ID Theory’s Thought Piece on Blockchain Evolution

I think almost everything about humans and human civilisation is explained better by evolution than anything else. - Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder of Angel List

There are numerous thought provoking articles that give a nod to evolution when describing the progression of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Recent notable examples include Dan Held’s Planting Bitcoin, Tom Shaughnessy’s Mutating Toward Preeminent Protocols and Nico Papanicolaou’s natural selection piece.

However, these concepts are not new. They came to prominence after the release of the Tezos whitepaper in 2014¹, which described a mutating, evolving and self-amending blockchain. Consequently, this is something I have been mulling over for a long time.

I will take this line of thinking a step further in this series of articles, having identified undeniable parallels between the emergence of life on planet earth and the proliferation of decentralised technology.

It is a topic that is important to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I am the Chief Investment Officer of ID Theory, a London-based investment advisory company focused exclusively on blockchain projects and cryptoassets.

Secondly, I hold a Master of Research in Systems Biology with a specific focus on genetic regulatory networks and spent ten years of my career developing medicines. These twin perspectives have led me to write this series, ‘On the Origin of Blockchains’.

The series has already involved a lot of research to get it to the point where the first six sections can be released. In the coming weeks, I will be releasing several more sections, as well as developing any areas that can be improved with new information.

You can find all of the currently available sections below and I would appreciate any comments or feedback from interested parties.