Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

district. The local token would likely

always be readily convertible out to

more liquid cryptocurrencies and fiat

currencies. This is the multiplicity and

abundance property of blockchain

technology. Blockchain technology could

enable currency multiplicity in the form

of many currencies potentially existing

side by side, conceived with more

granularity than fiat currencies, each for

use in specific situations. The overall

effect could be promoting a mindset of

abundance as opposed to scarcity in

regard to the concept of money,

particularly if simultaneously

accompanied by Guaranteed Basic

Income (GBI) initiatives that covered

basic survival needs for all individuals

and thus enabled a higher-level

cognitive focus. Currency could be

reconceptualized in the context of what

kinds of actions it enables in a

community as opposed to exclusively

being a means of obtaining and storing

value.

The Blockchain Is an

Information Technology

Perhaps most centrally, the blockchain is

an information technology. But

blockchain technology is also many

other things. The blockchain as

decentralization is a revolutionary new

computing paradigm. The blockchain is

the embedded economic layer the Web

never had. The blockchain is the

coordination mechanism, the line-item

attribution, credit, proof, and

compensation rewards tracking schema

to encourage trustless participation by

any intelligent agent in any

collaboration. The blockchain “is a

decentralized trust network.” 194 The

blockchain is Hayek’s multiplicity of

private complementary currencies for

which there could be as many currencies

as Twitter handles and blogs, all fully

useful and accepted in their own

hyperlocal contexts, and where

Communitycoin issuance can improve

the cohesion and actualization of any

group. The blockchain is a cloud venue

for transnational organizations. The

blockchain is a means of offering

personalized decentralized governance

services, sponsoring literacy, and

facilitating economic development. The

blockchain is a tool that could prove the

existence and exact contents of any

document or other digital asset at a

particular time. The blockchain is the

integration and automation of

human/machine interaction and the

machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet

of Things (IoT) payment network for the

machine economy. The blockchain and

cryptocurrency is a payment mechanism

and accounting system enabler for M2M

communication. The blockchain is a

worldwide decentralized public ledger

for the registration, acknowledgment,

and transfer of all assets and societal

interactions, a society’s public records

bank, an organizing mechanism to

facilitate large-scale human progress in

previously unimagined ways. The

blockchain is the technology and the

system that could enable the global-scale

coordination of seven billion intelligent

agents. The blockchain is a consensus

model at scale, and possibly the

mechanism we have been waiting for

that could help to usher in an era of

friendly machine intelligence.

Blockchain AI: Consensus as

the Mechanism to Foster

“Friendly” AI

One forward-looking but important

concern in the general future of

technology is different ways in which

artificial intelligence (AI) might arise

and how to sponsor it such that it

engenders a “friendly” or benevolent

relationship with humans. There is the

notion of a technological singularity, a

moment when machine intelligence might

supersede human intelligence. However,

those in the field have not set forth any

sort of robust plan for how to effect

friendly AI, and many remain skeptical

of this possibility.195 It is possible that

blockchain technology could be a useful

connector of humans and machines in a

world of increasingly autonomous

machine activity through Dapps, DAOs,

and DACs that might eventually give

way to AI. In particular, consensus as a

mechanism could be instrumental in

bringing about and enforcing friendly AI.

Large Possibility Space for

Intelligence

Speculatively looking toward the longer

term, there might be a large possibility

space of intelligence that includes

humans, enhanced humans, different

forms of human/machine hybrids, digital

mindfile uploads, and different forms of

artificial intelligence like simulated

brains and advanced machine learning

algorithms. The blockchain as an

information technology might be able to

ease the future transition into a world

with multiple kinds of machine, human,

and hybrid intelligence. These

intelligences would likely not be

operating in isolation, but would be

connected to communications networks.

To achieve their goals, digital

intelligences will want to conduct

certain transactions over the network,

many of which could be managed by

blockchain and other consensus

mechanisms.

Only Friendly AIs Are Able to

Get Their Transactions

Executed

One of the unforeseen benefits of

consensus models might be that they

could possibly enforce friendly AI,

which is to say cooperative, moral

players within a society. 196 In

decentralized trust networks, an agentÕs

reputation (where agents themselves

remain pseudonymous) could be an

important factor in whether his