Blockchains as a Granular Universal Transaction System

Blockchain technology is a new concept in large-scale coordination due to a number of key features. First, a blockchain is an open universal transaction system. Every transaction worldwide is processed the same way and posted and made available for viewing on the blockchain. The transaction ledger is publicly-inspectable on-demand at any future moment.

Second, blockchains are trustless in the sense of not having to find or trust any of the other parties in the transaction; it is just necessary to trust the system. This suggests that orders-of-magnitude more transactions may be possible in trustless systems since the architecture is a mechanism allowing anyone to transact with anyone anywhere; geographical proximity, personal knowledge, and the search problem are all reduced or resolved. This is conceptually a next step in the progression of how Amazon (a global system) opens up trading in a way that Craigslist (geographically-local) does not.

Third, blockchains are a universal tracking system that might be able to accommodate infinitely more granularity than has been feasible and cost-effective to monitor previously. The optimality of what level of transaction detail is best to post directly to the blockchain (thus invoking the expensive mining operation for their recording) is being sorted out in different ecosystem tiers. The overall blockchain ecosystem is developing to avoid bloating the blockchain with too many micro-transactions by making use of special-purpose sidechains, decentralized off-chain storage (for example with MaidSafe, batched transactions (like batched notary sidechains to register large groups of legal documents), and Merkle trees (confirming and storing a whole corpus of data with one meta-hash).

Blockchains are a Supercomputer for Reality, a Mechanism for Orchestrating Quanta

The key idea of blockchains as a universal transaction system is that they are an automated computational mode, a seamless universal infrastructural element for the coordinated activity of granularity. Blockchains could be a universal transaction system on an order never before imagined that could possibly be used to coordinate the whole of human and machine activity. In this sense, blockchain technology is a supercomputer for reality. Any and all phenomena that can be quantized (defined in discrete units or packages) can be denoted this way and encoded and transacted in an automated fashion on the blockchain. As big data seeks to perhaps eventually model and predict all phenomena, natural and otherwise, so too might blockchains accompany big data for the tracking and administration of all phenomena.

One summary and prognostication of this dynamic and the potential universal applicability of blockchains is that anything that can be decentralized will be. This has an implied assumption about the inherent efficiency, benefit, and potential superiority in certain situations of the blockchain model. Decentralization is ‘where water goes’ (where water flows naturally, along the path of least resistance and least effort). The blockchain is an Occam’s razor, a natural efficiency process.

Blockchains are thus an intriguing model for coordinating the full transactional load of any large-scale system, whether the whole of different forms of human activity (social systems) or any other system too like a brain. In a brain there are quadrillions of transactions that could perhaps be handled in the universal transactional system architecture of a blockchain, like with Blockchain Thinking models.

Further, it is not just the transaction-handling capability of the blockchain as a universal coordination system but other properties that can also be applied through-out such as demurrage incitory stimulation for dynamic resource redistribution across the system. In Blockchain Thinking, this could be redistributing brain currencies like ideas and potentiation. Thus, it is not the mere orchestration features of universal blockchain systems but their enhancement possibilities that is perhaps the more interesting point. Not only can we better organize larger-scale existing activity with blockchains, but we can also possibly open up new classes of as-yet unimagined functionality and potentiality.

More information: Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O'Reilly Media.

Blockchain Consensus Models Increase the Information Resolution of the Universe

There is ample opportunity to explore blockchains as a new form of information technology, including what consensus models as a core feature might mean and enable. A key question is “What is consensus-derived information?” that is, what are its properties and benefits vis-à-vis other kinds of information? Is consensus-derived information a different kind or form of information? One way of conceiving of reality and the universe is as information flows, where blockchain technology helps to delineate three distinct levels of information:

1. Level one: Dumb, unenhanced, unmodulated data
2. Level two: Socially-recommended data. These are data elements enriched by social network peer recommendation, which has been made possible by networked Internet models. The quality of the information is denser because it has been recommended by social peers. 
3. Level three: Blockchain consensus-validated data. Now a third level of data has been exposed, blockchain consensus-validated data, data’s highest yet recommendation level based on group consensus-supported accuracy and quality. Not just peer recommendations, but a formal structure of intelligent agent experts, have formed a consensus about the quality and accuracy of these data. Blockchain technology thus produces a consensus-derived third tier of information that is higher resolution in that it is more densely modulated with quality attributes, and simultaneously is more global, more egalitarian, and freer-flowing. The blockchain as an information technology provides high-resolution modulation regarding the quality, authenticity, and derivation of information.

Consensus data is thus data that comes with a crowd-voted confirmation of quality, a seal of approval, the vote of a populace standing behind the quality, accuracy, and truth value of the data, in its current incarnation effectuated by a seamless automated mining mechanism. The bigger questions are “What can a society do with this kind of quality of data?” or more realistically, “What can a society do with this kind of widespread mechanism for confirming data quality?”

Thinking of the benefits of consensus-derived information only helps to underline that blockchain technology might be precisely the kind of core infrastructural element, and scalable information authentication and validation mechanism, necessary to scale human progress and to expand into a global and eventually beyond-planetary society. Further, blockchains are a system of checks and balances that might help to effectuate not only friendly Blockchain AI, but also the transition to a future world of multipsecies intelligence. The speculative endgame vision is that the universe is information, where the vector of progress means transitioning toward higher-resolution information flows. Information may be conserved, but its density is not. Even beyond conceiving of blockchain technology as a core infrastructural element to scale the future of human progress, ultimately it might be a tool for increasing the information resolution of the universe.

Application of Complexity Theory: Away from Reductionist Phase Transitions

Reductionism persists as a useful node in the possibility space of understanding and managing the world around us. However the possibility space is now expanding to higher levels of resolution such as a focus on complex systems. Learning and tools are ratcheting in lock-step.

Some of the key complexity-related concepts in understanding collective behavior in real-life physical systems like the burning of a forest fire include:

• Organization and Self-Organization: Self-orchestration into order in both living and non-living systems, for example: salt crystals, graphene, protein molecules, schools of fish, flocks of birds, bee hives, intelligence and the brain, social structures 
• Order and Stability of Systems: Measurements of order, stability, and dynamical break-down in systems such as entropy, symmetry (and symmetry-breaking), critical point, phase transition, boundaries, and fractals (101 primer)
• Tunable Parameters: An element or parameter which doesn’t control the system, but can be tuned to influence the performance of the system (for example, temperature is a tunable parameter in the complex system of water becoming ice) 
• Perturbation and Reset: How and how quickly systems reset after being perturbed is another interesting aspect of complex systems 

 

Complexity science is not new as a field. What is new is first, a more congruous conceptual application of complexity thought in the sense of appreciating overall continuum of systems phenomena, not trying to grasp for the specific moment of a phase transition. Exemplar of this more comprehensive systems level thinking is Marcelo Gleiser’s reframe of the Grand Unified Theory problem and Sara Walker’s reframe of the Origins of Life problem. The other aspect that is new is the idea of working in an applied manner with complex systems, particularly with tools that are straightforward to implement like the math tools of non-linear dynamics, networks, chaos, fractals, and power laws (many inspired by the work of Stan Strogatz), and Software Tools like NetLogo, a multi-agent programmable modeling environment and ChucK, a digital audio programming language.