Written by Hank Sohota. Originally posted on Good Audience on 28th January 2019.

A viable, sustainable and scalable P2P sociopolitical economy, which embraces digital and data sovereignty for all agents, is about to emerge. One in which, as a consequence, money and intermediaries — social, political and economic — will no longer play the central, and therefore controlling, role they play today.

Let us start where Bitcoin started

Whatever socially and politically legitimised ‘flavour’ of money operates within a given community, nation or civilisation, it fundamentally shapes the economic, social, and political potential — and therefore possibilities — within those domains.

The Problem with Money

Money — by its very nature a social construct, as it fundamentally relies on people’s confidence in it — has three defining core functions. These are:

1. a store of value (i.e. sufficiently stable in value — and particularly, in people’s confidence in it — over time), which enables it to be …
2. a medium of exchange (i.e. also sufficiently saleable across scales and space), all of which enables it to be …
3. a unit of account

However, in order for money to work at scale, standardisation is also required which, in reality, inevitably means centralisation. Unfortunately, this intrinsically undermines the hardness of money (i.e. it’s ‘uninflatability’*), and the level of confidence people can have in its core functions, because decision-making shifts into the hands of the few. One cannot have sound money without reliable and consistent long-term hardness, as well as confidence-maintaining monetary policy. Regrettably, the few — or in the bygone case of a monarchy, an individual — have a long history of abusing their fiduciary responsibilities on both counts.

So, in order to solve the ‘hardness of money’ and the ‘level of confidence’ problems, we need to solve the centralisation problem, which — applied more broadly — asks:

How do we coordinate, cooperate and collaborate across space and time, at scale, without the need for intermediaries, representatives, executives or organisation-owners?

Arguably, this articulates, for some, the holy grail of anarchy (which should not be assumed to be synonymous with lawlessness, chaos or disorder).

Limitations of Bitcoin and Ethereum

Bitcoin is an attempt at solving the ‘centralisation of hard money’ problem which in the bigger picture is a good place to start. However, it does this by using a distributed ledger of hashchain blocks (giving it immutability), hard coding hardness (giving it uninflatability), and constructing a single network-wide timeline through a decentralised but not fully distributed Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism (giving it ‘uncensorability’*). This provides a form of ‘trustlessness’ by trusting the network rather than any individual entity or actor. Due to its significant practical and philosophical limitations, this approach provides only a partial and impractical solution because it is not distributed enough, not fast enough, not cost effective enough, and not scalable enough. Furthermore, it could push climate change too far in the wrong direction to be worth it, due to its electrical power consumption needs. Unless of course, conversely, it turns out to be a boon for renewable forms of generating electricity by increasing the financial incentives for it, perhaps even leading to green energy infrastructure which otherwise would not be funded. Nonetheless, these shortcomings will still apply even if all the near-to-medium term solutions work out as proposed. Even so, the four key features of Bitcoin*, in its current form, namely, immutability, uninflatability, uncensorability and unconfiscatability, are an historic achievement.

Ethereum, although not necessarily trying to solve the same problem — and not necessarily doing a good job of it — is fundamentally based on the same underlying ledger technology as Bitcoin and so suffers from the same or similar limitations, even before we include its ‘centralisation of power’ issues, its shortcomings as a cryptocurrency relative to Bitcoin, the complications and disadvantages of smart contracts, and its attempt to move to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism*. What Ethereum has done is enable the launching of several thousand Altcoins, none of which seem to make much sense, and nor do their fundamentals give one confidence that they will ever achieve their stated goals. Given that this has taken place in a new asset class and an unregulated market, no one should be surprised by the emergence of a FOMO-FUD wild west, or the role played in it by market makers.

Mutual Self-sovereignty — the foundational core construct of a fair and just sociopolitical economy

In my view, economics should have a strong focus on thrivability in human social systems — viable, sustainable and inclusive thrivability, at scale.

Although I over-simplify, I believe that at the heart of thrivability lies a dialectic in human social systems, that of group solidarity vs. individual sovereignty (cf. the political philosophy divide of left vs. right). Both aspects of this dialectic provide tremendous benefits for the group and the individual, namely, social cohesion leading to better survival odds, but this comes at a price, namely, acquiescence, conformity and homogeneity.

However, I would suggest that solidarity and sovereignty are two sides of the same coin – they mutually and dynamically ‘co-form’ and ‘in-form’ each other, and so co-evolve symbiotically. They constitute a ‘dialectical singularity’ which is brought into ‘harmony’ through mutual self-sovereignty (cf. Yin-Yang; i.e. black and white dynamically interacting with each other at the same time, without either diminishing in identity or the two combining to become a ‘middle’ grey). In this dynamic, both social cohesion and individual sovereignty are both ‘strong and fluid’, at the same time — a concept often referenced in Daoist philosophy using the metaphor of water. I believe it is this perpetual dynamic which leads to the anti-fragility of a human social system. I further believe, it leads to the perpetual emergence of one’s sense of self and one’s sense of identity.

The mutual self-sovereignty challenge

Even solving the centralisation problem — of hard money or more broadly — would not be enough. We need to go further and address ‘the mutual self-sovereignty’ challenge, which can be thought of as:

Not only do I need a viable option of not having to participate in any particular socially mediated ‘game’ played by a particular set of rules, I also need to be able to, easily and permissionlessly, change the rules of the game (i.e. create a forked version — preferably not a sh*tty/scammy one) and invite others to play, or — just as easily and permissionlessly — be able to invent an entirely new game.

Furthermore, and equally importantly, in all such games the rules (i.e voluntary and mutually enabling constraints) must be enforceable and policed in an emergent and self-organising manner by the participants — governance of the people, by the people, for the people — and the rules must respect relativity (i.e. multiple relativistic timelines) — global consensus should not be necessary. Otherwise, we inexorably end up back at the centralisation problem.

All of which means that Bitcoin and Ethereum — specifically their underpinning blockchain technology — are not going to take us where we need to go, in order to address our most pressing global and local challenges. This is because they are not sufficiently workable and do not go far enough although they will have been critical and essential catalysts. Even those who were initially inspired by the distributed ledger technology (DLT) of Bitcoin, as a means of addressing the challenges of enabling a radically new peer-to-peer (P2P) sociopolitical economy — which motivated some in the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities — are now having to recognise, and to concede, these limitations. Hence, the sense of malaise and disillusionment among the Ethereum and Ethereum-esque developers who are not in it for the money.

Holochain and the Post-monetary Economy

Holochain, on the other hand, will take us where we need to get to. It is the first technology, in human history, which genuinely addresses the mutual self-sovereignty challenge, completely and at any scale — in fact, it is inversely scalable, its efficiency and efficacy improve as network size increases — and as an integral component of the MetaCurrency and Ceptr projects, it also pre-dates both Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Holochain provides a bio-mimicry inspired, software-based, enabling social technology — a pattern, if you will — from which can emerge anarchy — life without mass intermediation as a necessity. Thus empowering us to move to a post-monetary epoch with, for example, a multitude of asset-backed mutual credit (crypto)currencies — which on Holochain are natively inter-operable — using a much broader definition of currency (i.e. a formal symbol system for shaping, enabling, and measuring flows — e.g. of value, promises or reputation). A much more enlightened interpretation of Hayekian thinking, I would suggest, than the neo-liberalism version.

A value flow, of any kind, must first be acknowledged and recognised before it can be managed for the better — making visible only GDP-related flows has been a disaster for humanity and the planet, if not potentially catastrophic. Then, and only then, can we begin the work of reinforcing or amplifying interrelated positive flows and mitigating — hopefully eliminating — interrelated negative flows, in an emergent and self-organising way. Thus we can form the basis on which more meaningful, and more humane, wealth and prosperity can be created for the many, perhaps even, for all.

Mass Disintermediation

Despite its long history, for most people, the economic and sociopolitical revolution Holochain will induce will seem like it happened overnight. This is because it is an open source software solution taking place in a digitalised world. It can be deployed at speed, at scale, and at zero marginal cost, using the full range of computational device types from a Raspberry Pi, to a smartphone, to a tablet, or a laptop — even a server — using software development languages and tools which produce secure, compact and fast web and native apps.

The first hApp (Holochain dApp) to be built — using Rust and WASM — is Holo, an hApp for hosting hApps which includes the first ever mutual credit cryptocurrency called Holo Fuel, to reimburse Holo hosts — who with Holo, host hApps using the spare computation and storage capacity on their own devices. This enables hApps to be accessed using a standard browser — such as Holochain favoured Mozilla’s Firefox — through the web, without any change in the user experience. However, even this hosting can be avoided, since any device running Holochain is natively both a user and a host. Holo’s purpose then is to provide a bridge between the current server-based web and the potential longer term server-less — because it is peer-to-peer — Holochain alternative. Ultimately, it should be possible to integrate mesh networkingtoo, which would mean a genuinely and fully distributed internet and web.

Furthermore, Holochain’s data integrity model supports mutual self-sovereignty by having an agent-centric orientation, using sourcechains (think, agent owned hashchains), digital signatures, and validatingdistributed hash tables (think, BitTorrent and GitHub), rather than a data-centric orientation. Thus fully returning value realisation and ownership, as well as privacy and confidentiality, to those actually creating the value locallyrather than intermediaries, representatives, executives or organisation-owners, seeking to extract and monetise it.

The Ultimate Question

Once workable, practical and ubiquitous, mutual self-sovereignty — as a movement — will redefine every dimension of our lives — social, political, economic, artistic and cultural. Most profoundly, it will completely change the nature of the stories we tell ourselves and each other in order to navigate our lives, both intra and inter generationally. In doing so, along with the societal implications of advanced, model-free, deep reinforcement learning AI — not to mention Ceptr and Ceptr-based AI — we will ultimately re-conceive and therefore redefine what we believe it truly means to be human — in the 21st century.

Disclosure: I am financially and philosophically invested in Ceptr/Holochain/Holo. I have never invested in Bitcoin, any alt-coin or crypto asset.

Photo by Freddie Collins on Unsplash

Thanks for reading.

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Further reading:

Ceptr/Holochain/Holo Whitepapers

Antonopoulos, M. (2016). The Internet of Money: A collection of talks by Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Volume 1. Merkle Bloom.

Antonopoulos, M. (2017). The Internet of Money Volume Two: A collection of talks by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Merkle Bloom.

Ammous, S. (2018). The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking. John Wiley & Sons.

* Special thanks to Tone Vays and Murad Mahmudov for so freely sharing their intellectual musings with the public.

The post Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum — a fairer and more just post-monetary sociopolitical economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A deep dive into Holochain – what some are calling an evolution on blockchain technology, operating “in parallel to BitTorrent to power fully distributed apps”

Continuing our coverage of Holochain, the following analysis was written by Tristan Roberts and was originally published in Crypto Insider.

Tristan Roberts: Bitcoin made the impossible a reality, and Ethereum aimed to take that same utility into other domains. Artificial intelligences need not beholden to their human masters, and global organizations no longer need be at the mercy of a handful of executives. Truly cooperative, decentralized organizations seem to be just on the edge of becoming a reality.

However, despite all the possibilities that blockchain technology has teased us with, we’ve already started to see limitations: seemingly innocuous apps like CryptoKitties have made the Ethereum network grind to a halt, and multi-signature wallets have been accidentally, irrevocably locked. There are a lot of reasons why blockchains suck, but that topic is for another article. Instead we’ll see how scaling limitations can be overcome, with a particular focus on Holochain.

EoS, BitLattice, and Holochain are all examples of an evolution on blockchain technology. Technically, they are not even blockchains at all. Rather than a linear sequence of transactions – a series of ‘blocks’ – they are more like a mesh of transactions. They all provide cryptographic control of information, but none of them require nearly as much storage and processing power as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

This next generation of crypto-networks have some parallels to how Einstein uppercut Newton. Rather than spend huge amounts of energy to construct an objective reality, these fledgling networks have a more relativistic perspective. Data is verified locally, rather than through global consensus mechanisms that make a linear, absolute sequence of events.

Your dear author has quested across the globe in search of what is ‘next’, and nothing seems to answer that question as thoroughly as Holochain.

Holochain is not a blockchain. It’s more like “git repositories for each agent which can be published, shared, synchronized or merged via a BitTorrent-like DHT (Distributed Hash Table)”. This shift to ‘agent-centrism’ rather than ‘data-centrism’ is important. Each application has its own Holochain, and each agent has their own chain. Rather than spending an absurd amount of energy to craft a single record of events, Holochain allows people to write anything to their own chain. However, transactions that violate the rules of the application (such as me saying that you gave me all your tokens) won’t be propagated by the network.

What does this mean to real people? Well, imagine Facebook without Zuckerburg sucking up all the wealth. Users get paid for their posts and for the data they generate – if they opt in to their data being sold. Imagine Uber owned by the drivers and riders; AirBnb owned by the hosts and guests. Strangers can interact collaboratively in a high-trust manner, without a profit-seeking corporation sucking up all of the ‘value’ it can.

Holochain is not just a way of verifying and controlling data. It is also a way of hosting that data as well: Ethereum meets the Inter-Planetary File System. When a request is made to see new messages on Holochain’s Twitter-killer, Clutter, the data is sourced from nearby nodes and comes in gradually like flowing water rather than being delivered in a single dump from a centralized database.

When you add something to a holochain, you sign it, append it to your own chain (like in Hashgraph, the latest entry is hashed to confirm the whole history is valid), and submit it to the Distributed Hash Table, which makes sure it conforms to that chain’s rules. You are also receiving and checking other people’s transactions in the process. Each application is its own Holochain, and a cell phone can easily act as a node for multiple Holochain apps.

Yes, there will be an ICO. Holo, the creator of the open-source Holochain, is framing it as an “initial community offering”. Unlike most ICO’s, Holo has taken great effort for this offering to be not just legally compliant, but perhaps even ethical. One of the founders, Arthur Brock, makes a solid point: most blockchain enthusiasts deride ‘fiat’ currencies as coming from nothing. But if a credit – say, a bitcoin – is made without a corresponding debit – then it is also coming from nothing, and is just as aptly labelled ‘fiat’ as notes from the Federal Reserve.

Holo is taking a different route. The credits that they offer during their ICO will be matched 1:1 to debits for their organization. Their organization will alleviate this massive deficit through a 1% transaction fee on the network. Similarly, each user is able to be either negative or positive, however, a much smaller debt limit than the Holochain organization.

Much of Holochain’s core infrastructure is already in place – proof-of-concept applications are already running. Thus, they are framing this as an ‘initial community offering’ – seeking enough Ethereum in order to make the community grow organically over time, rather than simply hoarding more Ethereum than they could ever hope to responsibly use like some upstarts.

Holo has already had a very successful crowdfund on IndieGoGo, primarily offering lightweight computers to act as nodes in the network. Much like Ethereum’s ICO, Holochain’s token offering keeps getting pushed back; perpetually just 2 weeks away. You can stay posted here.

If you are just interested in making mad returns on your cryptoinvestments, the remainder of this article is probably not for you. However, if you have a gut feeling that sexy distributed networks might just change how we interact with each other for the better: read on.

Metatcurrency Project & Ceptr

Holochain stems from a decade-old project re-evaluating some of the basic fundamentals of how we interact with each other. Theis Metacurrency Project in turn gave birth to Ceptr, a re-imagining of computer systems, based on mimicing biological processes rather than using cold, hard, centralized logic. The hope is that Ceptr will sprout out of Holochain, which the group believes is a necessary foundation for their loftier ambitions.

The Metacurrency Project’s starting point is viewing the universe as being made of language. Language is made of:

• Carriers, such as paper, lightwaves, soundwaves, and electricity
• Receptors, which transforms signal A on carrier X into signal B on carrier Y e.g. the ear transforms soundwaves into neural impulses, a microphone transforms soundwaves into electrical impulses, a speaker transforms electrical impulses into soundwaves, a pen transforms muscular movements into writing.
• Protocols, the code, for example, binary
• Signals, the patterns themselves

There are levels here. It’s a fractal. If you read this sentence on a screen, there were the electrons that made light, light that made a letter, letters made words, words made sentences. The receptors are lightweight virtual machines. These are autonomous. Receptors are composed of other receptors. Receptors hold both code and data. Branches of the tree hold data-types (e.g. integer) and data.

What data-type is it receptive to? What data-type does it output? This builds meaning into the computing stack at the lowest level possible

You can’t store meaningless data. You can store an age, or a shoe size, or something like that. You have to say the meaning of it.

These self-describing trees with data incorporated can use different protocols, but reduce to one big interoperable, mashable system.

How might you see this principles actually bring value to your life? Imagine mashing together your emails, facebook feeds, tweets, texts into a single stream. Without organization, this would be a mess of information. However, an intelligent system could start to organize the flow of information; managing workflow with ticketing scheduling. Once the workflow is defined, currencies and wealth can be built on top. In many ways, currencies are used to prioritize how we spend our attention. Currently, Facebook and Twitter manage our feeds for us. They have their own motivations which are not always in harmony with our own well being.

In the same way there is a constellation of protocols, there are a constellation of currencies: for example, we have all probably used our reputations in some way to get money.

Ceptr is a protocol for protocols. It’s a low-level, fundamental protocol for how to structure data, organize processing, and communicate. In other words: TCP/IP for wealth.

Is system-wide consensus really needed for a simple transaction between two individuals? In Holochain’s agent-centric approach, each user marks the transaction in their ledger, and this is made public for those who actually need to know. False transactions are not allowed to propagate through the network, and those who make fraudulent claims are eventually pushed out of the network.

The MetaCurrency project rejects the deeply seated idea that scarcity is a necessary for wealth. “Rather than trying to make one global, anonymous, digital cash, we are interested in building a rich ecosystem of interoperable currencies.”

Non-fiat system of money

One of the most notable ways in which this group diverges from typical understanding of money is the use of ‘mutual credit’. As mentioned earlier, most currencies, including Bitcoin, are based on fiat. They mint the tokens by a line of cod, and trade the resulting tokens that are backed by nothing. This requires global consensus of the state of the ledger. This cannot be done on a Holochain, where local versions of the ledger fall out of sync by design (everyone has their own ledger, in other words). You can’t track the coins. But you can still implement money if you re-consider what money is; a non-fiat kind of money.

Mutual credit systems has been around for centuries. In a mutual credit system, units of currency are issued when a participant extends credit to another user in a standard spending transaction. Picture a new mutual credit currency with all accounts having a zero balance. The first transaction could look like this: Alice pays Bob 20 credits for a haircut. Alice’s account now has -20, and Bob’s has +20.

So instead of coins being issued backed by nothing, they are issued by the peer, in arrangement with another peer, by creating liability/debt. “Managing the currency supply in a mutual credit system is about managing credit limits — how far people can spend into a negative balance. Different systems set different rules about this, ranging from everyone having the same limit (e.g. 100 credits), to having NO limits and leaving the choice up to each person as to whether they want to extend more credit to someone deep in debt.”

Ceptr’s ontology of ‘wealth’ is slightly unusual; when they say their tech can measure currencies, that includes any resource. AirBnB reputation is a currency. A movie that has a high IMDB rating is wealthy in that sense. A college degree is a form of wealth. And of course, traditional paper money is a currency.

Too narrow a view of wealth is what causes negative externalities. You burn coal to make money, but ruin the air; you didn’t have good air on your balance sheet.

Wealth is currently one-dimensional. Ceptr is trying to build a more complex, expressive idea of wealth, analogous to the shift from oral knowledge to written. Wealth in their terms can be subjective/expressive, like satisfaction. The proposed system allows any receptor to make a statement, then consensus is negotiated. If they don’t come to consensus, that’s fine, they fork, or cancel the transaction. Each node has full authority to process its own transactions.

If Alice receives a transaction request from Bob, she checks his signed transaction chain to arrive at the current state of his ledger, and “If both nodes are in an appropriate state which allows the current transaction, then they countersign the transaction and append to their respective chains.”

When your node appends a mutually validated and signed transaction to its chain, it has updated its local state and is able to represent the integrity of its data locally. As long as each transaction (link in the chain) has valid linkages and countersignatures, we can know that it hasn’t been tampered with.

Most distributed apps have no need for consensus with the whole world. If I want to book your room, you & I have to make an agreement, no more. This seems to me a more in line with decentralization than what Ethereum or Bitcoin can provide.

If you’d like to learn more, a solid section of links is provided below. More than all of this technical knowledge, however, the reason why I support Holochain is its community. It is both literally and figuratively a magical group of people. When the authors met them in San Francisco, they were literally living cave like rooms, no bigger than the size of a bed. None of the people seemed to be there to get wealthy: all of them were passionate about building something better. Of restoring the internet to its former glory, before behemoths sucked up all the value.

RESOURCES

– Holochain Greenpaper

– Mutual Credit: Currency without Consensus

– Holochain Gitub Repo

– Holochain Overview <10 Minutes

– Two short videos for understanding what a receptor is: [1] [2]

–  Video on receptor-based computing

–  An hour presentation on Ceptr.

Note: I have not received any compensation from Holo other than a lovely meal at their former group home – the Holodeck – and a deep meaningful gaze into their spokesperson Matt Schutte’s eyes. \International pirate of intrigue Conor O’Higgins contributed substantially to this article.

This article has been edited publication to reflect the distinction between Holo and Holochain. It is republished in the P2PF blog with the author’s explicit permission.

Featured image from Ibrahim Boran on Unsplash

The post What could come after blockchain technology? The what and why of Holochain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Holochain : The Blockchain picks up a Dimension

Jamie Klinger: Bitcoin’s central mechanism — the Blockchain — is a monumental achievement in computer science. And from that central achievement, many other cryptocurrencies have emerged attempting to improve the model in one way or another. Holochain has come along to further decentralize, maximize efficiency, and allow for all types of interfaces and applications to be built with it.

Holochain harnesses the parallelism of BitTorrent to power fully distributed apps.

Holochain is a data integrity engine for distributed apps

An Engine is “a machine with moving parts that converts power into motion.” (Source: Google)

Data Integrity is what blockchains and torrents have been doing. They make certain that the data on my computer is the same as the data on your computer. They make certain that the order of the data is exactly the same, otherwise there would be a malfunction.

Distributed Apps are apps that run locally on your personal device (as opposed to in the cloud).

https://www.pexels.com/u/lumariia/

A centralized app like Snapchat offers you a small file (the app) to download that sends data through centralized servers.

A decentralized app like TenX runs on a decentralized blockchain (Ethereum).

A distributed app would run locally on your personal device and would offer peer-to-peer connections.

So if Snapchat were a distributed app, you and your friends would all have the (d)app on your phone, and when you send a photo, it would be sent directly to your friends and only to your friends. No intermediary servers. No intermediary blockchain.

Another way of seeing distributed apps are as scripts (executed code) that hook into distributed databases, compiling data.

Holochain allows you to build interoperable apps for communication

https://www.pexels.com/u/gratisography/

If you want to build a Twitter clone on Holochain (which, incidentally, its core team has already started, and it’s called “Clutter”), you decide on the rules for message size, hashtags, and whatever other parameters are important to you. Maybe you decide that for your specific Twitter app, it is crucial to segregate posts by the person’s color preference, so in the creation of your app, you hold a sign-up requirement for people to share their favorite color.

Now, when you post a poll and people begin to respond, you can have their answers sorted automatically by the respondent’s favorite color.

Ok, so you made Twitter with color preferences, we’ll call it Color-Twitter. That’s not the most useful feature in my opinion, so I make a poll asking people to vote on a more useful parameter and gather statistical information. The group votes and they choose age. We then request to the creator of the app to add in this parameter to Color-Twitter. Here’s what happens next.

https://www.pexels.com/u/sebastian/

The app creator likes your idea

Congratulations! The app creator wants to integrate your update! They build the new functionality into the app, but since it is a distributed system, everybody who is using the platform needs to download the latest version.

The founder will run both versions (and hopefully many people will do the same to facilitate the transition) where the users who have upgraded will leave one final tweet saying, “I no longer post here. Find me as HonestlyJamieK on ColAge-Twitter, follow this link.”

Some users may choose to stay behind and continue using Color-Twitter. They will not be able to interact with ColAge-Twitter accounts. But it could be possible in the future that ColAge-Twitter accounts can interact on the old chains of users still running Color-Twitter. This is because the parameters for Color-Twitter have been met by all users, but the parameters of ColAge-Twitter have not been met by all users.

Color-Twitter can only exist as long as there are users running that specific app. If all of Color-Twitter users go offline and/or upgrade to ColAge-Twitter, it will no longer be accessible.

Users who have chosen to use ColAge Twitter are now required to register their age before being able to join..

Once Ceptr — a parent project encompassing Holochains and related tech that would further simplify interoperability — is integrated, it could be fully possible that if another application already holds the information required by this app, Color-Twitter could automatically make a request for access to this parameter. This can be looked at a little bit like an auto-fill feature. In other words, by filling out your age once, you might never have to fill it out again, you would only need to approve access to that information by a specific app that you downloaded.

https://www.pexels.com/u/pixabay/

The app creator does not like your idea

If the creator does not believe that this is the vision of their system, they can refuse to upgrade and remain with Color-Twitter.

Now, the same thing happens as before except that the founder of Color-Twitter is the one who is left behind. I can take the original app’s code, fork it, add the parameter of age, and launch it in holochain as my separate app. People can now use my app to broadcast tweets too if they choose.

Just like in the other example, if my new app follows all of the rules of the Color-Twitter, when someone broadcasts on the ColAge-Twitter app, they can (if they choose) simultaneously broadcast on the Color-Twitter app. As long as the rules of all the apps validation rules (color for Color-Twitter, color+age for ColAge Twitter) are met, you can broadcast across as many apps as you are running; the holochain-equivalent Facebook, Flickr, Slack, etc.

https://www.pexels.com/u/pixabay/

Distributed, not decentralized

Want to post on the Color-Twitter? I hope you’re prepared to share the network load. Holochain apps will be light enough to run on your cell phone and will be efficient enough to only be grabbing the information you request at any given time.

If the system was decentralized, we would require upgraded nodes for ColAge-Twitter to be able to run. With a distributed system, it is entirely individualized and is up to the user base to voluntarily follow along. However, if your dApp is financially sustainable and you want to provide your users with access without requiring them to maintain a shard* of the system, there will be an opportunity for dApp maintainers to run nodes/servers.

*Each app consists of a series of shards distribted across the userbase sharing the serverload, comparable to torrent functionality

https://www.pexels.com/u/kaiquestr/

Lyft & Uber vs La’Zooz & Holochain

La’Zooz was a blockchain-based ridesharing app. It functioned as a self contained system. The network was supported by its mobile app users running the app and earning tokens, who were supported financially by token purchasers, which worked by having drivers accept the tokens. They completely removed the middleman that is Uber. While that project itself has fallen to the wayside, the idea of it seemed completely obvious to anybody who has ever played with blockchain — and it won’t be going away.

Why pay a middleman when the system can be taken entirely out of the hands of a corporation? There actually are a number of very important reasons why Lyft and Uber need to exist today and why the blockchain isn’t ready for them just yet. There are legal challenges, security issues, insurance requirements, etc., that make a purely peer-to-peer system for ridesharing a bit out of reach. But in a few years, we can expect smart contracts to enter the equation and solve many of these problems.

Decentralized and/or Distributed reference systems are right around the corner. We can create parameters for verification of proper insurance, background checks, and any other requirements for potential drivers. This would function similarly to a smart contract, allowing for users to move through to the next level of verification once accepted through the former.

And once the Uber-clone is up and running, somebody can decide to fork it and generate an eco-friendly version which would only support drivers using electric cars. Eco-Uber might cost more, but it would offer a new parameter to its participants.

https://www.pexels.com/u/gratisography/

There Are Too Many Apps!

After Eco-Uber started, somebody created Red-Uber for red cars and Blue-Uber for blue cars. If the driver is subscribed to the Mass-Join-Drivers App, and fits the appropriate driver parameters, they can automatically (with permissions) becomes a driver for all of the latest apps.

For users, imagine someone now has a list of options to choose from (Red-Uber, Blue-Uber, etc) and it’s just too many unimportant choices for them. They don’t care about who drives them from point A to B, they just want to get there quickly.

Just like with Color-Twitter and ColAge-Twitter, if you as a broadcaster meet all of the requirements, you can broadcast to whomever you like, even multiple applications simultaneously.

So the user sends out their lift request to all of the appropriate driving apps. Once the first driver responds to the call, it will ping the user and then automatically cancel all of the other lift requests.

Holochain is like having access to all of the capabilities of all of the Internet apps simultaneously without needing an API, because the languages are entirely compatible. Holochain is the equivalent of having an IFTTT layer built underneath the entire Internet.

It is important to note that some of the deeper features described in this article will require self-describing protocols which have been built into Ceptr, a highly related but (currently) separate sister project.

The Ultimate Dashboard

Today, we are forced to settle for what Facebook’s algorithm decides to show us. Our capabilities for manipulating our feed are extremely limited. With Holochain, we are only limited to the parameters set by the applications. And if you and your friends don’t like those parameters, you can change them with a forked app!

And because the information exists on a layer on top of the app and isn’t held proprietarily, you can mix and match your feeds to your heart’s content. I might create dashboards for all different circumstances and be able to jump between them seamlessly. Everything dog-related from all of my app channels from users who have posted at least 10 times could be one of my dashboards. All pizza-related posts by users with a high reputation level who live within 10km of me could be another dashboard.

Because the information isn’t forced to sit uniquely in each application, the end user can create a customized experience with the parameters of their choosing. The possibilities for data mining and consensus building are endless. End the data-monopolies of Facebook and Google. If we choose to use Holochain, we choose how our information is shared and empower the commons to utilize it for collective growth and understanding.

Sources:

• CEPTR Home
  
• Holochains for Distributed Data Integrity
  
• Arthur Brock’s Personal Web Site | Arthur Brock 

Lead image: https://www.pexels.com/u/invisiblepower/

The post What is Holochain and why does it matter? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A holochain application is run entirely by the people who use it.
This enables direct communication, without the need for corporate web servers.

For any particular use case, developers can create fit-for-purpose solutions that strike the right balance between minimizing risks, reducing costs, and optimizing speed.

Relative to other distributed application infrastructures such as Blockchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum), Holochain applications operate exponentially faster and cheaper. Our lightweight architecture is perfect even for mobile phones and other low capacity devices.

A series of explanatory videos featuring Arthur Brock. You can read more about the project, in this link: Holochains for distributed data integrity.

How Holo Works

How the Holo ecosystem works

The post What is the difference between Blockchain and Holochain? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Playing for Team Human is systems thinker, currency designer, and social hacker Arthur Brock. Art joins Douglas to talk about how currency is less a thing you own and more a way of sharing. It’s a conversation that poses a crucial question of both money and cryptocurrencies alike–how might we design new exchanges that embody values of social and environmental betterment, rather than extraction and exploitation?

Rushkoff begins today’s show with a monologue about Instagram’s recent addition of an algorithm that removes mean comments from users’ threads. While on the surface the idea appears to be an attempt by Instagram to quell trolling, Rushkoff questions both the means and intentions. Is Instagram merely building an algorithmically programmed version of “see no evil, hear no evil”… or worse?

Team Human is produced each week thanks to listener subscriptions. Join us on patreon at patreon.com/teamhuman. There you’ll find a variety of subscription levels with exclusive patron rewards.

The music you heard on this show is thanks to the generosity of Mike Watt, R.U. Sirius, Josh Sitronand the Team Human band, and Fugazi.

Photo of Art by Twah Doughtery

Slider Photo: Igor Ovsyannykov

The post Team Human: Arthur Brock Reclaims Currency appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Summer 2017 Residencies

San Francisco CA ~ Ashland OR ~ Albuquerque NM

At Ceptr we’re building a platform for distributed applications that will power new forms of human collaboration and help the world successfully navigate the daunting challenges we face. Designed using the organizational patterns found in nature, we’re opening new possibilities for more more equitable and regenerative forms of governance and wealth creation.

You don’t program? Cool! Because the project needs all sorts of skills; storytellers, marketeers, organizers, community developers and more.

Click here to apply

We are looking for summer residents to join our team as we build and launch initial applications, share discoveries, and grow a movement that will change the planet.

As a Resident of the Ceptr team you will help awaken people’s minds to possibilities that they’ve never imagined and create the tools that will make that future a reality.

As an Open Source project, Ceptr is not a profit-driven organization and has no short-term revenue. Most people participate as volunteers. We operate as a “do-acracy,” empowering people to participate in whatever ways they see fit within self-directed teams.

We are implementing new ways of recognizing the contributions of our community members and supporting them and their growth.

Residencies include room and board. There will be domain-specific teams located in San Francisco (CA), Albuquerque (NM), and Ashland (OR).

More important than specific job skills or experience is communication, competence and commitment. We can provide training and development on particular skills, although it is also great if you’re already bringing some good ones.

If selected, this could easily become a career path as most will advance toward positions of leadership or take their training out into the world to start their own entrepreneurial ventures.

If you know of people that are good candidates for a residency, please let them know about the opportunity.

Types of Residencies ~ Ways to Participate

There are many ways to participate and contribute. Below are some that our teams have identified, maybe you can bring some of the skills, talents, and interests we need.

Software Development: Skills/Interests in Go, JavaScript, protocols, blockchain, or distributed computing.

Writing, Blogging, Editing: Good writing skills. Actually enjoy writing and editing. Research, develop, and write engaging blog posts, website content, video scripts, crowdfunding copy. Edit new and previously written documents and prepare them for public distribution. Find supporting images and/or work with photographer to capture useful visual content.

Executive Assistant, Admin & Organization: Competent, detail oriented, and excited to learn. Support founders and team leaders on a wide range of tasks including training, calendar management, travel logistics, email communication, editing, and report writing.

Marketing, Social Media & PR: Good communication skills, facility with many social media tools. Support for the social media strategy. Listen to conversations, analyze data, engage with audience, track questions, monitor influencers and hashtags, identify opportunities. Help design strategic vision and lay groundwork for broadcasting that vision.

Crowdfunding, Communications & Outreach: Experience running a crowdfunding campaign. Coherency holder for one or two of our crowdfunding campaigns. Ability to communicate effectively with a team of broadly skilled individuals including writers, videographers, and marketing strategists to engineer a brilliant campaign in a short amount of time.

Graphic Design: Skills in visual communication and graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. Work with our UX, Web, and Marketing teams to create style guides, branding, and online experiences that are compelling, yet intuitive. Your work will be critical for both our products and community relations.

Web Site Development: HTML, JavaScript, Jekyll, and basic layout & design. Create websites for Ceptr and for specific projects and applications that are engaging and delightful. We are building new ways of computing, but many of these need to interface with or be marketed on the world wide web. Work with our graphic design and backend software development teams to drive engagement and adoption.

UX Design: Design and iterate on user-centered experiences. Expertise in UX software such as InVision, UXPin, Balsamiq, Framer.js, Quartz Composer, and the like is a must. Basic HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript skills are a plus. Design and deliver wireframes, user stories, user journeys, and mockups that lead to intuitive user experiences. Make strategic design and user-experience decisions related to core, and new, functions and features. Collaborate with Graphic Designers, User Interface Designers, Web Developers and Software Engineers.

Infrastructure and Deployment Engineering: Automating cloud and metal infrastructures with tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, Storage, Networking, Security.

Test Engineering: Creating test suites for automated distributed app test-driven development processes. Holochain application development includes a testing-harness to automate tests across many automatically instantiated instances of the application. This work includes developing and enhancing that testing-harness and it’s Docker integration. Expertise in Test-driven/Behavior-driven development, Docker, go, unix system scripting all helpful.

Videographer, Video Editor: Natural storyteller with video filming and editing experience. Experience editing with Adobe Premier (preferred), Final Cut Pro or similar software. Create videos for social media, online education and community onboarding to help build understanding of – and nurture participation in – our work to re-design internet communication, collaboration, and work itself.

Animation; Illustration: Natural storyteller with experience in graphic illustration and/or digital animation. Experience creating 2d animations or motion graphics with After Effects or similar software. Illustration chops and experience with Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign a plus. Create video and web animations that help communicate world changing ideas and engage audiences..

Community Development, Event Organizing: Good communication skills, eagerness to learn and create value. Contribute to event organizing and production online and offline. Learn to produce e-learning materials in Learning Management Systems (LMS), be in service to the needs of people in the community. If proficient in the content, then contribute to forum moderation. Contribute to activities related to community development like potlucks, be-ops and others.

Apply now to our Summer 2017 Residency Program

The post This Summer, Build the Next Internet! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“At Ceptr we’re building a platform for distributed applications that will power new forms of human collaboration and help the world successfully navigate the daunting challenges we face. Designed using the organizational patterns found in nature, we’re opening new possibilities for more more equitable and regenerative forms of governance and wealth creation.

You don’t program? Cool! Because the project needs all sorts of skills; storytellers, marketeers, organizers, community developers and more. We are looking for summer residents to join our team as we build and launch initial applications, share discoveries, and grow a movement that will change the planet. As a Resident of the Ceptr team you will help awaken people’s minds to possibilities that they’ve never imagined and create the tools that will make that future a reality.

As an Open Source project, Ceptr is not a profit-driven organization and has no short-term revenue. Most people participate as volunteers. We operate as a “do-acracy,” empowering people to participate in whatever ways they see fit within self-directed teams.

Residencies include room and board. There will be domain-specific teams located in San Francisco(CA), Albuquerque(NM), and Ashland(OR). More important than specific job skills or experience is communication, competence and commitment. We can provide training and development on particular skills, although it is also great if you’re already bringing some good ones.

Types of Residencies – Ways to Participate

There are many ways to participate and contribute. Below are some that our teams have identified, maybe you can bring some of the skills, talents, and interests we need.

• Software Development – Skills/Interests in Go, JavaScript, protocols, blockchain, or distributed computing.
• Writing, Blogging, & Editing – Good writing skills. Actually enjoy writing and editing. Research, develop, and write engaging blog posts, website content, video scripts, crowdfuding copy. Edit new and previously written documents and prepare them for public distribution. Find supporting images and/or work with photographer to capture useful visual content.
• Executive Assistant, Admin & Organization – Competent, detail oriented, and excited to learn. Support founders and team leaders on a wide range of tasks including training, calendar management, travel logistics, email communication, editing, and report writing.
• Marketing, Social Media & PR – Good communication skills, facility with many social media tools. Support for the social media strategy. Listen to conversations, analyze data, engage with audience, track questions, monitor influencers and hashtags, identify opportunities. Help design strategic vision and lay groundwork for broadcasting that vision.
• Crowdfunding, Communications & Outreach – Experience running a crowdfunding campaign. Coherency holder for one or two of our crowdfunding campaigns. Ability to communicate effectively with a team of broadly skilled individuals including writers, videographers, and marketing strategists to engineer a brilliant campaign in a short amount of time.
• Graphic Design – Skills in visual communication and graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. Work with our UX, Web, and Marketing teams to create style guides, branding, and online experiences that are compelling, yet intuitive. Your work will be critical for both our products and community relations.
• Web Site Development – HTML, JavaScript, Jekyll, and basic layout & design. Create websites for Ceptr and for specific projects and applications that are engaging and delightful. We are building new ways of computing, but many of these need to interface with or be marketed on the world wide web. Work with our graphic design and backend software development teams to drive engagement and adoption.
• UX Design – Design and iterate on user-centered experiences. Expertise in UX software such as InVision, UXPin, Balsamiq, Framer.js, Quartz Composer, and the like is a must. Basic HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript skills are a plus. Design and deliver wireframes, user stories, user journeys, and mockups that lead to intuitive user experiences. Make strategic design and user-experience decisions related to core, and new, functions and features. Collaborate with Graphic Designers, User Interface Designers, Web Developers and Software Engineers.
• Infrastructure and Deployment Engineering – Automating cloud and metal infrastructures with tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, Storage, Networking, Security.
• Test Engineering – Creating test suites for automated distributed app test-driven development processes. Holochain application development includes a testing-harness to automate tests across many automatically instantiated instances of the application. This work includes developing and enhancing that testing-harness and it’s Docker integration. Expertise in Test-driven/Behavior-driven development, Docker, go, unix system scripting all helpful.
• Videographer, Video Editor – Natural storyteller with video filming and editing experience. Experience editing with Adobe Premier (preferred), Final Cut Pro or similar software. Create videos for social media, online education and community onboarding to help build understanding of – and nurture participation in – our work to re-design internet communication, collaboration, and work itself.
• Animation & Illustration – Natural storyteller with experience in graphic illustration and/or digital animation. Experience creating 2d animations or motion graphics with After Effects or similar software. Illustration chops and experience with Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign a plus. Create video and web animations that help communicate world changing ideas and engage audiences..
• Community Development, Event Organizing – Good communication skills, eagerness to learn and create value. Contribute to event organizing and production online and offline. Learn to produce e-learning materials in Learning Management Systems (LMS), be in service to the needs of people in the community. If proficient in the content, then contribute to forum moderation. Contribute to activities related to community development like potlucks, be-ops and others.”

Apply to the Summer 2017 Residency here.

More information can be found here.

Photo by Randy Wick

The post Summer 2017 residency program by the Ceptr team appeared first on P2P Foundation.