If blockchain evangelists think the technology is poised to transform the world, some are fairly self-aware of the extent to which the average person still doesn’t quite understand what it does. One of them is Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and one of the technology’s biggest boosters. In “Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet,” published in January by Random House, Dixon explains the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency and lays out a case that despite some high-profile scandals (ahem, FTX), it can still preserve the best parts of the internet. But the book isn’t just a sustained defense from one of blockchain’s biggest fans: It’s a case for how the technology could rebuild the economic landscape of Silicon Valley in its image, replacing a digital economy dominated by Big Tech with one that gives users a fairer deal. It also raises some big-picture, unanswered questions: To what end might those users direct the power they wrest away from Silicon Valley megacorporations, and can the ideals of fairness and reciprocity they espouse be written into the blockchain’s very code? Dixon defends the blockchain with a neat dichotomy, splitting its uses into the “computer,” or the underlying software that enables a decentralized system of digital verification, and the “casino,” the inherent speculative financial capability of tokens. He argues that the unseemly, get-rich-quick qualities attributed to the “casino” (think memecoins) obscure the benefits of the “computer.” One major benefit of the “computer” in this formulation is how it establishes digital identity and property rights that aren’t controlled by a remote corporation. Dixon compares this to how early internet technology, like the domain name system, works: You permanently own a web domain in a way that you don’t own a Twitter handle or your Facebook account. Therefore, you can publish or conduct whatever business you wish using it, without fear of censorship or “throttling” by large social media platforms. Blockchains restore that ownership to users’ digital presences by simply eliminating those middleman institutions like Facebook or Google and connecting users to each other directly, via the encrypted code of the blockchain and the apps built on top of it. But to accomplish all that, you have to convince people to actually use the network. To set rules and incentivize developers, blockchain founders establish a governance structure and capacity for fundraising, creating tokens or cryptocurrency. While the cryptocurrency can be used for speculation (the “casino”), Dixon says setting financial incentives for “computer” developers gives the blockchain business model an advantage over nonprofit development, which lacks the financial firepower to sustain large decentralized networks. “If you go to a creator and you say ‘Would you like to make $1 million a year or $0 a year,’ that's going to be very compelling,” Dixon said. “Social network revenue last year was $150 billion… if you took 10 percent for the intermediaries instead of 100 percent, that's $130 billion paid out to the network participants.” It’s a pretty compelling case in a digital media environment where all but the most successful struggle to stay afloat, and are threatened by increasingly sophisticated AI products. Dixon writes that when it comes to governance of these blockchain networks, a fine balance of financial incentives that he calls “tokenomics” can ensure “inscrutable social dynamics” are replaced by “thoughtful design.” (For example, early adoption of the network, developing key tools for it, or simply being a good citizen and following the rules could be rewarded with a financial stake.) This was the point where, as a reader, my critical radar began to ping furiously. If economic incentives ensure digital property rights and good governance, don’t the “computer” and the “casino” have more in common than either side might like to admit? The notion of designing incentives to drive efficient markets is an old and hotly contested one. Why should it work any differently on a software network than it does in the analog world? Dixon and other blockchain supporters argue good behavior can be written into the blockchain code: In his formulation, it changes Google’s “don’t be evil” slogan into “can’t be evil.” Dixon says the tech’s altruistic overlay “isn’t to say the computer culture isn’t interested in making money,” but rather that “computer” crypto thinkers take a long view, and “casino” crypto thinkers have a shorter-term approach. “I meet with policymakers and they ask me ‘Isn't this all self-interested?’ and I say ‘Sure it is, because we're a venture capital firm and we want to see a lot of startups,’” Dixon said. “We're dependent on startups, and having an internet that is controlled by five companies and kind of calcified is bad for our business… but I make the case that it's also probably good societally to also have a dynamic internet, startup creation and new companies.” Dixon’s book is a very strong explainer of a series of technological concepts whose abstraction can chafe at the limits of human attention. But even more so, it’s a crystal-clear demonstration of the market-driven ethos underpinning even the most altruistic blockchain projects. If Dixon’s dream comes true, a great deal of power will certainly shift from the behemoth tech platforms to users. Those users will then try to maximize the internet’s “value” in their own right, meeting each other on the digital plane to barter for maximal utility. To avoid the blunders, bloodthirsty competition, monopoly and roll-up that followed a previous generation of web utopians’ ascent, it’s going to take the most supremely intelligent on-chain code that Dixon and his fellow believers can muster.
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