Sardines, Protests, Trees, And Bitcoin — What Do They Have In Common?

By Contrast Crypto on Altcoin Academy

Sardines travel in large groups which tend to attract a lot of attention from nearby predators. Why do they do this? Surely they’d attract much less attention swimming alone.

Survival.

In 2014, tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens gathered in the streets to protest Chinese influence in the Hong Kong electoral system in what became known as the Umbrella Movement.

Joshua Wong was thrust into leadership during this movement, and he became the target of a media frenzy, which he puts down to the centralized leadership structure.

“We know that if you have a specific individual leader, that leader just gets targeted, arrested, prosecuted, and jailed,” Wong told Vice earlier this week.

Drawing on lessons from the Umbrella Movement, the 2019 Anti-Extradition protests have a decentralized framework which allows groups in different locations to coordinate campaigns. In this system, organizers are able to compartmentalize information to ensure the protest will not be shut down if a figurehead is arrested.

Figureheads can present their own dangers to protest movements, in that they become an Achilles Heel — a point of strength and weakness for the cause. If the figurehead is removed, the movement may lose morale, energy, and direction, as the success of the protest can be seen to be tied to the leader.

Wong recognizes he is a key figure in the 2019 Hong Kong protests, but rejects that he is a central authority without which the movement would falter. In a Facebook post, Wong reflected on his imprisonment, acknowledging that the movement remained strong without his input.

While the Umbrella movement relied on vital components rendering it vulnerable, the Anti-Extradition movement operates with a decentralized structure — like a tree.

When a tree loses a limb, the remainder of the tree isn’t at risk of dying — it heals and continues to grow. The strength of a tree isn’t in the individual parts, but in the collection of individual parts. Providing the tree has enough meristematic tissue — like stem cells for plants — to support the growth the following year, the tree will survive.

Furthermore, a cancerous plant cell is unable to metastasize because plant cells are locked in place due to rigid cell walls — so even when a plant cell begins to divide uncontrollably, the tumor that form will be stuck in the same location.

Sardines group together because it increases the likelihood of survival for each individual sardine in the school. When sardines travel in a group, they all benefit from the protection of every other sardine in the group. Swimming in large numbers does not protect all of them, but it does allow the majority of the group to survive.

The strength of the Bitcoin network lies in the collection of nodes and miners maintaining the same transactional ledger. Having thousands of Bitcoin nodes and miners don’t prevent malicious activity happening to the network, but it does allow the majority of the nodes to survive and continue maintaining the ledger.

No single arrest has been able to halt the protests in Hong Kong, thanks to their adoption of decentralized, compartmentalized campaign strategies.

The power of many is stronger than the power of one.