How to improve decentralized blockchain systems, designed to resist change?

Blockchains as Governments

When I was introduced to the idea of a decentralized cryptocurrency back in 2013, how such a system can be improved to meet the demands of its increasing popularity was not an immediate concern. The answer was— you just update the software. Simple.

A few billion US dollars later however, politics have entered the sphere of blockchain technology and the governance of decentralized, open-source systems is now becoming a trendy topic in … mathematics.

New Form of Societal Organization

The concept of decentralized, digital, private currency is nothing less than revolutionary. But perhaps not only for the immediately obvious reasons.

Not being subject to government-induced inflation is great, while not having to entrust the value that you have created to a third party is a dream come true. But these are only the immediate advantages of a technology that challenges us to organize people in a completely novel way.

The knowledge that we generate while trying to keep this idea relevant and competitive could turn out to be the key to our survival. Survival not only of the top 5% (our current path, in my opinion), but survival for the masses.

Decentralized, digital, private currency is a reality. Next big challenge: keep it relevant in a competitive environment

Improving Systems Designed to Resist Change

Adaptation is at the center of evolution. Any organism that cannot adapt well to the changing environment “goes the way of the Dodo”. Is technology subject Darwin’s law of evolution? Does the survival of public blockchains depend on adaptation? I believe so.

Economic survival through utility may only be achievable through adaptation

I like the popular perception of Bitcoin as the “Honey Badger of money”, but I now believe that the first cryptocurrency could be better compared to this creature:

“The Horseshoe Crab of Money”, not that catchy though.

The Horseshoe crab survived for more than 300 million years relatively unchanged. Nature got it almost perfectly right the first time obviously. Maybe Bitcoin was an evolutionary fluke as well.

I am confident that Bitcoin will be an important part of tomorrow for exactly the reason of being inflexible and employing a “heavy” governance mechanism.

However, it is only natural for blockchains at the other end of the “flexibility” spectrum to emerge. I believe that they will have their own essential role to play in solving the challenge of a more egalitarian society. You may not be fully aware of this, but

blockchains are economic instruments generating funding for fundamental research in the sphere of governance

A Step Forward

Ethereum is undoubtedly breaking new ground in this respect but it also faces its own set of scalability challenges. The recent move to fork the system into essentially two branches — a permissioned one and a public one—can be perceived as a sign that one of its primary features — flexibility — is still not executed well enough.

It might not be immediately clear, but the demands of the enterprise market can be used as a litmus for where the value is

In order to commercialize blockchain technology and allow a larger percent of the world’s population to make use of it, enterprise-grade applications must become publicly available and their decentralized governance must be flexible enough to accommodate market demands quickly.