Moloch coin is an automated and nearly unstoppable blackmail engine. No one should ever build it.

This is a crytpocurrency horror story.

Recently I’ve had network-effects on my mind. Specifically token sales, ICO’s, or whatever coin someone is trying to sell you now. The supposed goal of these sales is to raise funds for development and fuel some useful distributed mechanism.

And some astonishingly small percentage do actually achieve something useful with their token. Mostly around governance I’ve seen so far.

But the vast majority are about locking in and extracting value from users.

I don’t like lock in on principle. It restricts the user where good technology should prove it’s worth by empowering users to do things that where previously impossible.

Of course the argument against my anti-token views is that crytocurrency projects can only have positive ‘network effects’ and not negative ‘lock in’ because they have to provide value to someone to be used at all right?