Last October, exactly 365 days after leaving my last job to travel and work on personal projects, I joined ConsenSys, the leading Ethereum organization. It was a surprising landing spot to many, including myself — not a super obvious next step after digital education, strategy consulting, and political philosophy studies. I’m not a developer, or an anarchist, or a big crypto-investor.

But it was actually the result of a search for the best way to make an impact in what has become my deepest interest: the growing social divides, blind spots and tunnel vision in our fast-paced, polarized, no-nuance societies. As I explored the space, I realized how dramatically decentralization could alter problematic power structures, that token-based incentives could re-align behaviors with long-term values, and that cooperative networks could become the most effective tool social organization we’ve ever seen.

I also came to learn that the builders in this ecosystem were unbelievably open and well-intentioned, and formed a powerful community eager to learn and do good (this was before the late 2017 craze and the recent buidl movement). After exploring some areas close to my experience (education, politics, and business), I narrowed in on an area that was both a critical need now and extremely relevant to my questions around how organize and group: identity.

Finally, I came to believe that some of the attitudes that dominated this community were a bit narrow, over-confident and a bit utopian, perhaps dangerously so. That sometimes the exuberance over the potential of blockchain to help us coordinate can make us overlook the downsides of these powerful new tools, forgetting lessons we should have just learned from the arc of Web 2 and its impact on how we relate to each other. And that, maybe, I could champion some alternative perspectives as we develop these technologies. That’s what this article, and my role in the ecosystem, is about.