Summer of Protocols

Weird how everyone laments trust in institutions is eroding but outside blockchain world now body does the brain-dead obvious thing and work on building trustworthy institutions ground-up from assumptions of trustlessness 

Our way may not turn out to be the best way but at the moment it’s the only actual attempt

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

The “restore trust in institutions” crowd tends to focus on emphasizing historic eras of trustworthiness as a recoverable ideal when in fact they were usually a combination of the cheap idealism of good times (zirpy saintliness) plus simple lack of scrutiny

They tend to hope loudly for a better class of elites but humans don’t really change. Tech evolves to make it easier for “the wrong people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons” more often.

This is true of all ideas of “better”

It seems ironic because crypto is so venal, degenerate, and scammy. But that’s actually the right set of initial conditions. We have nowhere to go but up. High-minded idealistic sermonizing has nowhere to go but down