If you haven’t yet read Part One, I recommend starting there for the discussion of how platforms came to sit upstream of identity—how technical systems inherited institutional power without ever being treated as institutions.

Part Two turns to the consequences—and the possibilities that follow. When identity is abstracted, automated, and enforced through procedures at scale, failure no longer looks like error or intent; it takes the form of enforcement without recourse. This is not an argument against technology itself. Rather, this section traces how technical control outpaces social governance, and how rethinking identity as relational, contextual, and textured offers a path beyond abstraction—toward forms of coordination that preserve scale without erasing legitimacy.

Technological Change without Social Innovation

Much of the tension shaping public life right now doesn’t stem from technology itself, but from the growing gap between what our systems can do and the social structures meant to govern them. In recent years, digital infrastructures have taken on roles that were once clearly institutional: deciding who can access work, credit, platforms, services, or visibility; shaping reputations; mediating participation in economic and civic life. These systems operate at speed and scale, yet the norms, safeguards, and forms of accountability around them remain fragmented, reactive, or ill-defined. What we experience instead is a persistent sense of mismatch—of living inside mechanisms that affect us deeply, but are difficult to contest, understand, or meaningfully shape.

This is the context in which the following insight becomes less a warning than a diagnosis: “technological change can generate distortions when not accompanied by social innovation, so a technologically-changing society has a standing obligation to reexamine and reinvent its social institutions.” When new capabilities emerge without corresponding shifts in how societies organize trust, responsibility, and legitimacy, the result is not neutrality but drift. Power doesn’t disappear; it relocates—often into opaque systems that inherit political and economic influence without inheriting the obligations traditionally associated with it. The question, then, is not whether technology should advance, but whether our social institutions are evolving quickly enough to meet it. The discussion that follows takes social identity as one such fault line: a domain where technical progress has raced ahead, while the social frameworks needed to govern it remain unresolved.

Social Identity, With Texture — Along Different Edges

What struck me most about RadicalxChange’s framing of decentralized social identity in this article wasn’t the technical specifics, but their approach to identity as inherently social, relational, and political. Traditional views treat identity as a static object, typically controlled by governments or corporations. In contrast, the article emphasizes identity as fluid and context-dependent, shaped through interactions within communities and relationships.

This fluid conception of identity directly impacts how we understand data privacy and ownership, highlighting the need for systems that reflect these relational dynamics. Individualist approaches, emphasizing personal data rights and sovereignty—such as privacy-focused frameworks like GDPR or property-based blockchain models—face significant paradoxes. These approaches struggle to define clearly what constitutes “personal data,” encounter issues around unilateral bargaining power against data-rich AI platforms, and raise doubts about whether individual data revocation meaningfully enhances privacy. Moreover, the article argues that the notion of data being entirely private may itself be somewhat meaningless. Since data is inherently relational—created through interactions between individuals and platforms—complete privacy is rarely achievable or practically valuable.

The real challenge lies not in isolating data entirely, but in managing how and when it is shared within appropriate contexts. Part 3 suggests a compelling middle ground, advocating a system where data sovereignty resides with democratically accountable communities defined by productive interactions or social relationships. Such a system recognizes that data is inherently relational—shared, context-dependent, and most valuable when managed collectively within meaningful communities rather than isolated individuals. Recognizing data’s inherently relational nature invites us to consider identity not just as data points but as layered, contextual, and richly interconnected. This nuanced approach could balance privacy, autonomy, and effective collective governance.

The concept of adding “texture” or layers to our understanding of identity introduces other transformative possibilities by enabling more accurate and granular representation of social interactions. Instead of treating identity data as either fully public or entirely private, adding texture allows for nuanced distinctions about who can access certain information, under what conditions, and within which contexts. This granularity reflects how real-world social relationships function, where trust and information-sharing vary depending on circumstances and participants. With these nuanced representations, social identity systems could support authentic democratic participation within diverse contexts—such as corporate governance, environmental advocacy, or community-driven projects—where traditional centralized approaches have struggled. Over time, this could fundamentally reshape democratic governance by extending legitimacy and accountability to a wider array of institutions beyond the traditional nation-state framework

This textured approach also lays the groundwork for “new organizational structures that blend democratic governance typically associated with nation-states with the dynamic, entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism”. One example is the notion of Quadratic Finance, a mechanism designed to fund public goods based on community support rather than pure financial influence. The core principle of Quadratic Finance is that matching funds from a central pool—provided by governments, philanthropists, or other institutions—increase disproportionately with the number of individual contributors, rather than simply matching the total amount contributed. In other words, many smaller contributions from diverse participants collectively receive more significant matching funds compared to fewer, larger contributions from a limited number of donors. This approach is significant because it promotes broader participation and reduces the influence of wealthy individuals or entities, ensuring funding decisions better reflect the true preferences and needs of the community rather than the interests of a few. Effective implementation requires a robust, nuanced social identity system to prevent manipulation, accurately reflect genuine cooperation among participants, capture subtle distinctions in social ties and degrees of collaboration, and ensure the integrity of the funding process.

The Missing Social Layer

This gap between technological capacity and social innovation has already produced material harm where identity has been turned into an administrative abstraction. In the United States, the post-pandemic “unwinding” of Medicaid between 2023 and 2025 relied heavily on automated eligibility and redetermination systems. Millions lost health coverage not because they were newly ineligible, but because identity checks failed to reconcile addresses, paperwork, or database records at scale. Procedural flags were treated as authoritative, while the social realities they erased—housing instability, language barriers, caregiving obligations—had no standing within the system. When machine-readable identity signals broke, access to care disappeared with them.

A more extreme version of this logic has played out in India through the Aadhaar biometric identity system. As Aadhaar was made mandatory for access to food rations, pensions, and welfare benefits, biometric authentication failures—unreadable fingerprints, connectivity issues, database mismatches—led to documented cases of exclusion, including starvation deaths. Here, identity was reduced to successful biometric recognition, overriding local knowledge, community verification, and human discretion. In both cases, the technology performed as designed: it processed identity efficiently and at scale. What failed to scale alongside it were the social institutions required to absorb error. This was not simply a failure of automation, but of abstraction—identity became legible to systems built to decide quickly, while becoming increasingly illegible to the people subject to those decisions, stripped of context and the ability to contest outcomes.

Seen this way, failures of identity infrastructure are not isolated administrative errors but symptoms of a deeper structural problem. Reimagining social identity opens the door to reimagining the political economy. Traditional monetary systems and linear pricing mechanisms abstract away crucial social relationships, treating economic interactions as purely transactional and isolated from context. A textured social identity framework challenges this abstraction by reintroducing relational, non-linear dimensions into economic life—precisely where existing institutions have struggled to govern complexity at scale.

Building on the concept of the “Future of Money” and the data economy themes I’ve explored in previous articles, social identity offers a way to integrate social dynamics directly into the core of economic systems. In contexts involving public goods and collective action—which constitute a significant portion of modern economic life—effective governance must reflect cooperative structures, shared exposure, and community-driven preferences. Without corresponding social innovation, technological advances merely accelerate existing failures of recognition and coordination; with it, they open the possibility of a more resilient and legitimate political economy.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

It was originally published on Substack.

Decentralized Identity Without the Hype

In my last article, I explored the hidden cost of “free” social media and how blockchain might offer an alternative—one where users could reclaim value by monetizing the data they currently give away for free. But the premise came with a caveat: the system only shifts if enough people opt in. A few users asserting ownership over their data won’t change the status quo. For any meaningful transformation, collective action is required—millions of users recognizing not only the value of their data but also their power in numbers.

This article was sparked by a conversation I had with someone from our blockchain accelerators group at work. We were discussing similar themes around data ownership, but in a slightly different context: digital identity. And that got me thinking: In a world where platforms hold the keys to our digital selves—our logins, our credentials, our reputations—what does it actually mean to own your identity, and why is that a question we should take seriously, in a space where so many concepts sound important but fade into buzzwords?

As you may have gathered from the articles I’ve written so far, my interest in blockchain isn’t rooted purely in the technology itself or in hyped-up products that promise “value” for the sake of marketability. Rather, my interest lies in the original ethos that the technology promises to make tangible—and in the underlying question of how digital infrastructure shapes power: how systems are designed, who they serve, and whether it’s possible to build ones that reflect a more thoughtful balance between individual autonomy and collective structure.

The idea of a decentralized or Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) initially struck me as yet another buzzword in a space full of them. Even as I’ve explored this concept more deeply through writing these articles, I’ve found that while certain aspects of decentralized identity are genuinely thought-provoking, they have not fully persuaded me.

Part One walks through the mechanics of decentralized identity and why it appeals to so many advocates. Part Two reflects my own attempt to assess whether those ideas hold up beyond the conceptual level—whether they meaningfully alter the balance of power, or whether they ultimately repackage familiar dynamics in new language, adding yet another layer of abstraction to an already crowded digital landscape.

Technological Concept

After reading dozens of pieces on the topic, one series finally helped the concept and its implications really click for me. It was a three-part blog post from the RadicalxChange Foundation, published back in 2019—a time when many of these ideas were still early and raw (see the RadicalxChange series: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.) I hadn’t heard of the foundation before stumbling across the article, but their framing was unusually clear and ambitious in scope. RadicalxChange is a civic innovation nonprofit that explores how emerging technologies can enable more democratic, equitable societies. Their work often sits at the intersection of tech, political theory, and institutional design, and this series on decentralized social identity reflects that interdisciplinary spirit.

Before diving into the broader implications, it’s worth pausing on how they actually define the concept at a technical level. In practice, the RadicalxChange vision of decentralized identity works like this: Instead of logging into platforms via a central authority like Google or Facebook, individuals hold their own digital credentials—similar to digital ID cards—that are issued by a range of sources, such as schools, employers, or community groups. Verification happens peer-to-peer, rather than through a central gatekeeper. These credentials live in a secure digital wallet, most likely in an app on the user’s smartphone, functioning much like Apple Wallet or Google Pay but for identity. The user has full control over which credentials to store, how to organize them, and which ones to reveal in any given interaction. You might show proof of membership without sharing your name, or verify your age without revealing your birthdate.

This model represents a shift from a one-to-many architecture—where a few IdPs manage access for millions—to a many-to-many network. In this setup, users manage relationships with many different credential issuers—individuals, institutions, or communities—each of whom can verify a specific aspect of their identity. These credentials are portable and reusable, held by the individual and shared selectively depending on the context. To make this possible, the system relies on what is essentially a universal identity wallet—an application that stores and organizes credentials securely on the user’s device. All credential issuers, from institutions to peer groups, can become compatible with this system by following shared technical standards for credential formats and verification protocols, making the wallet interoperable across a wide range of services and communities. This concept is outlined in Part Two, where the authors describe a user interface that brings together credentials from diverse sources, allowing individuals to manage them privately without central coordination. Importantly, the architecture avoids funneling everything through a single identity hub or namespace. The ultimate ambition, as suggested in Part Three, is for this universal wallet system to transcend national boundaries altogether. While ambitious, the vision is a globally interoperable infrastructure for identity—one that could underpin new forms of digital citizenship and democratic coordination beyond the limits of the nation-state. Instead, identity is treated as distributed, emergent, and responsive to the specific social setting in which it’s used.

This setup removes the need for traditional Identity Providers (IdPs)—centralized services that currently dominate the login layer of the internet. IdPs not only determine who you are in digital spaces, they also collect and monetize your activity, creating lock-in and surveillance risks. They track user behaviors, preferences, and interactions—data that is often sold to advertisers or used to create targeted profiles. And once these systems accumulate large stores of behavioral data, users become functionally ‘trapped’—switching services means losing access and convenience. It’s the same dynamic I explored in my last article: our data, constantly mined and monetized by platforms, becomes the product we no longer control.

Zero Knowledge Proofs

Although the RadicalxChange series doesn’t explicitly mention zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), it’s worth briefly touching on how this cryptographic technique could enhance the kind of selective disclosure described in their vision. For instance, being able to prove that you’re of legal drinking age without revealing your actual birthdate—or confirming membership in a group without disclosing your name—are both use cases that ZKPs make technically feasible.

As explained in this article by Mina Protocol, zero-knowledge proofs allow users to verify the truth of a statement without revealing the underlying data. The mechanism relies on cryptographic algorithms that let a ‘prover’ demonstrate to a ‘verifier’ that they know certain information (like their birthdate or income bracket) without ever exposing the data itself. This is achieved through math-intensive commitments and challenge-response interactions that confirm truth without transfer. This approach ensures that “only the proof is shared, not the underlying data itself,” allowing individuals to verify key aspects of their identity while maintaining full control over their private information.

This opens up a wide range of practical uses for identity: someone could prove they’re over 18 without revealing their date of birth, show they live in a particular voting district without disclosing their full address, or confirm their income level for benefits without submitting bank statements. In the context of a universal identity wallet, ZKPs could radically enhance user control while minimizing the data footprint shared across services—allowing people to prove enough, but never too much.

The Parallel Between Identity Providers and Nation-States

Earlier, we discussed how the ultimate goal of decentralized identity systems is to transcend the limits of nation-states altogether. In this context, however, we could note that traditional Identity Providers (IdPs) themselves function similarly to nation-states, with the power to completely shape users’ digital identities, limit their access, and even erase their existence. Like Natalie Smolenski notes in her article “A New Paradigm for Sovereignty on the High Seas: “web-based applications like Google, Facebook, and others are very similar to nation-states in this regard, only with the added sovereign power of completely constituting the identities of users, presetting their capabilities within the application, and even erasing their existence without recourse if they choose…They are accountable to their users insofar as without them their own existence is precarious, so they seek to please them; however, the legal terms of service agreements users agree to, and which are enforceable by the nation-state, grant users very few rights.” These platforms have become essential to modern life—acting as the infrastructure, “the seas, roads, buildings, schools, and libraries”, within which we interact, work, and express ourselves. However, users without access or the ability to control their data are left subject to the whims of whatever system they happen to fall under.

These risks have also been well-documented by critiques like this overview from Stanford’s Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy, which highlights how current identity infrastructures concentrate power and undermine both privacy and democratic participation. When a handful of companies or governments control access to identity, they gain disproportionate influence over who can participate in civic, economic, and political life. Centralized identity systems can inadvertently (or deliberately) exclude vulnerable groups, silence dissenting voices, and entrench inequality.

A clear example of this is India’s Aadhaar system—the world’s largest biometric ID program—which has drawn sustained criticism for its execution. While Aadhaar was intended to streamline access to services, it has also led to the exclusion of individuals from essential welfare programs due to authentication failures and bureaucratic mismanagement. Privacy and surveillance concerns have also been raised about the central database’s vulnerability and potential misuse. As reported by The Probe, Aadhaar has in some cases become a gatekeeping tool rather than an enabler—showing how even well-intentioned digital identity systems can backfire when implemented through rigid, top-down structures. By contrast, the model proposed by RadicalxChange avoids these dynamics entirely. It breaks identity into contextual pieces, distributes verification across many actors, and returns control to the user—without requiring a central intermediary to oversee or approve each interaction.

Concluding Part One

The parallel between identity providers and nation-states is a compelling one. Platforms do not merely mediate access; they define the terms of participation, legitimacy, and exclusion in ways that increasingly resemble sovereign power. This concentration of authority—rooted not in territory or law, but in control over data, credentials, and inference—points to a broader problem that extends beyond identity alone. Across digital systems, power has begun to accrue to those who control infrastructure and interpretation, raising familiar concerns about technological centralization and what is sometimes described as a form of informational or platform-based dominance - sometimes characterized, more bluntly, as a kind of data dictatorship rather than democratic governance.

Part Two turns to the question this framing raises. If centralized identity systems pose a real and growing problem, does decentralized identity meaningfully challenge that dynamic—or does it simply reframe it in new technical language? Can decentralization disrupt entrenched power, or is it yet another layer of abstraction that absorbs dissent without altering underlying structures? The next section examines whether decentralized identity represents a genuine shift, or whether it ultimately adds to the noise surrounding technological solutions to fundamentally political problems.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

It was originally published on Substack.

If you haven’t yet read Part One, I recommend starting there for the discussion of how blockchain technologies tend to move from esoteric infrastructure to everyday life—and why social media may be the most likely gateway for that transition.

Up to this point, the focus has been on entry: how new technologies become legible to non-technical users, how they embed themselves into familiar environments, and how shifts in interface and proximity transform abstract systems into lived experience. By tracing the arc from early computing infrastructure to domestic intimacy, Part One asked what it takes for a technology to feel personal rather than imposed.

Part Two turns to what happens once that entry is complete. When social media becomes ambient—woven into attention, identity, and daily rhythm—the question is no longer how people arrive on platforms, but how value is extracted once they are there. Social systems do not simply connect users; they structure incentives, monetize participation, and quietly shape what kinds of behavior are rewarded or discouraged.

This section examines the economic logic underlying “free” social media: surveillance capitalism, data extraction, and attention markets. It then asks whether Web3 alters that logic in any meaningful way—or whether new forms of ownership risk reproducing the same dynamics under different technical terms. Rather than assuming decentralization as a solution, Part Two treats data monetization, user ownership, and the commons as open questions—contested terrain where power, design, and lived experience remain deeply entangled.

The Hidden Cost of ‘Free’ Social Media: Surveillance Capitalism

For decades, social media companies have operated under a business model where user-generated content and personal information fuel massive advertising revenues—without compensating the users who create the content or provide the data that powers these systems. In an age where nearly every aspect of our lives is mediated through digital platforms, this dynamic has created an imbalance of value exchange—one where a small handful of corporations extract immense financial gains while the individuals who make these platforms valuable remain excluded from the profits.

The exploitation of user data is not a new concern, but it has only become more pronounced over time. Several high-profile cases have exposed the extent to which user data is harvested, manipulated, and monetized without consent:

• Cambridge Analytica (2018): Facebook allowed the political consulting firm to collect data from up to 87 million users without their knowledge. This data was then used to build detailed psychological profiles and influence voter behavior, playing a role in major elections, including the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The scandal revealed how social media data could be weaponized on a mass scale, often without users even realizing their information had been compromised.

  
  

  

  
  

• Meta’s AI Data Scraping (2024): Meta admitted to using years of Facebook and Instagram posts to train its AI models—without informing users or providing an opt-out mechanism. The data used included personal content dating back to 2007, raising significant privacy concerns about how user-generated content is repurposed without explicit consent.

• Ongoing FTC Investigations (2024): A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report found that major social media companies continue to engage in widespread data collection and sharing with third parties under vague or misleading privacy policies. The report highlighted how many of these companies obscure the extent of their data practices, making it nearly impossible for the average user to understand what personal information is being harvested and for what purposes.

These cases reinforce the need for a fundamental shift in how social media platforms handle user data. Opt-in and opt-out mechanisms, while a step forward, do little to alter the fundamental economics: social media platforms extract billions in value from user engagement and data, while users remain passive participants with no claim to the wealth they generate. But this is not a static system—users are not just data points, they are the foundation of these platforms’ business models, and that gives them leverage. A platform that redistributes some of that value—whether through direct revenue-sharing, tokenized incentives, or user-owned networks—could have a significant competitive advantage. Just as content creators on YouTube or Substack have shown that audiences will migrate toward platforms that offer better monetization models, the same could apply to social media at scale. The question is not whether users should be compensated for their contributions, but whether platforms that enable value-sharing will be able to outcompete those that continue to treat users as a free resource.

Blockchain and Data Monetization: A New Power Dynamic?

Blockchain provides a fundamental advantage over Web2 when it comes to user data monetization by removing the need for trust and eliminating intermediaries. While Web2 platforms could, in theory, allow users to monetize their data, the problem is that the system remains centralized—meaning the platform ultimately retains control over the data, sets the rules for payouts, and can change those terms at any time. Blockchain shifts this dynamic by allowing users to store and manage their data independently through cryptographic keys, ensuring true ownership rather than permission-based access. Instead of relying on social media companies to broker data transactions, users can interact with decentralized marketplaces where advertisers or data buyers pay them directly via smart contracts, ensuring transparency and immediate compensation. Because blockchain networks are open and auditable, users can verify how much their data is worth and track revenue flows without opaque corporate policies dictating the terms. Additionally, blockchain’s composability allows users to carry their data across different platforms rather than being locked into a single provider. This fundamentally changes the power structure of the data economy—shifting it from a model where platforms extract value to one where users have control over how, when, and at what price their data is sold.

While blockchain technology offers the potential to revolutionize data ownership and monetization, current Web3 social media platforms predominantly focus on content monetization rather than direct data monetization. For instance, platforms like Diamond App and Minds allow users to earn cryptocurrency rewards for their posts and interactions, effectively monetizing their content contributions. The following platforms, while not traditional social media networks, highlight emerging models that enable users to monetize their data, signaling a shift toward a more user-centric digital economy:

• Republike: Republike aims to return control of data to users by allowing them to monetize their information on their own terms. Their manifesto states that “this model, which gives the illusion of a free service, is based on the exploitation of our data, the new digital gold that we all surrendered to Big Techs as soon as we accepted the Terms of Service.” To counter this, Republike envisions a decentralized network where users can directly control and monetize their data exchanges with advertisers, marketers, and researchers. Additionally, they plan to allow users to sell their data to polling institutes, monetize their skills, and establish partnerships with media organizations to integrate monetized content into online publications. (Republike FAQ)

• Ocean Protocol: While not a social media platform itself, Ocean provides a framework where users can tokenize and sell their data in a decentralized marketplace. The platform describes its mission as enabling people to “monetize AI models & data while preserving privacy,” providing a system where individuals can profit from their data without handing over control to corporations. (Ocean Protocol Official Site)

• Brave Browser (BAT): Although technically a browser, Brave has already proven that a user-owned ad economy can work. Rather than relying on invasive data tracking, Brave matches ads locally on users’ devices, keeping personal data private. Users who opt into viewing these ads receive compensation in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), which they can keep or use to support content creators. As Brave puts it, “Other tech companies steal your data to sell ads—to them, you are the product. Brave is different. We think your attention is valuable, and that you should get a fair share of the revenue.” While this model challenges the traditional advertising economy, it does not allow users to directly sell their personal data. (Brave Official Site)

• Permission.io: Unlike traditional ad networks that collect and sell user data without consent, Permission.io allows individuals to actively “permission” their data to advertisers in exchange for ASK tokens. Rather than relying on third-party tracking, advertisers on the platform engage with users directly, offering incentives in exchange for specific profile data. As the company explains, “The Permission Token enables individuals to earn ASK for permissioning their data when advertisers ‘ASK permission’ to engage.” The platform also envisions a future where users manage their personal information through Digital IDs, further enhancing control over how their data is shared and monetized. (Permission.io FAQ)

Why Ownership Alone Isn’t Enough

Despite the promises of decentralization, most Web3 social media platforms today focus on content monetization rather than data monetization. Platforms like Minds, Lens Protocol, and Diamond App provide alternatives to traditional social networks by rewarding users for engagement, but their models center on content ownership rather than allowing individuals to profit from their personal data. While owning what you create is a step toward a more equitable digital landscape, it does not fully address the deeper issue of how data itself is monetized. The examples explored in this article are not traditional social media platforms, yet they reflect a broader shift toward rethinking data ownership. Whether through decentralized marketplaces, privacy-first advertising models, or blockchain-based identity management, these platforms indicate a future where users have more control over their personal information and how it is used. However, this shift has yet to take hold in social media, where centralized platforms still extract immense value from user engagement without redistributing meaningful compensation.

For new social media platforms to break through, data monetization could be a key differentiator. Given the dominance of established networks and the inertia of user behavior, simply offering an alternative is unlikely to drive mass adoption. However, a platform that enables users to monetize their data in a transparent, fair, and direct manner could provide the kind of economic incentive needed to challenge incumbents. If executed correctly, this model could be the edge that helps new entrants scale.

That said, data monetization alone will not fix the deeper issues of digital engagement. As Republike’s manifesto notes, “we must also not focus primarily on individual money or rewards and ownership but on the ‘Commons.’ If people contribute and stay on the platform, we want the reason to be that they had an excellent experience and feel that they have become better, more useful individuals with real goals by using it.” While monetization may shift power dynamics, it does not inherently make social media better for users. Without thoughtful design, it could become just another tool to manipulate engagement, reinforcing the same dependency-driven behaviors that define existing platforms. Ultimately, for Web3 social media to truly reshape the digital landscape, it must go beyond redistributing economic value and reconsider what makes online spaces genuinely valuable to users.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Originally published on Substack.

From Esoteric Technology to Everyday Use: How Blockchain Could Enter the Mainstream

I recently came across an article titled “What is Consumer Crypto?” (from Luca’s Substack) and it got me thinking about how the ideologies behind blockchain and crypto will eventually embed themselves into everyday life. Right now, crypto and blockchain seem to be domains for the technologically inclined or financially speculative, but history tells us that transformational technologies often begin as esoteric before they become ubiquitous. The internet itself was once an academic and military tool, primarily used for communication between select institutions. It wasn’t until the rise of graphical web browsers, email services, and social networking that the internet became widely accessible, evolving into the user-friendly Web2 experience we now take for granted. In a similar way, crypto’s eventual impact may not be seen in its raw, decentralized form but rather in how it seamlessly integrates into existing industries and everyday transactions.

The article I read suggests that blockchain’s most significant impact will be in restructuring the financial system. As the author writes, “Ultimately, the biggest impact of crypto will be its ability to create a fundamentally new financial system, changing how capital flows through the world.” However, another critical point the article touches on—and one I find particularly compelling, which I will explore more deeply later in this article—is data. The way data is controlled and monetized today is at the heart of many existing economic power structures, and blockchain could play a crucial role in shifting that landscape.

Social Media as a Gateway to Widespread Adoption

The article also makes a compelling argument: before we see widespread adoption of blockchain in finance and data structures, the first gateway will be entertainment—particularly through industries that attract non-technical users. The author lists the following categories as potential entry points:

• Gaming

• Social (creator platforms)

• Trading

• Casinos

• Betting

• Digital collectibles

• Tokenized culture (turning intangible concepts into tradable, permanent assets)

Of these, I want to focus on social media in this article for several reasons:

1. Social media is the largest industry in terms of revenue compared to gaming and gambling (see figures from GlobeNewswire, GlobeNewswire, and Research and Markets.). If crypto is to onboard the next billion users, it makes sense to start with the largest pool of potential adopters.

2. In my opinion, social media still holds the greatest potential to create tangible, real-world value for people compared to the other categories (excluding tokenized culture, which I think has a lot of value but is too nascent). While gaming provides immersive entertainment and gambling is largely a net-negative externality, social media’s ability to connect people and foster communities remains a powerful force in shaping human interactions.

3. The role of data: Social media is the most direct way to explore how data is currently exploited and how blockchain might enable a more equitable system for data ownership and monetization.

Interestingly, this idea also intersects with a book I’m currently reading—The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book, published in 2020, is primarily about the climate crisis and explores radical interventions such as targeted assassinations of high-emissions individuals and bureaucratic gridlock preventing real change. Interestingly, it proposes a carbon coin—a blockchain-based financial incentive for reducing carbon emissions, an idea many people in blockchain are already familiar with. But even more surprisingly, the book also advocates for putting all social media and user data on the blockchain, allowing individuals to own, buy, and sell their data at will. Though at first glance this may seem unrelated to climate change, the novel makes a strong case that inequality is at the root of both environmental and economic crises. Developing nations often suffer the most from climate change while contributing the least to it, yet they are forced to abide by climate laws that developed countries hypocritically do not follow, leaving them without viable alternatives and placing them in a position of dependency and weakness. The same imbalance exists in the way data is monetized today—where a few powerful corporations extract immense value from user-generated content, while the creators themselves see little return.

Rethinking What Passes for “Fun” Online

As a side note, I want to briefly challenge the idea of “fun” presented in the article. The author of the original article is not necessarily wrong—if we look at the revenue numbers of gaming, gambling, and social media, they do suggest that people are drawn to these forms of entertainment. But I’d like to introduce a personal perspective: are these things truly “fun”?

Take social media, for instance. How many people genuinely “enjoy” the moments they spend scrolling versus just doing it out of habit? Compare that to real-world social interactions: attending a party or concert or having dinner with friends. Or to moments of learning, such as reading a book, or practicing an instrument. Can unconscious scrolling compare to the deep contentment derived from meaningful experiences? There is a lack of intentionality on social media that, to me, makes it not truly ‘fun’—it is often just a thoughtless action. Intentional research on the web, on the other hand, could still be considered fun. The lack of intentionality, I think, is the issue.

This raises an even bigger question—beyond utility, how could the internet actually be made “fun” in a fulfilling way? Is it even possible to create digital spaces that provide genuine satisfaction? This is a question beyond the scope of this article, but it might be worth exploring further in the future—and whether there is or isn’t any overlap with the Web3 ethos and how it could enable that remains to be seen.

Concluding Part One

In Part Two of this article, I want to take a deeper look at how Web3 social media can challenge the existing data economy and whether it can truly create a more equitable system for users. Could blockchain transform the way we think about content, engagement, and online identity?

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Originally published on Substack.

If you haven’t yet read Part One, I recommend starting there for the discussion of cooperative lineages—from Mondragon to DAOs—and how collective coordination is being reimagined through digital infrastructure.

Up to this point, the focus has been on how collective systems are built: how ownership is shared, how governance is structured, and how coordination becomes legible at scale. From historical cooperatives to contemporary DAOs, we’ve traced efforts to formalize participation and collective control in environments where informal trust alone is insufficient.

The question now shifts to the conditions in which those systems operate. Collective infrastructures do not exist in isolation; they are embedded in monetary environments that shape how value circulates, how obligations are honored, and how easily commitment can be withdrawn.

Part Two turns to that monetary layer. Rather than asking how coordination is designed, it asks how universal money shapes the durability of collective worlds—and what that means for efforts to sustain shared ownership, mutual aid, and long-term cooperation.

Designing for Pluralism: Community Currencies and the Limits of Universal Money

In contrast to approaches that emphasize governance structure or coordination mechanisms, the RadicalxChange essay “Plural Money: A New Currency Design” turns attention to a more fundamental question: how value is defined and distributed. The core argument is that universal money—whether fiat or digital—flattens diverse forms of social value into a single dimension: price. This allows different communities to trade without needing shared values or norms. While this makes cross-community exchange possible, it also comes with a cost. As the article puts it, money allows for “exchange without integration”—it lets communities transact based on power, rather than aligning around justice, accountability, or legitimacy.

This dynamic becomes problematic when it begins to shape interactions within communities. If universal money becomes the primary way people relate to one another—even in contexts that rely on trust and mutual obligation—it can start to displace the relational norms that define those communities. Rather than being governed by shared commitments, internal dynamics begin to mirror market logic. The ease of transferring wealth out of a community weakens the sense that contributions will be reciprocated or that mutual aid will be honored. Over time, this erodes the social fabric - the very trust and accountability, or mutual aid, that made the community valuable to begin with. This is especially interesting given that the essay explicitly names mutual aid as a critical ingredient of strong communities—making a conceptual link back to Breadchain’s work.

This matters because communities derive strength from those shared norms. When value is denominated in a universal unit, mutual aid can become less viable. If individuals can easily extract power or capital from a community and spend it elsewhere, the social bonds that hold that community together begin to fray. The essay refers to this as the problem of capital exit: when wealth can leave a community too easily, members lose trust that what they give will eventually return. This weakens the rationale for mutual aid and undermines the commitment to collective care.

The article proposes that a better system would increase the “exit cost” of community wealth. This doesn’t mean making money less transferable in a punitive sense, but rather rethinking how money functions within a community. The idea is to retain wealth and power in local or context-specific systems, where it can recirculate and reinforce the social fabric. Community currencies—historically proposed as a way to keep economic activity local—are revisited here as digital, tokenized alternatives. These currencies could reflect the unique priorities of specific communities and resist the extractive tendencies of universal exchange.

The article even sketches out a tokenomics model for how such a currency might work. It’s detailed, and potentially too prescriptive, but the key takeaway isn’t the formula—it’s the idea that a well-designed token could help preserve community integrity. By keeping economic activity within a defined group, such tokens could support more durable, cooperative forms of interaction. In this way, the token functions as more than a medium of exchange—it becomes a governance mechanism.

Importantly, the article also frames strong communities as a kind of capital in their own right. It argues that intact communities—those resistant to capital exit—create the conditions for mutual aid to thrive. These communities don’t just redistribute resources; they offer meaning, resilience, and a sense of belonging. As the essay puts it, “Because these communities would be resistant to capital exit, mutual aid could flourish in them. They could therefore become pillars of the well-being of their members.” That framing brings the argument full circle: if mutual aid and trust are the lifeblood of community, then the role of monetary design should be to reinforce, not erode, those dynamics.

It’s also worth noting that the essay opens with a quote from The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber—an author whose work I’ve cited previously in writing about the future of money. Seeing his influence woven into this discussion was a reminder of how long these questions have been circulating—and how blockchain-based experiments are beginning to inherit, and potentially realize, some of the more radical ideas that thinkers like Graeber helped articulate.

Rethinking Sovereignty in a Networked World

Several thinkers featured in the Global Governance Programme’s symposium on non-territorial sovereignties offer additional perspectives that complement and extend the arguments explored so far. Vitalik Buterin argues that “network sovereignty”—a concept relevant to how blockchain-native communities define and manage themselves—shouldn’t be treated as a single model, but rather a family of overlapping approaches to collective autonomy. These range from technical architectures to political experiments. This reinforces a key theme throughout this piece: DAOs are not state analogues, but flexible governance tools that allow communities to define legitimacy and structure on their own terms.

Michel Bauwens brings a historical perspective, comparing emerging blockchain communities to the layered, overlapping power structures of medieval Europe. Rather than being disruptive in a purely novel sense, these formations may represent a return to more networked and decentralized patterns of sovereignty. Nathan Schneider reminds us that infrastructure alone doesn’t sustain communities—shared values, rituals, and meaning-making practices matter too. Without cultural depth, even the best-coordinated DAOs may struggle to endure.

As Gilad Abiri points out, the long-term challenge isn’t just building network sovereignties, but maintaining them. This cuts to the heart of the questions explored throughout this piece: what makes a decentralized system not just functional, but meaningful and durable over time? If DAOs are to serve as the infrastructure for mutual aid, economic cooperation, or digital self-governance, they must reflect the shared commitments of the communities they serve—not just encode rules. The real test lies not in automation or scale, but in sustaining collective alignment across time and distance.

Conclusion: Defining DAOs Through Use, Not Rhetoric

All of this brings us back to the ambiguity—and possibility—of the term “DAO” itself. As The Blockchain Socialist points out, it began as “Decentralized Autonomous Corporation,” a concept aimed at automating business operations through blockchain. Vitalik Buterin’s proposal to shift the term from “corporation” to “organization” reflected an early attempt to open the concept up to non-commercial, possibly more participatory forms. That shift in language marked the beginning of a broader ambiguity— one that persists today, as DAOs continue to evolve across vastly different social and political contexts.

That linguistic shift opened the door to something more fluid. Today, the term “DAO” can refer to a venture fund, a mutual aid group, a collective budget, or even a tokenized chatroom. This variety isn’t just semantic confusion—it reflects the real diversity of use cases and political imaginations in play. As the article notes, this ambiguity offers an opportunity: DAOs can be defined not by ideology or form, but by how they’re actually used.

This becomes especially relevant in contexts like workplace democracy, public goods, and platform governance—where DAOs are positioned as alternatives to centralized structures. The original techno-libertarian vision suggested that companies like Uber could be replaced by decentralized protocols. But whether that shift leads to worker ownership or just more efficient extraction depends entirely on implementation.

The infrastructure is plastic. It can be shaped. Whether DAOs become tools for solidarity and economic democracy will depend less on their technical features than on the values they encode—and whether they’re built to sustain those values over time.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Originally published on Substack

On Blockchain, Co-ops, and a Music Platform That Sparked a Thought

Recently, I came across a Twitter post by someone whose work I stumbled upon via a few blockchain-related blogs I follow. While I’m not entirely sure of the extent of his involvement in the blockchain space, I noticed several others in that ecosystem follow him, and his ideas seem to have intersected with blockchain discussions in the past. The post in question, from Austin Robey, wasn’t directly about blockchain, but it articulated a co-operative model that immediately brought to mind the kinds of organizational structures blockchain might enable.

In the tweet, Robey shared a simple diagram of a co-owned music platform—essentially a Bandcamp-style site where artists, supporters, and others could collectively own and operate the platform. This triggered a broader set of reflections around cooperative models, which I’ve been thinking through for some time. One particular reference in the tweet caught my attention: Mondragon.

What Is Mondragon?

Mondragon is a worker-owned cooperative federation based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in 1956 by a priest and a group of engineering students who wanted to create a new kind of economy—one that was democratic, community-oriented, and rooted in solidarity. Over the years, it grew to become one of the largest co-operatives in the world, encompassing manufacturing, finance, education, and retail.

The structure is complex, but in short: workers own their workplaces, elect their managers, and share profits. The cooperative principles are deeply embedded: one person, one vote; wage ratios between lowest- and highest-paid workers are capped; and there’s a strong emphasis on reinvestment in the local community.

I’ve mentioned The Ministry for the Future in previous writing, and that novel is where I first encountered the Mondragon story. The book presents blockchain as one of several tools for systemic transformation, and seeing the Mondragon reference again—this time in the context of platform ownership—brought together several strands I’ve been thinking about: cooperative structures, blockchain, and digital governance.

DAOs, Tokenization, and the Infrastructure of Collective Ownership

Thinking about co-ownership models inevitably leads to questions about infrastructure: how do we coordinate, make decisions, and distribute value in ways that scale? This is where blockchain, and in particular DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), enters the picture. While DAOs are often associated with speculative crypto projects, there is a growing body of thought that reimagines them as tools for scaling cooperative coordination—particularly in digital spaces.

Two essays from the Breadchain project are especially relevant here. Breadchain is part of a growing network of efforts to explore how blockchain technology can support mutual aid, public goods, and cooperative governance. These essays don’t treat blockchain as just a financial instrument—they look at it as political infrastructure for solidarity-based organizing:

• “Collaboration at Scale: Blockchain and Mutual Aid”

• “Our Way Out: Dual Power and the Future of Organizing”

The first essay suggests that blockchain could serve as a coordination layer for distributed, collectivist efforts. Mutual aid is described as a “radical decentralization of traditional giving,” and blockchain, in this view, helps make that decentralization operational. By enabling collective decision-making, shared ownership, and pooled resources to function across geographies, blockchain tools reduce the need for central intermediaries.

To understand why this matters, it’s useful to return to what mutual aid involves. It’s not just about offering help—it’s about building networks of reciprocal care rooted in shared vulnerability and trust. This logic mirrors the core principles of cooperative models: democratic governance, shared responsibility, and mutual support.

DAOs play a central role in translating these cooperative principles into digital infrastructure. As member-governed organizations built on blockchain protocols, DAOs offer a framework where participation and control are formally encoded. They don’t just host activity—they govern it. Within a DAO, smart contracts automate group decisions, multi-signature wallets ensure that collective funds can’t be unilaterally accessed, and on-chain voting enables decisions to be made transparently and verifiably by the membership. The essay illustrates this with examples such as Gitcoin and Panvala, which have pioneered blockchain-based public goods funding models, and DAOs like PactDAO and Breadchain that are actively exploring how these governance tools can support mutual aid efforts in practice. These cases show how DAOs can serve not just as funding mechanisms but as operational frameworks for community-driven resource coordination.

The second essay introduces the concept of digital dual power: the idea that mutual aid doesn’t just require alternative institutions—it also requires alternative infrastructure. Many activist and cooperative groups today rely on tools like Google Docs, Instagram, and Venmo—platforms that are centrally controlled and structured around extraction. Breadchain argues that if cooperative systems are to scale meaningfully, they can’t just replicate these platforms—they must replace them with tools aligned with collective values. Blockchain becomes relevant not only for decentralizing control, but for enabling communities to co-design and co-govern their own digital environments. DAOs, smart contracts, and hyperstructures offer composable systems for resource sharing, coordination, and governance—allowing communities to run essential infrastructure without surrendering autonomy to third-party platforms. What’s at stake here is not just technical decentralization, but the ability to embed political commitments directly into the architecture of our digital spaces.

Still, both essays remain exploratory. They offer a compelling vision of how decentralized technologies could support mutual aid and cooperative governance, but they stop short of engaging with the full complexity of implementation. Critical issues—like governance fatigue, unclear incentives, or uneven access to technical knowledge—are largely unaddressed. The essays provide a provocation to think seriously about how technologies shape collective life—and a reminder that infrastructure design is closely tied to political imagination.

Concluding Part One

From Mondragon to DAOs, this first part has traced how collective coordination is deliberately built—through shared ownership, governance, and infrastructural design. These systems make cooperation legible and scalable, particularly in digital contexts where informal trust alone is insufficient.

But coordination is only one layer of collective life. The infrastructures that enable participation and shared control operate within broader economic systems that shape how value circulates, how obligations are sustained, and how easily commitment can be withdrawn. Part Two turns to that underlying layer, examining how universal money conditions the durability of collective worlds.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Originally published on Substack

***If you haven’t yet read Part One, I encourage you to do so first for the full framing of Graeber’s critique of debt and how Bitcoin’s issuer-less design challenges the global hierarchy built around it.***

Up to this point, we’ve traced how monetary systems evolved from mutual obligation to instruments of control—and how Bitcoin, by removing the issuer, exposes the political architecture behind money itself. We looked at how sovereign debt has long served as a mechanism of international dependence, binding nations to the monetary policies of issuing powers, and how a stateless currency could, in theory, unsettle that hierarchy.

A quick recap: in Part One, the focus was on systems of control at the geopolitical scale—how debt became moralized, how sovereignty turned into dependence, and how decentralization might reverse that structure by redistributing monetary authority across borders. The question now turns inward: what happens when that same decentralization reaches the level of everyday human exchange?

In Part Two, the inquiry moves from the global to the social. If Bitcoin reorders value among nations, what might it reveal about how value itself is created among people? How could technologies inspired by it reshape trust, reputation, and the meaning of contribution within communities? What’s emerging here is not merely a change of scale but a change of substance: power once enforced through debt now begins to disperse through participation, creating new forms of accountability and trust.

Ryne Sax, founder of Eco, presents a fascinating argument in his article Currency in a Post-Money World that aligns uncannily with David Graeber’s unique perspectives in Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Sax, whose work at Eco focuses on creating a digital wallet that rewards users with cashback in stablecoins, approaches the topic of money from both a technological and philosophical angle. His perspective is particularly relevant as Eco aims to build a more consumer-friendly financial ecosystem, aligning with Graeber’s challenge to rethink traditional narratives about money and debt.

In Currency in a Post-Money World, Sax challenges the mainstream belief that money evolved solely to solve trade inefficiencies. Instead, he proposes that early societies functioned as intricate networks of debt and credit. “Emerging research suggests money didn’t develop simply to compensate for trade inefficiencies. Instead, it evolved as a sophisticated way of tracking social obligations,” he writes. He goes on to describe how early civilizations, as they began to specialize and trade, developed rudimentary credit systems to underwrite production and foster economic growth. When debts and credits began to be recorded in writing, these early ledgers transformed into primitive forms of currency, allowing societies to trade credits instead of settling debts in tangible goods.

This idea of “social obligations” as the foundation of money aligns closely with Graeber’s argument that debt was initially a fluid social contract before it was codified into formal monetary systems. Where Graeber illustrates how debt shifted from a mutual agreement to a tool of control, Sax envisions a future where technology could reverse this process—creating systems where trust, contribution, and reputation serve as the new currency. Both authors highlight the deeply human element of economic exchange: money is not just a medium for trade but a mirror of our social structures and values.

Sax’s concept of social capital as an evolution of monetary systems is particularly compelling. He argues that we are witnessing the “early stages of a fundamental reimagining of how we exchange value,” suggesting that cryptocurrency is not merely a new payment method but “a philosophical experiment in reimagining value exchange.” His vision of a dynamic network of micro-exchanges—where communities form around shared purposes and create value beyond traditional economic metrics—feels like a modern interpretation of Graeber’s early societies, where value was based on reciprocity and social obligation rather than transactional exchange.

Both Graeber and Sax suggest that money’s true potential lies not in the stability of its supply but in its ability to reflect and support human connections. As Sax puts it, “Currency has always been about connection—about how we recognize and reward contribution.” This perspective offers a powerful lens through which to view the future of money—not as a static tool for trade but as an evolving language of value, capable of capturing the complex and often intangible ways we contribute to one another’s lives. If obligation once meant subordination, responsibility might be its freer counterpart—a voluntary alignment with shared principles rather than imposed rules. The new architecture of trust, then, depends less on code than on conscience: how we choose to participate, verify, and uphold value together. In this sense, cryptocurrency, and specifically Bitcoin, might be a stepping stone—providing a stable foundation from which new forms of social and economic capital can emerge, echoing the earliest systems of credit and trust that Graeber describes.

In this sense, what emerges is not the end of obligation but its redesign. Decentralized systems don’t erase the architecture of trust and debt; they rebuild it in new materials—code, consensus, and community norms. Just as earlier economies inscribed obligation in ledgers or laws, blockchain systems inscribe it in transparent protocols. The question is whether these new foundations can support a more equitable moral structure, or whether they will calcify into hierarchies of their own.

Ultimately, the future of money may not be about technological innovation alone but a deeper philosophical shift. It challenges us to reconsider how we define wealth and value—moving beyond mere transactions and toward a system that genuinely reflects the contributions and connections that sustain communities. As Sax eloquently states, “The future of money is a conversation we’re all part of. And we’re just getting started.” It is a conversation not just about currencies and markets but about reimagining how we value each other, creating a more flexible, inclusive, and human-centered economy.

Yet, the promise of cryptocurrency as a transformative force hinges not only on technology but on the motivations of the people who build and use these systems. A decentralized ledger, no matter how brilliantly designed, cannot by itself foster a fairer economy if those participating are not driven by principles of transparency, equity, and genuine value exchange. The gap between technology and reality is a reminder that human nature often leans toward complexity and obfuscation—where incentives can misalign, and systems can be gamed. In a world where markets are frequently driven by speculation and narratives rather than true value, the idea of transactions grounded in pure contribution and trust may seem, at best, aspirational and, at worst, naive. The real test lies not in the code but in the culture: whether we can align our collective behavior with the ideals of openness and reciprocity that both Graeber and Sax envision.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, “Reverberations, Onchain”, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Originally published on Substack.

In 2021, I read Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. A friend of mine—someone I consider to have a taste for radical ideas—recommended it. I trusted his judgment, and the book did not disappoint. Graeber delves deeper than the mechanisms of currency and economy; through rigorous philosophical and historical analysis, he challenges the very foundation of how humans have transacted with one another throughout history.

It's easy to assume that human interactions have always been purely transactional, governed by economic exchange within a market context. To suggest that transactions could have once been based on gratitude or mutual obligation might sound naive or even "wishy-washy." Yet, Graeber presents compelling historical evidence that this was, in fact, the case. He argues that early societies often relied on informal credit systems and mutual exchange, with formal money and debt systems emerging much later—and often through processes of coercion and control. Over time, societies transitioned from these exchanges of goodwill to a world increasingly dominated by formal debts and monetary obligations.

This shift had profound implications. As debt became institutionalized—particularly through state-backed currencies and formal financial systems—it transformed from a social contract into a powerful tool of control. The language of debt began to shape not only economic interactions but also social hierarchies. As Graeber points out, under this system, a debtor is not just someone who owes money but someone who carries a moral stain, a mark of failure in the eyes of society. Those who controlled the issuance and management of currency, often states or powerful creditors, wielded disproportionate influence, while debtors found themselves vulnerable to exploitation.

This historical perspective opens up an intriguing question: If traditional currencies and debt systems have long been used as instruments of power and control, could a new form of currency disrupt this cycle?

When I started exploring crypto—and Bitcoin specifically, Graeber’s ideas lingered in my mind. The ethos of money described in Debt and the principles outlined in the Bitcoin whitepaper both seemed to push back against the economic status quo. Yet, I couldn’t quite pinpoint where the overlap lay. The idea that stood out most was that, unlike traditional money, Bitcoin has no issuer, no central authority, and no mechanism for arbitrary inflation or debt manipulation. In traditional systems, the power to issue and control currency has often been tied to the ability to create and enforce debt, a tool that states and institutions have historically used to maintain control over populations.

Bitcoin, by contrast, operates on a decentralized protocol where no single entity can dictate monetary policy. Its fixed supply prevents the kind of inflationary manipulation that often leads to economic and social crises, as Graeber describes when debt spirals into societal upheaval. In this way, Bitcoin might not merely represent a departure from the debt-driven economies of the past but could offer an entirely different framework—one where value exchange is based on mutual consent and transparency rather than imposed obligations and control.

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Parker Lewis, a contributor to the Bitcoin-focused publication TFTC (Truth for the Commoner), argues in his article Bitcoin is Money (&) Currency that Bitcoin offers a fundamentally different approach to money. TFTC, known for its deep dives into the philosophy, politics, and economics of Bitcoin, has built a reputation as a credible voice in the crypto community. While most Bitcoin enthusiasts are well-versed in the anti-inflation argument—how a fixed supply of 21 million coins makes Bitcoin resistant to the currency debasement so common with fiat money—Lewis goes further, suggesting that Bitcoin’s true power lies not just in its scarcity but in its total independence from any issuer. Unlike traditional money, which requires a central authority to validate and enforce its value, Bitcoin operates autonomously, with no gatekeepers and no room for manipulation.

Graeber’s historical analysis provides an interesting counterpoint to Lewis’s argument. He contends that throughout history, those who controlled the issuance of money wielded it as a tool of social and moral control. Debt, originally a mutual agreement, transformed into a mechanism for enforcing hierarchies—not just between individuals but also among nations. In modern times, this dynamic plays out on a global scale, where countries become beholden to creditors through national debts, often denominated in fiat currencies controlled by powerful states or institutions. When Lewis describes Bitcoin as a currency without an issuer, he is highlighting a potential break in this cycle of dependency.

Bitcoin's decentralized design means that no single nation or institution can manipulate its supply or use it as leverage against others. For countries struggling under the weight of sovereign debt, Bitcoin could offer an alternative reserve asset—one that is immune to the political and monetary policy decisions of foreign powers. Instead of entering debt agreements where the terms are dictated by the whims of an issuer, nations could transact in a currency that operates independently of any central authority. This opens the door to a more equitable global economy, where financial obligations are not used as tools of control, and where transactions are governed by mutual consent rather than external coercion.

This shift would not only affect international relations but could also redefine what it means for a nation to be "in debt." The traditional narrative, where indebted countries are seen as morally or economically inferior, could erode as the power to create and enforce debt becomes decentralized. In this way, Bitcoin offers more than a hedge against inflation—it introduces the possibility of a new financial order where value exchange is governed by transparency and fairness, challenging the historical norms Graeber critiques so effectively.

Taken together, these ideas suggest that the first half of this story isn’t just about the moral history of debt—it’s about how that morality becomes geopolitical infrastructure. Graeber’s argument about debt as moral control scales into a global hierarchy, where states and institutions that issue currency also dictate the terms of debt, turning sovereignty itself into a system of dependence. In this light, Bitcoin’s relevance is not abstract or idealistic but politically concrete: by being a currency without an issuer, it conceptually breaks the monopoly of creditor nations and hints at a new form of international exchange—one that no longer relies on subordination to a dominant currency, such as the dollar, and where no nation’s prosperity depends on another’s permission. It gestures toward a shift from currencies enforced by issuing powers to systems that function through shared participation. In such systems, monetary power becomes an outcome of shared protocol rather than centralized issuance—replacing imposed obligation with transparent coordination, and amounting to a structural inversion of the creditor–debtor hierarchy that has defined global finance for centuries.

At the individual level, the same question of sovereignty reappears in miniature. Bitcoin offers a unique form of financial freedom, but this freedom does not necessarily eliminate the need for evaluation and trust within economic interactions. Graeber's analysis of debt as a tool of social control often involves the ways institutions formalize trust through credit scores, financial histories, and structured debt agreements. Bitcoin removes the intermediary and allows for direct, peer-to-peer transactions, yet this decentralization also introduces new challenges. Without a traditional financial institution acting as a gatekeeper, individuals must find new ways to establish trust and assess risk.

In a world where Bitcoin or similar decentralized currencies dominate, evaluation would likely shift from institutional metrics to more community-driven forms of validation. Instead of relying on a formal credit score, individuals might build a decentralized reputation based on transaction history, peer reviews, or contributions to digital communities. While Bitcoin itself is neutral—offering a base layer of financial sovereignty—human nature would likely fill this neutrality with new forms of social evaluation. This creates an interesting tension: Bitcoin liberates individuals from institutional debt traps and traditional forms of financial judgment, but it also sets the stage for new, potentially more nuanced systems of peer evaluation to emerge. The challenge would then lie in ensuring that these systems avoid replicating the same forms of exclusion and moral judgment that Graeber critiques in historical debt systems.

Concluding Part One

These ideas close one chapter and open another. If sovereignty can decentralize at the level of nations, it raises a deeper question about how that same dynamic might unfold among individuals. The forces of power and obligation rarely disappear; they adapt. As control dissolves at the institutional scale, new forms of trust and evaluation begin to emerge—shaped not by states or creditors, but by the communities and networks through which value now circulates.

Part Two continues this exploration, turning from global systems to the human scale—to how decentralized forms of money might transform the way we build trust, reputation, and meaning itself.

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This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, The Permissionless Imagination, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Up to this point, we have considered how civilizations advance through energy use, why the Kardashev Scale matters, and how Bitcoin mining could fit into that trajectory by helping capture and monetize surplus energy. Projects like Gridless, and Crusoe's Bitcoin mining to repurpose flare gas, illustrate that connection—linking planetary energy challenges with practical, local solutions.

A quick recap: the Kardashev Scale shows that advancing civilizations must pass through stages of ever-greater energy use to reach a renewable, abundant phase. Bitcoin, by monetizing stranded and surplus power, could play a role in smoothing that transition. The deeper question now becomes: what does it mean to tie a monetary system directly to physical energy expenditure? How does that change the way we think about scarcity, value, and even climate policy?

In Part Two, the question is not only how Bitcoin supports renewable adoption, but how tying digital value directly to energy expenditure challenges long-held assumptions about money, scarcity, and climate narratives. By revisiting the earlier themes of energy abundance and civilization’s progress, we can see how Bitcoin complicates the story and forces us to ask different questions about where we are headed:

Beyond its role in energy infrastructure, Bitcoin represents a deeper transformation in how economic value is tied to physical resources. Bent also sees Bitcoin as the first true digital-physical asset, anchored in real-world energy consumption through its proof-of-work mechanism. Unlike fiat money, which can be created arbitrarily, Bitcoin’s supply is hard-capped and requires real-world energy expenditure to produce, reinforcing its role as a scarce, incorruptible asset. This tethering of digital value to physical energy is what distinguishes Bitcoin from other digital assets, making it fundamentally different from tokenized representations of physical goods. Bitcoin’s reliance on proof-of-work ties it directly to the physical world in a way that is uncommon for digital assets. This raises broader questions about the nature of money itself—should monetary value be purely abstract, or should it be anchored to tangible constraints? Traditional economic models have long operated on the assumption that currency can function independently of physical limits, yet Bitcoin challenges this idea by making energy a fundamental component of its monetary system. ​This convergence of digital scarcity and physical resource consumption not only distinguishes Bitcoin from fiat currencies but also prompts a reevaluation of how energy expenditure underpins economic value in our increasingly digital world.​

It should be noted that many of the ideas discussed in this article originate from Marty Bent, the speaker from the podcast mentioned earlier. His perspective runs counter to the mainstream climate narrative, which often equates energy consumption with environmental harm. Unlike most, who accept the prevailing climate consensus, Bent remains skeptical of the climate emergency narrative. He sees it not as a purely scientific concern but as a vehicle for political and corporate agendas that benefit from regulation and centralized control. This is undoubtedly a controversial viewpoint, and while I do not necessarily agree with it, I believe it is worth exploring as part of a broader discussion on energy and economic policy. Bent argues that carbon taxes, emissions caps, and net-zero policies create artificial energy scarcity, allowing governments to dictate economic activity under the guise of environmentalism. He also highlights the financial interests driving ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing, which directs massive subsidies into green initiatives. Critics, including Bent, claim that ESG mandates, often shaped by financial giants like BlackRock, influence corporate behavior not through market demand but through imposed policies that align with specific ideological and financial interests.

On a global scale, Bent is skeptical of climate agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, which he views as mechanisms for redistributing wealth from industrialized nations to developing ones through bureaucratic climate funds with questionable effectiveness. He argues that Western nations use climate policy as a geopolitical tool, pressuring developing countries to avoid fossil fuels while continuing to rely on them themselves. A striking example of this can be seen in policies that discourage African nations from developing their own natural gas resources, despite Europe increasing its reliance on natural gas imports. As highlighted in TFTC's 'Net Zero Called Out', such policies often prioritize Western economic interests over genuine environmental progress, raising questions about the true motivations behind global climate agreements. This, he suggests, creates a paradox where nations that have historically built their prosperity on energy abundance now dictate restrictions that hinder economic growth in less developed regions.

These insights into energy, Bitcoin, and civilization’s progress come from a deeply contrarian perspective—one that challenges many widely accepted ideas. For those accustomed to mainstream narratives, such views may initially seem jarring or counterintuitive. However, they are worth exploring precisely because we often underestimate how much of the world operates in a system of smoke and mirrors. This theme of questioning dominant assumptions is deeply embedded in Bitcoin’s ethos and community. Bitcoin itself emerged as a response to opaque financial systems and centralized control, offering an alternative rooted in transparency and decentralized verification. In many ways, the discussions challenging the common narratives around energy, climate policy, and Bitcoin mining reflect the broader philosophical shift that Bitcoin represents—challenging entrenched power structures and forcing a reconsideration of what we take for granted about value, resources, and progress. The intersection of these issues is highly complex, and we must be careful not to oversimplify. In our explorations, we should avoid being either too rebellious or too blindly accepting of common narratives, recognizing that both skepticism and critical thinking are necessary to navigate these debates effectively. As Bitcoin mining continues to evolve, it provides a real-world case study in how technological and economic incentives can shape the future of energy use. Whether it ultimately proves to be a sustainable solution or a temporary experiment, its role in challenging assumptions about energy, scarcity, and value cannot be ignored.

Marty Bent presents an alternative perspective: to advance as a civilization, we should be using more energy, not less. Bent specifically mentions the Kardashev Scale, a framework for measuring a civilization’s technological advancement based on its energy consumption. Originally proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, the scale categorizes civilizations into three types based on their ability to harness energy: Type 1 (planetary), Type 2 (stellar), and Type 3 (galactic). Physicist Michio Kaku, a renowned theoretical physicist and futurist, is known for his work in string theory and his ability to make complex scientific ideas accessible to the public. In books like Physics of the Future, he explores humanity’s potential transition to a Type 1 civilization, emphasizing the technological and societal shifts required to reach this milestone. He explains that humanity is currently around 0.7 on the scale due to its limited energy utilization.

A Type 1 civilization would not only be able to efficiently capture and use all of the energy available on Earth—including solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal sources—but achieving this would inherently drive advancements in technology, governance, and infrastructure. The challenge of harnessing planetary-scale energy requires the development of dynamic global energy systems capable of balancing supply and demand in real time. This involves not only advancements in energy storage, transmission, and conversion but also international cooperation to align policies, resolve competing interests, and divert military spending towards building the infrastructure required to support a resilient, interconnected energy network. Thus, social, economic, and geopolitical considerations all play a crucial role, as scaling and distributing energy globally would reshape economic structures and require new frameworks for international collaboration and resource management.

As energy demands grow, the focus naturally shifts to sources that are both abundant and universally accessible—solar energy being the most prominent example. In this article, David Maiolo expands on this point, arguing that solar power is not only the most abundant energy source but also the most technically feasible option for achieving the energy demands of a Type 1 civilization. Unlike other energy sources that require complex extraction or conversion processes, solar energy is continuously available and can be scaled globally with advancements in photovoltaic and energy storage technologies. Elon Musk has also noted the alignment between the Kardashev Scale and solar power, stating, “Once you understand the Kardashev Scale, it becomes utterly obvious that essentially all energy generation will be solar.”

Musk’s perspective highlights that, since nearly all energy on Earth originates from the sun in some form, harnessing solar power directly is the most logical and scalable approach for advancing civilization’s energy capabilities. However, as Maiolo points out, transitioning to a solar-dominant energy system is not just a technological challenge but a structural one—it requires rethinking energy distribution, grid systems, and economic incentives to make solar power a practical foundation for global energy infrastructure. This shift would demand not only advancements in photovoltaic efficiency and storage but also restructured energy markets and new geopolitical dynamics, as greater energy independence could reduce reliance on centralized fossil fuel industries. The feasibility of this transition remains uncertain, but it underscores how energy is not just a technical issue but one deeply intertwined with economic and political realities.

This decentralized approach to energy aligns with another emerging force reshaping how power is consumed—Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining, in this context, emerges as a potential force that could reshape how surplus energy is utilized. As the world moves toward more decentralized energy solutions, Bitcoin mining presents an intriguing mechanism for capturing and monetizing energy that might otherwise go to waste. Far from being a wasteful endeavor, Bitcoin mining serves as a buyer of first and last resort for energy, making stranded or excess energy economically viable. For instance, in Texas, companies like this case study of Crusoe Energy’s approach are using Bitcoin mining to repurpose flare gas—natural gas that would otherwise be burned off due to a lack of infrastructure—into a productive energy source.

Similarly, excess hydroelectric power in regions with seasonal water flow variations and surplus solar and wind energy during off-peak periods could be leveraged by Bitcoin mining, potentially turning intermittent energy generation into a continuous economic driver. By acting as a flexible energy consumer, Bitcoin mining has the potential to stabilize electrical grids by absorbing excess supply when demand is low and scaling down when demand is high. This dynamic load balancing could provide energy producers with a more stable revenue stream, making renewable energy projects more financially viable and encouraging further investment in energy infrastructure, particularly in remote or underserved regions. A compelling example of this is Gridless, a project in rural Africa that integrates Bitcoin mining with small-scale renewable energy initiatives. By monetizing surplus electricity from microgrids, Gridless helps communities fund and sustain local power generation, reducing reliance on external aid while fostering economic self-sufficiency.

Concluding Part One

Taken together, these examples show how the Kardashev framework and decentralized technologies like Bitcoin mining can interact in surprising ways. The scale reminds us that civilizations advance by mastering energy at higher and higher levels, and projects like Gridless, and Crusoe's Bitcoin mining to repurpose flare gas, hint at how this trajectory could unfold in practice. At the same time, they raise questions that extend beyond grids and kilowatts: how will societies choose to value energy, and what trade-offs will they accept on the path to abundance? These are questions Part Two takes up in more depth.

This reflection is part of my ongoing writing project, The Permissionless Imagination, exploring how blockchains can help us re-imagine how we organize, cooperate, and build shared futures.

Bitcoin has been around for about 15 years. I first heard about it as a teenager, but it wasn't until a long sabbatical in the Himalayas that Bitcoin and the broader crypto world began to truly resonate with me. You might think it would have clicked sooner—after all, I graduated with degrees in Biology and English, then pivoted to software engineering, and have spent the last five years doing Data and AI consulting at Accenture. Living in Manhattan, surrounded by conversations on crypto and Web3, I absorbed enough to hold a conversation but never felt compelled to dive deeper.

That changed in the Himalayas. During my travels, I met a café owner who had a vision to create a cryptocurrency centered around Tibetan culture and commerce, aiming to connect it with the global economy. This was a revelation. It was the first time I encountered the idea of cryptocurrencies enabling micro-economies, preserving cultural integrity, and resisting the homogenizing force of our monopoly-driven, monoculture world. It struck me how this technology could not only preserve cultural identity but also amplify the voices of underrepresented, resource-constrained communities, offering them a platform on the global stage. It struck a chord with my preference for diverse, self-sustaining communities over systems dominated by a few corporate giants.

From that moment, my interest in crypto expanded rapidly. I started investing, got involved in side projects, and began hosting events with Crypto Mondays in Manhattan. I met people who shared a contrarian, anti-establishment spirit—traits I had always felt but never fully embraced. For years, I had harbored a persistent intuition that something was fundamentally wrong with our economic system, particularly how wealth accumulates in isolated clusters of individuals and corporations. Yet, without a framework to articulate it, my intuition remained a quiet discomfort, more of a feeling than a stance.

By chance, I found myself immersed in the Web3 community, particularly among Bitcoin enthusiasts. Here, I discovered the theories and ideas that validated my intuition. I was captivated by the anti-centralization philosophy of Bitcoin and the broader potential of cryptocurrencies to build decentralized, democratic, and corruption-resistant systems. The idea that blockchain technology embeds anti-corruption principles directly into its architecture was a revelation. It was mind-expanding to realize that blockchain technology allows for systems where governance and validation are hard-coded, operating independently of human biases. Unlike traditional systems, where human judgment and institutional interests can sway decisions, blockchain offers an unprecedented model where truth and integrity are maintained through transparent, immutable code—decided not by people, but by democratically agreed-upon code, logic, and technology itself.

This newsletter is my attempt to explore these ideas further, particularly the impact of Web3 on geopolitics, social media and digital communities, social impact, and the art world. I hope to refine my thoughts, validate my intuitive insights, and expand my imagination into unexplored possibilities for society as a whole. My aim is to synthesize these concepts into fresh insights—not just for myself but also for anyone following along. I invite you to join me on this journey of discovery and critical exploration into what our future could look like if we embrace the potential of these emerging technologies.

Reverberations, Onchain

A space for tracing the quiet revolutions emerging from decentralized systems — where ledgers and protocols meet culture, and value begins to resonate in new forms. It follows the restless, uneven rhythm of an evolving, onchain world, where the tools of coordination, identity, and exchange are being rewritten just beneath the surface.

Here, reverberations, onchain are not just technical effects — they are social, psychological, and political echoes. Each piece maps a frequency: of resistance, of reinvention, of systems yet to be born. This is not a celebration of crypto hype. It’s a space attuned to the shifting infrastructure of change: from DAOs as civic architecture and Bitcoin as counter-power, to self-sovereign identity for a borderless future, culture liquefied through tokenization, social platforms without masters, and blockchain infrastructure built for the public good.

It’s a listening post — for the ambient signals of a decentralized future still coming into focus: through new currencies, evolving identities, experimental governance systems, micro-communities, and emerging models of give and take.