1/ What do memes, shitposting, #NO2X and “community” have to do with one another? Riffing on @spencernoon’s community thread from yesterday a little.
2/ If blockchains are network organization tools, one of the most important answers to “why decentralize” is to eliminate the distinction between network owners and network participants.
3/ When networks have owners who are separate from participants, at some point incentives diverge. In the case of network businesses like Amazon or Facebook, this manifests as higher fees or more data capture to satisfy shareholders. @Kjer called this the “Extraction Imperative”
4/ When the network we’re talking about is money, the “owner” is the entity with the ability to print money. In an ideal world, government and citizen interests are aligned, but, weirdly, we don’t always live in an ideal world. #SaltBae
5/ Whether the network is money or something else, a big part of the goal of decentralization is distribute value across the network in such a way that their ceases to be a distinction between owners and participants. The participants are the owners.
6/ Of course, different classes of participants may have different interests that they advocate vociferously for, but in the absence of a single entity with fundamental decision making power, this is just the natural push and pull of governance.
7/ In the context of 2017’s ICO craze, the important network participation concept that is “community” became associated with a stupid heuristic of Telegram group size. To be clear, a big Telegram group was never a community.
8/ Interestingly, we *did* have some amazing examples of what real community in crypto networks looks like last year - with the #NO2X movement being one of if not the best example.
9/ In short, ignore the marketing implications of the word community itself for a minute, and the underlying concept that is important is a new form of distributed network participatory governance.
10/ This governance includes both formal systems, but - just like traditional politics - also includes a huge array of organizing and mobilizing tactics, from the high falutin right on down to the memes and shitposts that are the new broadsides and political cartoons of today.
11/ To me, “community” right now is about learning to adapt an old & integrate a new set of strategies to getting a group you care about to orient in the direction you want. It’s the new politics of networks. When the first & most important network is money, the stakes are high.
juuuust in case this was unclear about the division of interest between govt's and citizens..
