rivals. It makes for a lack of overall care. It causes people to no longer celebrate the successes within the market– unless they directly affect their own project.

It is essentially turning the people against themselves.

(This is not to say there aren’t people who invest in multiple coins and tokens that are perceived as rivals to each other, but it would be fair to argue that even these people have one project they might prefer over another).

This is not so much of an issue currently, as the cryptocurrency industry is still relatively new, and most projects have not been around for a while, but if something isn’t done, it will get worse.

As some projects grow in age and build larger fanbases with more people investing significant sums of money, these communities will get more and more rabid. This is especially worrying as we are entering a time when the wealth gap has grown tremendously, meaning that more people are hoping that crypto will help lift them out of poverty.

It makes sense that the people associated with a failing coin will envy or feel bitter towards another that is performing well.

Interoperability– the enemy of tribalism

Enter interoperability: a simple, yet highly admirable idea within the industry.

Interoperability is the concept of separate blockchains communicating with one another. It is something that crypto fans have been speaking about for as long as I can remember, and for good reason, as this is the true antidote to tribalism.

The problem with the current makeup of the crypto world is that every blockchain stays internal, constantly locked away from other blockchains. This is because most current-day blockchains are built as stand-alone systems that operate within themselves.

However, interoperable blockchains are coming into existence, such as Polkadot, Cosmos, and ICON. These are networks that have cross-chain capabilities, meaning that people can transfer their assets through them with ease.

This a direct strike against tribalism because it breaks apart echo chambers and stops projects from seeming like walled gardens, where only projects on that blockchain can communicate and function with each other.

Don’t get me wrong, these projects also have their own tribalistic fanbases, but my prediction is that these communities will stop seeming as rabid once it becomes commonplace for blockchains to open up and communicate.

Final Words

We need interoperability sooner, rather than later. This is the one idea within the blockchain world that has the ability to truly unite everybody within it. The ability for blockchains to connect between each other will change the nature of each individual community, and will prevent the industry from fracturing.