Can Technology Improve Trust?
This is essay #4 of 7 as part of The Tech Progressive Writing Challenge. Join the discussion with build_ in the Discord.
After cracking open the Messari Crypto Theses for 2022 (highly recommended), they open with a real heavy-hitter about the Collapse in Institutional Trust to set the stage from the Edelman Trust Barometer.
It’s eye opening to see what many of us may already suspect quantified in such a way where there is NO institution that is seen as both competent and ethical.
Get Angelo Alessio’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The hint between the lines of the remaining 122 pages of the report (again, well worth the time) from a Crypto Research Firm is that perhaps the trustless/brokerless nature of crypto could better enable an institution that is competent and ethical where “code is law” and the rules are clear. This author is cautiously optimistic that with the right people, foresight, and planning these institutions can be created as long as we recognize that it is still at the end of the day a new technology, not a solution. A technology, however, that is impacting the current landscape of almost every aspect of society at a seismic level.
New Territories
Web 3 has unleashed an entirely new landscape of use cases and possibilities that weren’t even possible before the its creation. Some examples:
- The OG Bitcoin — gives anyone with an internet connection to send currency from user to user on a peer-to-peer network without the need for intermediaries. Goodbye Western Union. This doesn’t even touch the more hotly debated store of value argument for which it also potentially becomes goodbye gold.
- Digitally verifiable proof of ownership for reproducible content via NFTs
- The possibility of quadratic funding and quadratic voting, a mathematically superior method to fund and vote for democratic communities.
- Self-repaying loans like Alchemix and ArkaDiko. Note these are still largely unproven but sure enough being used in practice.
- Buying an NBA team as a fan-owner.
- Raising $40 million in 7 days in a bid to buy the U.S. Constitution.
These are just some of the many examples that help illustrate just how new this territory really is. And any new territory is going to have its fair share of dangers and perils.
Current Troubles
Anyone who has been dabbling in the web3 space for a bit has most likely seen their fair share of thorny situations. Whether it be very sophisticated Discord phishing schemes, to fund siphoning, to simply losing private keys, we’ve all heard of the horror stories. These are problems, that like any other industry, won’t be disappearing overnight. When considered holistically, they offer a cautionary offset to the borderline euphoric optimism you may typically see on crypto twitter.
Cautious Optimism
Somewhere in between the moon club and the boomer knee-jerk dismissal of crypto lies a tempered stance that recognizes that like most technology, web3/crypto is simply another tool that provides additional leverage into the pursuit of something bigger, perhaps the foundation for an institution that fits the bill as both competent and ethical that instills trust in its stakeholders.
