Sup, mates:
There's a series of lectures about the blockchain history and its current state at Berkley. They tell the not so known story of the developments that lead to Bitcoin. Since the cypherpunk movement till today.
You might be interested in knowing for instance that Bitcoin wasn't the first cryptocurrency or the first one to use a proof of work system or the first one to use decentralized mining. Just like the eureka moments have been proven to be periods of relaxation that let out an answer constructed with a lot of effort, the same goes for cryptocurrencies. It wasn't a moment of inspiration but of a combination of past efforts.
In the past desires of people who envisioned a future similar to this lies the future. Just like with the AI winter, there was also a Cryptocurrency winter.
If you are interested you can wath this series of 12 lectures.
Starting with lecture 1. Right here.
Lecture 1: History: From the Cypherpunk Movement to JPMorgan Chase
Now, here me out. Here's the theory.
There's a fundamental problem that has been roaming around since life's beginnings: Devaluation.
Everything devalues. Your money, your time, your life, your computer.
Be it by new competing elements, or by wear and tear.
One of the first solutions was to find new uses for old things. Recycling. One of the first mechanisms in the "cryptospace" was p2p.
P2P started in the 1970's. People kept using it and you can see an example here in an old project called MojoNation.
Watch this video in DefCon 8, year 2000, where you are gonna basically hear about something like Bitcoin but 8 years before Satoshi's paper.
Mojo Nation: Building a next generation distributed data service
Distributing storage, computational power, and work by creating a currency to incentivize growing the network. It never gained liquidity but their developers went to create things like BitTorrent and other projects.
So if we could put our devaluating machines to a good use. Then they would work for us and we could properly reward contributions of people in the field they desire to pursue. Absolut meritocracy.
This is the problem that people like Vitalik Buterin and Juan Bennett are trying to solve. How to value properly contributions without a judge. Objectivizing worth.
The next Internet Revolution | Juan Benet | TEDxSanFrancisco
Once you have a growing network and an incremental loop currency (A hoarders honey bag) the next thing is to create smart contracts to eliminate people from the equation of consequences. So an automatic betting system.
The next step is an oracle. Something that pegs the value of objects and properly assigns value in the real world to the digital.
Next a contribution valuation system. If you have 24 developers working on a project and the 25 developer comes in and does the job, he has to share his part with everyone else. The early adopters get rewarded just for being early in the game.
Finally, augmented reality.
Nothing of this is new. People want a world where rules hold and feedback is immediate.
The thing is being constructed is a
Gamified world.