It’s Saturday 7pm. A pretty airline hostess friend of mine was in San Francisco for the night, wanting to do drinks. What to do?
I was knocking on the door of a home in Palo Alto that had a Guy Fawkes mask on a Christmas reef. As for why, it was to attend the first ever Decentralized Autonomous Society Meetup, an event with a minimal description other than a title “Let the revolution begin”. The event reads:
In the early 90s the cypherpunk movement held its meetup in Palo Alto, working through many ways in which cryptographic technology could be used to promote human freedom. Eventually Bitcoin was born.
Today we discuss how the second wave of blockchain innovation can enhance human freedom.
The house was packed. Hours earlier, TechCrunch had posted Decentralise All The Things! and mentions Ethereum and Maidsafe who are leaders in the movement. In my search to find a solution to a business challenge I have, I inadvertently was now at a meetup where one of the speakers was a representative from Maidsafe and another speaker representing Ethereum. But not just that: I found myself after the talks talking to the globe trotting Vitalik Buterin, the inventor and chief scientist of Ethereum.
Although I had been tracking Bitcoin for a few years now and evangelising it behind closed doors to influential politicians, business executives and my network, a frustration I had was that no one understands the true impact. This is something that has been on my mind every since I become aware of after a talk by former Googler Mike Hearn in 2012.
That changed a few months ago, when I stumbled on Ethereum’s white paper and found it the single best document describing the state of cryptocurrency and its potential beyond being simply a means of exchange as Bitcoin is known. Ethereum’s creator might only be 20, but with his former project being the Bitcoin magazine which has been an invaluable resource to understand Bitcoin, he comes across to me as probably having one of the deepest understandings of cryptocurrencies, their potential — and weaknesses.
Both Vitalik and I hold a mutual view that we don’t know what the future of Bitcoin is and if it will last. But after talking to him, I had in no doubt that I had met a genius that one day may be regarded like Tim Berners-lee who created the world wide web.
Separately, I was talking with one of the organisers, and he was excited I understood the potential of DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) and similarly remarked at his frustration that most investors in Silicon Valley don’t seem to get it. Given silicon valley investors are beating the drum roll of Bitcoin’s world domination despite the rest of the world not getting it, you can take that to be a sign this is pretty early days of the Decentralised Autonomous movement.
But let me get to the point of why I’m even writing this — both due to something Vitalik said to me and that I separately read yesterday that he pointed me too. He referred me to a recent blog post on secret sharing and where he writes a money quote in the conclusion of the article explaining DAO’s as follows:
If the blockchain is a decentralized computer, a secret sharing DAO is a decentralized computer with privacy
In a world where no one can really explain it yet, that explains DAO’s beautifully. But let’s back it up: blockchain, one of the four technologies underpinning Bitcoin (the others being PGP, Proof-of-work (such as mining which includes hash functions and Merkle trees ), and peer-to-peer)…is a computer? When I prodded Vitalik about what use-cases he was prioritising ahead the Ethereum 1.0 release later this year (March), he eventually responded: “It’s hard to prioritise one use case when you’re building a computer!”.
And that’s exactly what’s going on. This is all software, architecture and philosophical vision for a decentralised world, bringing the Internet back to its roots. In the process, this will enable a weak form of artificial intelligence. If hypertext is what underpins the web and has transformed the world of communications, then cryptography is what underpins the blockchain and will be transforming our world starting with payments but beyond that such as any system where “trust” is needed like elections, contracts and more. The power being the computers manage the “trust” (no humans tampering with it) and can automate the enforcement.
3D printing and Dones are two long term technologies that I regard as inevitable and game changing. It just might take 20 years for us to fully realise it. Well, Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto-currencies is my other main trend — but the externalities of that trend such as the Ethereum project and the ecosytem building around it, is something I think everyone should have on their radar that I think is akin to the web starting.
This year will see Ethereum 1.0 released (roadmap) with a chat application, a browser, as well as the ability for people to build their own applications with javascript — and we’ll also see the Bitcoin foundation be transitioning to a block-chain based voting system for its 2000 members which if it happens will become the highest profile example of DAO principles in action, beyond the Bitcoin network itself and the blockchain voting by the Danish political party.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not something that I’m early to identify rather it’s been in my face: at my business StartupHouse, we host events for Bitcoin developers and its intrigued me in their grass roots support. Combined with my reading, once you begin to understand the value of a blockchain, the power of cryptography, and what you can do outside of currency — then maybe, just like me and thousands of grass roots community support in silicon valley and around the world, you’ll begin see the emergence of something. A something driven by a frustration to emerge from the world post the credit crunch induced recession, government abuse of power with people’s money, and inequality where the few are owning more of our society’s capital.
A vision that, maybe, just might be a revolution in how the world operates that is as dramatic as what the world was like before the web. Stay tuned.