Holochain is a non-blockchain framework for writing fully distributed peer-to-peer applications. Nor is Holochain a single platform like Ethereum. It akin to a decentralized Ruby-on-Rails: a toolkit that produces standalone programs, but in a serverless way.

A thought exercise

Understanding the interaction between software and user is the simplest on a single machine, operated by one user. You don’t want the machine to have its own perspective on things — especially a perspective different from yours — you want the machine to objectively represent facts.

If there are more users in the mix (e.g. multi-user mainframes with many terminals) — the machine’s objective perspective naturally serves as a surrogate for the objective physical reality we are used to. It is a space.

This is where Holochain comes in: Holochain makes sure that these computer networks are user-centric, and not data-centric (as is the case with blockchain).

(Hash)Chain Reaction!

Fundamentally, Holochain does not force consensus between the many nodes that make up the network — instead, each node keeps a record of the data that it uploads to the relevant network. We say “relevant network” because Holochain allows one to write distributed p2p apps — allowing for a wide choice of structuring. One of these structures is…

Ulex

Ulex is being built on the Holochain infrastructure for the reason that blockchains simply do not satisfy the needs of most legal persons in business: a blockchain is a single piece of information that all nodes keep a recent copy of, as well as the history of the network (for those running Bitcoin Core, downloading a 7GB file of the blockchain’s transaction history is a well known issue).

For those persons using a decentralised legal system, having a reputation and having safe staking mechanisms is the most important aspect of the whole ordeal: something that Holochain provides both directly and as a consequence of Ulex being programmed in the Holochain infrastructure.

What do you think the future holds for decentralised law?

You can start winning bounties by contributing to the Ulex git — legal researchers, coders, philosophers — one and all are welcome.

Law is going international. Be ahead of the curve.