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Chelsea Palmer is an open source educator and free agent in the cryptocurrency ecosystem that tweets (too) to @IMmsGNU.
The following is an exclusive contribution for the 2018 year of CoinDesk under consideration.
I think the majority can agree that it was a hellish year, in crypts and in general. The best way to reflect on the year could be to review our expectations as soon as we have entered it; to this end, I strongly recommend a review of the post "95 Crypto Theses" by Ryan Selkis.
Selkis was wise enough to deviate from the micro-predictions and instead focused on broad and conceptual observations that sound true regardless of where our current prices are. The most important thing is that his theses were modeled by the fundamental values of most crypto-decentralized: search for liberation, escape from censorship and bewilderment for the success of the centrally released XRP.
As Zach Harvey has already well outlined in this series, these values come from the encrypted roots of the cryptocurrency, which are crucial to stay in focus. Unfortunately, my biggest takeaway since 2018 was this: Progressive tricks were in full swing when the year started, and even when the opportunists fled the market crash, we are still surrounded by those who try to undermine the fundamental principles of our alleged revolution.
You do not have to worry about prices … until you do
My 2018 began with desperate angst for the huge crowd of scammers still in HODLing from the December highs. As a public educator in a small community, I was relieved when prices fell in February: we could breathe and take a break from telling all these noobs not to burn on the stove.
For most of the year, I ignored prices – as the market plunged again in June, I was busy bringing the absurd conference of my dreams to life, and we danced on the streets of Vancouver without a thought or a word about money.
However, even my punk ass was served by the brutal spiral at the end of this year, losing both my work in the industry and a large chunk of my savings in value. In the end I stopped fighting and I embraced the bear market for which, madly at first, I fled desperately.
I'm not alone in this: Crypto Twitter has become quieter, and those who are still around are resigned to continue building and learning for what could be another long winter. This is a perfect opportunity to reflect on the contemporary lessons that surround us if we hope to support the original dream of decentralizing social power.
Outgrowing Simple "Immutability"
In the middle of the year, Vlad Zamfir he began to firmly document a conversation he instigated for a while: how we can define and understand blockchain governance. From this emerged a lively community debate, with some notable contributions from CleanApp, Dean Eigenmann and Matthew Prewitt and Steven McKie.
The reason why I find this subject important enough to spend a huge chunk of my review summarizing is this: "blockchain governance capture," as defined by Vlad Zamfir, is not only theoretical, but is already manifesting itself in ecosystem policy.
Zamfir is a self-proclaimed unchanging cynic, but even those of us who consider him a strong point of this technology must accept that blockchains can not live only with immutability. In fact, the most shocking example of corporate acquisition attempts arose in 2018.
& # 39; We have captured your code; Sorry I do not mind
Ethereum Classic (ETC), the small but dedicated community that rejected Ethereum's 2016 hard fork after the DAO hack, is known for assessing the concept of immutability over almost everything else.
ETC was struck with a blatant corporate protocol capture attempt last month when ETCLabs, under the control of the Digital Finance Group, entered its proprietary access to the main ETC GitHub repository, so it quickly deleted all other owners to get only control of the main ETC code base.
I will give them shocked credit for the fact that they completely owned this coup – heck, they basically boasted about this. Stressing that nothing has technically violated the terms and conditions of GitHub, they boldly declared that they knew better than the community at large and therefore did not need to ask for their approval.
The community has gathered to successfully subvert this acquisition, but it is a cold lesson to end the year. I focus on this as a case study because I fear it is the logical conclusion of the power struggles of the year and a sign of further struggles to come.
Are we looking for new masters?
Social revolutions often fall prey to opportunists who convince others that intermediaries are not only a necessary evil, but precious leaders. When you look closely, these people are making money thanks to open source protocols, putting a strain on the ecosystem infrastructure and even taking into account community-driven intellectual property.
As much as I despise the ICO model, and I believe it is responsible for the swelling of optimistic optimism and the gloomy and gloomy capitulation that defined the 2018 markets, it presented a beautiful promise: you could raise funds without dirty traps and oppressive fine print of legacy business practices.
We must carefully examine the objective value added of private companies and the players of power within our industry. We must ask those who make use of every major new financial "win" and how each of these affects open public goods and decentralization.
It would be easy to build a new world that looks a lot like the old one, but I think we have enough collective ease and quite different opinions within the cryptocurrency ecosystem to push the temptation to simply raise new leaders to dominate us of us old ways.
If 2018 showed us anything, it is that we have tireless agitators in our ranks that will exchange the roles of leaders and informers, builders and pen-meters, in an endless cycle of growth. True innovation will require vigilance, persistence and often turbulence.
Even if it's a grueling job, it's much more rewarding than a brilliant new set of upgraded chains.
Have an opinion of 2018? CoinDesk is looking for proposals for our 2018 under consideration. News via e-mail [at] coindesk.com to learn how to participate.
Image of "Blockchain Angst" courtesy of Chelsea Palmer
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