This letter written by Salman Sadeghi is a response to Bitcoin Magazine’s letter entitled “Dear Iran, a letter from Bitcoin.”

Dear bitcoin

Congratulation on your victory in the war with central banks! This victory and your success as the first cryptocurrency of the world promise a new future for our old-fashioned financial world. I am a citizen of Iran, who has spent all his life living in Iran, and I want to take this moment to discuss why I, despite my heartfelt love for you, believe you cannot solve the problems of my country.

You came at a time when the Great Recession of 2008 had brought the banks and financial institutions to the brink of bankruptcy. Countless extravagances, risky investments, lending behind closed doors, along with the inherent contradictions of the capitalist economy, had once again emerged as a devastating crisis. As the lenders of the last resort, governments always support them to salve the nation’s financial wounds. The solution is always to devalue their debt, devalue money, and transfer bankruptcy to society. In the end, this is us, the masses, who pay the price for the stupidity and corruption of the central banks. That was not the first time that this, believe me, happened. As John MacAfee in his “Declaration of Currency Independence” wrote:

“The whole of civilization has quietly fallen under the influence of sovereign entities with the ability to control the value of expended work through the manipulation and control of currency”.

So you came with a solution in your heart: Let’s decentralize financial relations! Let's cut the hands of intermediaries and take back the state monopoly on the fabrication of money. We got your message. It was so revolutionary. We, as the people who are really tired of the Superpower’s sanctions and centralized economic policies, would better appreciate your novelty. But dear bitcoin, There are problems that make us frustrated with the dream that you can solve all our problems. I will mention some of them below.

You must know that a few mining pools have taken control of more than half of your mining process. Gervais, in “is bitcoin a decentralized currency” draws a similar conclusion. He indicates that only three centralized mining pools control more than fifty percent of the bitcoin network’s computing power. These mining pools have accumulated the computing power of those interested in you by providing profitable schemes. They are a potential threat to a genuinely decentralized distribution of power and responsibility in your network. So how someone expects that a country with more than 80 million population can trust a network of three Chinese mining pools?

Besides that, do you know Centralized Exchanges and Wallet providers that are hosting most of your coins can easily restrict users and manipulate their funds, remember what Bittrex did to Iranian users! Do you see how easily they make tremendous fluctuations in your exchange value when they own their user's funds?

Bittrex exchange disabled Iranian bitcoin accounts

Moreover, you know better than me, around 90 percent of your coins are previously mined. So now that mining is more pricy, How someone expects that we allocate all our resources, especially at this moment of power shortage in our country, to keep mining alive, especially at a time when the Chinese are no longer interested in this energy-consuming process, and American wealthiest are nagging about its environmental impacts?

Bitcoin, my Darling, Have you heard about the distribution of wealth in your community? Only for your information, I need to mention that independent researchers believe that the Gini coefficient of your community is even higher than the most totalitarian regimes of the world. For example, Manas and Parth Gupta, in “Gini Coefficient Based Wealth Distribution in the Bitcoin Network,” estimated the bitcoin Network’s GINI coefficient around 0.9, which indicates a tremendous inequality in the distribution of wealth. As you may know, The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the wealth inequality in a given community. In this measurement, one means that the total wealth is accumulated in the hands of one. You should know that this concentration of wealth would provide big actors total control of bitcoin’s supply and price. So believe me, if we want to keep a currency that can lose half of its value in a day for the pleasure of its big actors, Why don't we keep Rial, our poor national currency!

In addition, the libertarian rhetoric surrounding you promotes the fact that everyone can participate in your network, and there is no restriction for users’ movement. I wish it were true because in our out-of-date financial world central authorities can easily restrict users that they don’t like! Like what they did to Iran by economic sanctions. But the truth is not beautiful. As you know, Bitcoin transactions are publicly available, and every single coin’s expenditure can be publicly tracked. The government and entities can taint coins that are related to activities they do not like. Miners and individual users may stop interacting with taint coin owners, and it would devalue all the coins pertaining to that address. So you see, Central authorities and government can still exercise their power even in your semi-decentralized network! So, it is possible that in the future, the centralized institutions boycott our country again, this time in bitcoin transactions?

My lighthouse, Dear bitcoin

My beautiful but sad country suffers from countless fundamental problems, which are now exacerbated by the US sanctions and the pandemic. Of course, you can help us; your message to cut the hands of intermediaries and rebuild transparency and confidence with cryptography will be our beacon! We will do our best to spread the idea of decentralization of financial relations. But it is not you who can solve our problems, It is Us! believe me.

“We, the undersigned, will dedicate our lives building networks and systems that restore the Integrity of Value and directly challenge the authority of those who seek to destroy Value.” Declaration of Currency Independence

Your lover
Salli

Dear Bitcoin, A Letter From Iran! was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am writing these words at the time when in Turkey, our Western neighbor in Iran, more than 400,000 users have lost their crypto funds due to the shocking flee of young Thodex exchange CEO. In Iran, it is more like the calm before the storm: Although no one has escaped yet, the government has arrested Sina Stavi, the young CEO of Cryptoland exchange and the generous buyer of Jack Dorsey's first-ever NFT. We know that there is always a possibility of losing capital in the centralized exchanges as centralized systems intrinsically suffer a single point of failure. But this becomes even more frightening when lack of regulations and compatible infrastructures greatly increases the likelihood of failure.

Iran has a big share of the global cryptocurrency market. With the collapse of the stock and housing markets, many people have turned to cryptocurrencies. These, along with the fact that Iranian users cannot use global exchanges have increased the market volume of cryptocurrency exchanges in Iran. While today more than 24 exchanges are serving Iranian users, none have yet adapted government regulations. In fact, there is no clear law in Iran concerning cryptocurrencies. This increases the risks of using centralized exchanges in a country, Where, people, tired of never-repeal inflations and centralized economic policies, see cryptocurrencies as a lifeboat to rescue themselves from the inevitable fluctuations of the capitalist economy.

In an attempt to analyze the quality of Iran-based cryptocurrency exchanges, we at Coiniran conducted a research project to rank all exchanges which are operating in Iran. The aim was to analyze the quality of Iranian exchanges and introduce those with better qualities. Our first benchmark was published in the fall of 2020 and gained lots of attention locally and globally. In the first edition, we evaluated four Iranian exchanges with the highest market volume subject to various qualitative and quantitative metrics. At the time, we believed that the evaluation of a cryptocurrency exchange should not be only based on its market volume, but should be based on the quality of services and transparency of information in it. For this reason, we tried to develop a creative methodology in order to better evaluate exchanges. Now we are happy to announce that the second edition of our benchmark has developed its methodology and evaluates 24 exchanges according to more than sixty qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Coiniran Exchange benchmark

Hundreds of hours of research have been done to identify exchanges with higher qualities. While this benchmark evaluates all cryptocurrency exchanges which are operating in Iran, it can not introduce a suitable place for investment and trading activities. Who can guarantee that these newborn platforms with centralized architecture will never be attacked by black hackers or that their young CEOs will not flee the country with a suitcase full of private keys?

The aim of Coiniran research is to increase transparency and improve the performance of Iran-based cryptocurrency exchanges and not more!

With these lines in mind, we can answer the primary question of the text: which Cryptocurrency exchange to use in Iran? In fact, I want to explain how one would benefit more from the reading of the Coiniran benchmark report.

First, we should know all risks associated with using centralized exchanges. Actually, we need to know that the lack of government supports and the absence of determinable laws increases all the risks associated with the centralized mode of exchange. Second, we should become familiar with the decentralized methods of exchanging cryptocurrencies. There are many platforms on which users can exchange their crypto assets in an autonomous and decentralized manner. Generally, these so-called DEX exchanges do not restrict users due to their nationality or race. It means that Iranians can easily use these platforms and avoid using centralized exchanges. Finally, if one, aware of all the risks and familiar with the decentralized modes of exchange, still needs to use Iranian platforms, the Coiniran benchmark would be a very beneficial and in-depth reference for her to get informed about the quality of Iranian platforms.

After all, please keep in mind that this ranking does not indicate the permanent and inherent superiority of one exchange over other exchanges. It also does not introduce a suitable place for investment and daily tradings. The purpose of this study is to increase transparency and as a result, the quality of exchange services. It is true that some may be professional traders, but perhaps for most of the cryptocurrency enthusiasts in Iran, as the old saying goes, “Hodl” is still the best trading act in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Read more about the Coiniran benchmark here.

Coiniran Exchange benchmark

Which Cryptocurrency exchange to use in Iran was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Coiniran Cryptocurrency Exchange benchmark is a ranking methodology that the Coiniran research center has developed to analyze the quality of Iran-based Cryptocurrency Exchanges.

This research was revealed for the first time in November 2020, and the new version of it, the Spring Edition, also has been published. The purpose of this ranking is to increase transparency and improve the performance of Iranian Cryptocurrency Exchanges.

This ranking gives all Exchanges which are operating in Iran a quantitative score and a qualitative mark. In this article, we want to describe the Coiniran ranking methodology and discuss what was important for us in our mission to evaluate the quality of Iran-based Cryptocurrency Exchanges.

Market volume is misleading!

Many believe that exchanges with higher market volumes have better quality and thus are safer to use. But we know that exchanges can easily manipulate the liquidity and increase the volume on their platforms by using incentive mechanisms such as trading competitions and airdrops. This is to say that evaluating exchanges based solely on their market size could be misleading. We believe that the evaluation of exchanges should be based not only on their market volume but also on the quality of services and the transparency of information in it. In other words, to better analyze the quality of a Cryptocurrency exchange, a set of different metrics must be considered.

What should be important then?

In our methodology, we tried to evaluate exchanges from different points of view. In fact, The Coiniran benchmark consists of six independent metrics with subsequent weightings:

To ensure not one metric overinfluences the overall ranking, Each metric is converted into a series of points based on clearly defined criteria. To say, each metric consists of multiple sub-metrics.
In the following paragraphs, I will review the main metrics of the Coiniran benchmark one by one.

Legal Compatibility

We developed nine different sub-metrics to examine exchanges in terms of their legal compatibility. The graph below shows our legal metrics and their subsequent weightings.

Security

Security breaches on cryptocurrency exchanges are alarmingly common. Exchanges are key targets for hacking attacks. To evaluate the level of security exchanges provide for their users, a series of different metrics were developed. The graph below demonstrates our high-level security metrics and their subsequent weightings.

Data provision (API)

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. An API allows you to connect with your exchange and have access to real-time market data in the crypto space. It is an important issue for institutional and algorithmic traders. We developed nine sub-metrics to analyze the quality of the API of Exchanges.

Market quality

In order to provide a representative picture of what trading looks like in Exchanges, we adopted five different metrics concerning the quality of their Markets. Our aim was to identify Exchanges that behave differently from what we expect as a normal Market in the Cryptocurrency atmosphere.

User experience

The User experience is a user emotion and attitudes about working with the exchange platforms. It generally includes a user’s perceptions of systems aspects such as utility, ease of use, and efficiency. We designed seven metrics to have a good sense of how working with these platforms looks like, which was gathered through a structured survey from the volunteered users.

Executive management

The quality of the Executive Management team and their level of transparency can bring us to understand how well an exchange is managing. We developed five metrics to analyze all exchanges based on the assumption that the more transparent and experienced/educated an exchange executive team is, the higher the quality of the exchange.

There are two metrics with the titles (Support and Monitoring) and (Negative reports), which are not among the main metrics in our ranking system. The first is considered an incentive point, and the second is a punitive point.

The “Support and Monitoring” metric evaluates the quality level of investment companies in exchanges. It also examines the quality of tools that exchanges use to monitor user tradings and transactions. This metric adds up to five points to desirable exchanges.

The metric of “Negative Reports,” as its name suggests, is based on the reports received by the research team as well as users’ complaints against Iran-based Cryptocurrency Exchanges. This metric gives up to 5 negative points to exchanges that deserve it.

Grading

The final score of each exchange is obtained from the cumulative score of all the mentioned metrics. The table below identifies the quality mark criteria corresponding to each score range.

The Coiniran Exchange benchmark is a seasonal ranking methodology. We have published two editions of our ranking yet. It should be noted that this ranking does not indicate the permanent and inherent superiority of one exchange over other exchanges. It also does not introduce a suitable place for investment and trading activities. The Coiniran research center has developed this ranking system to inform users about the quality of Iran-based exchanges.

We believe that this competitive ranking system can increase transparency and, as a result, the quality of service providers in Iran.

You can read our latest report and ranking here at Coiniran.

Coiniran Exchange benchmark

What is Coiniran Cryptocurrency Exchange Benchmark? was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Six years ago, we set out to empower the “underprivileged” by educating them on how decentralized financial tools can help leverage personal and financial status. In western contexts, we often conceive of the “underprivileged” as a minority cultural or racial group in a particular country and neglect how entire populations across geographical regions also fall into this category.

For instance, In crypto discourse, we hear a lot about the commitment to “banking the unbanked”, yet it is rarely acknowledged who exactly the “unbanked” are. Did you know that most of Iran’s population — regardless of their political views or ideologies — are cut off from all international banking services? This means that no one can send or receive payments to Europe or the entire American continent. Paying for an online subscription for Spotify, Netflix or NYtimes becomes next to impossible. We, at Coiniran, are not always able to help out with these kinds of issues, and even if we try, we risk being criminalized as money launderers for “Sanctions circumvention”. We also risk getting our assets frozen until (if) proven innocent when engaging in a financial transaction with someone in Iran, even when proper Know Your Customer (KYC) is carried out.

We therefore decided that rather than giving people a fish a day, we will teach them how to fish (A persian proverb). Language is a significant barrier that most Iranians have to deal with when it comes to understanding decentralized technology & finance. We seek to provide the kind of education using Farsi content, lifting some of these challenges.

In the last 6 years, we have served more than 2 million Farsi speaking individuals on blockchain and decentralization. In Coiniran, we covered everything crypto, from the fundamentals of cryptography, to what Bitcoin is, and currently, we are covering all things DeFi on our podcast. Living up to these conditions has been challenging, and there have been many ups and down — for instance, having to avoid political speech and agendas, avoiding getting CoinIran’s website blocked by Iran’s Internet, and avoiding our own hosting services being suspended — as it’s a website for Iranians and all Farsi speaking population. Furthermore, Cloudflare CDN & Google Clouds are both sanctioning Iran’s IP address while also being partially blocked from the inside.

Our current commitments now revolve around empowering Farsi speaking women. In contrast to the West where computer engineers are predominantly male , Iran’s STEM graduates are about 70% women. With this program, we are hoping to empower more Iranian women engineers. As one of the latest projects CoinIran launched the Iranian chapter of the global community of “Women in Blockchain” — with the goal to empower Farsi speaking women by teaching them technical fundamentals of Blockchain coding such as Solidity and smart contract development.

With the help of Women in Blockchain’s Founder Thessy Mehrain (also ½ Iranian), and CoinIran co-founder Bahar’s tireless efforts, we were able to secure scholarships to the Consensys Academy for a selected few Iranian women (900 USD each). This has enabled them to attend the ConsenSys Academy Blockchain Developer bootcamp — The bootcamp is one of the most popular and up to date courses that teaches everything from hashing, developing, testing deploying smart contracts in Solidity. We held bi-weekly meetings outside of the course syllabus, enabling CoinIran scholars to discuss their issues and concerns, and get technical mentoring whenever it was required. We are proud to announce all seven of our scholars finished this course and their certification from ConsenSys Academy.

Currently, Women in Blockchain Iran are putting these new skills to work by teaching and training, enabling them to generate a steady income. There is also now a smart contract development discourse forum that enables Farsi speaking individuals to share technical blockchain knowledge with other people. This forum is solely run by Women in Blockchain Iran, and open to all Farsi speaking population. In addition, they are working on technical videos and educational content in Farsi to be released in this forum. In the future, we are looking to attract more people who are interested in blockchain and smart contract development to the forum. Our long term goal is to empower women in blockchain by drawing in more Solidity projects and accepting more paid and/or non-profit projects.

Here is the managing team of the first technical smart contract development forum in Farsi:

We are interested in more scholarships, project funding, and learning opportunities for this group of women as well as for other smart and eligible Farsi speaking individuals. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorships or learning opportunities please contact us at: info@shiryakhat.net (or on twitter @shiryakhat).

This blog was originally posted on coiniran.com .

Empowering Iranian Women with Blockchain was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jannice Käll in “Blockchain Control”, argues that Blockchain can be considered as a codification of control into bodies. The spring of Smart Contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) make us believe that code can displace law as means of capitalist control. It reminds us of Deleuze and his notions on “Postscript on the Societies of Control”. Years before the spread of the Internet, Deleuze articulated the way in which societies were/are transforming from disciplinary to what he named “control societies”.

The libertarian rhetoric surrounding bitcoin ignores the fact that Blockchain, despite all its revolutionary characteristics, can consolidate the controlling power of Governments and Intermediaries in such new ways. In most of the crypto communities, entities like Central banks and Governments are not removed but replaced by new entities like Mining pools and core developers. This would be the dark side of Blockchain technology.

In the second part of our interview with Creston Davis, we asked Creston for ideas about the threat of automation and job loss in the coming years. We also went further and asked if the philosopher sees Blockchain as a new weapon in a Deleuzian sense or not. Moreover, we discussed obstacles in front of the globalisation of value. In the end, Davis introduced the economy of GCAS College and his praxis along with the Economic Space Agency to create a new academic paradigm in order to experiment with Cryptoeconomics and collective pedagogy.

Hope you enjoy the second part of the discussion. You can read the first part of the interview here.

Creston Davis is an Irish- American philosopher, psychoanalyst, and writer known for his work on Christian theology and continental philosophy. He is a prolific author whose last published book was Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology. He is the founder and the director of the Global Centre for Advanced Studies and the Chancellor and CEO of GCAS College in Dublin. A research institute and a graduate college were created to experiment with collective pedagogy and crypto-economics. He currently researches future consciousness, sustainability and advanced technologies.

Salman Sadeghi is Coiniran collaborator, and researcher at the GCAS College of Dublin focusing on French post-structural philosophy, political economy and Cryptoeconomics. He currently researches Money, Tokenomics and future consciousness.

Shayan Eskandari holds a PhD from Concordia University. He is the founder of Shir Ya Khat podcast. He is a Coiniran collaborator who is now working as a security engineer with ConsenSys Diligence. He currently researches Security in Bitcoin and Ethereum Blockchain. He is a specialist in decentralized technologies.

Salli:

I know that you’re interested in psychoanalysis professor and you’re a professional philosopher in this field and also for me, this is the most interesting part of this conversation, this would be I think, but excuse me; I should get back to my question.

Imagining the end of both nation states and corporations is even I think harder than the end of capitalism itself. This would be the other side or the dark side of the Blockchain technology: Blockchain could further consolidate centralized power of corporations and governments. Every Wall Street bank is doing Blockchain project. Data shows that only two Chinese giants can control half of the Bitcoin mining operations, also smart contracts, which are among the best use cases of Blockchain technology, would be very beneficial in terms that they would cut off the power of middlemen in intermediaries; there are some other problems with them.

The emergence of a highly automated society makes some changes in the future of the job market. I’m talking about the treat of automation and job loss in the coming years. A new kind of job loss that is totally different from the one that human experience during the 20th century. In the 20th century lots of unemployed farm workers due to automation in agriculture moved to working in industries, so people lost their low skill jobs in farms and transferred to low skill jobs in industries. There were still some opportunities for the masses because the owners of the means of production needed a work power, but today for most of those masses, it is not easy to make the transition. No one knows what a job market would be like in 30 or 40 years, especially it is not the problem of the United States or Western Europe, but in undeveloped countries like countries in Africa or Central Asia, the governments have no idea what to teach children in school. I think a new kind of inequality will emerge here due to contradiction between the owners of data, I mean Facebook, Twitter, etc. and a new sort of class, that I on behalf of Noah Harari would call “useless class”.

So, what is your idea Professor? How would you describe this emerging inequality? And do you see Blockchain a game changer narrative technology here?

Creston:

That’s a really great question and it would take a book to really respond, but I really like your question.

I do have some ideas where we are familiar with AI technologies, automation. I first learned about this when I was an undergraduate in Oxford when I read Jeremy Rifkin’s book called “The End of Work” and it really read like a sci-fi diagnostic of the economy like, are there really going to be machines that take over jobs and this was in the early 90s when I was reading this. But as it turns out that more and more, it’s the case that two things are happened, jobs are shipped over for cheaper labor markets overseas, from say first world to developing world to save money on labor costs. What happens there, you have sweatshops in Bangladesh for example, which is where all the t-shirts and many of the major stores that we wear are made in sweatshops. So that’s the first part that you have shipping overseas or outsourcing jobs and then you can pay less and the conditions are really bad and even worse for human beings to make consumer items. China is a good example of being able to make a lot of products for cheap and the U.S. loves to consume those products, so that’s the first one.

The second one is automation, so it’s a double-edged sword or it’s a double whammy, let’s say. In the first place, that ship jobs overseas to save money on labor and with the money we’re saving on the labor costs, we’re going to invest in AI, automating, machines in the United States and this is precisely what’s happened. And now with Covid-19, with the pandemic, with everybody in isolation, this is a perfect example or laboratory in which to measure who is really essential for an economy and who is not.

This is an answer to a question that you could only theorize about, but now you can actually have data, who’s really essential to an economy and who’s not. And my guess is, you’re going to have basically a massive push for AI technologies happening in the United States, in Canada, in developing worlds in Europe, Western Europe and you’re gonna be able to displace workers altogether and this we called the mannequin proletariat, right? , The ones who have no means of being able to survive on their own anymore. What is this going to be? No wonder you see the ramping up of militarization of police forces, no wonder you have this rather artificial way to separate immigrants from the fortress Europe, from Trump’s wall and this when you put these logics together that double whammy outsourcing AI and you have massive unemployment with walls going up in the militarization of the police and the state apparatus. It doesn’t look very rosy; it looks really ominous. So my answer to this, because we can’t just sit around twiddling our thumbs or entertaining ourselves by talking about how dystopian and everything is which becomes a certain kind of enjoyment pleasure in basking, in our demise as a civilization,

So my answer was let’s develop a college that is also a venture firm that can create jobs for people while they finish their degrees and you create a federation of individuals across the planet who are able to trust each other and can therefore develop new and interesting ways of making things, making society at the level of a virtual and actual axis and axis point our vortex. Rather than just sitting on my ass or retiring as a professor which I certainly could have done, I decided, let’s strategize here knowing what’s really happening. So that’s my contribution along with the others in GCAS including you Salman, that’s what we’re doing, we’re developing those platforms, so yeah. And our cryptocurrency as you know is very different than the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, you can earn cryptocurrency from within the developing community, the college and then be able to start paying for books and classes, but also eventually with our store launching in e-commerce, you’re gonna be able to pay for food, for other supplies, smartphones, computers, whatever. You’re going to be able to pay potentially utilities, so that you can create an internal economy that grows itself through itself, is an imminent structure in a kind of Deleuzian philosophical sense. That’s my contribution as best as I can make it.

Salli:

You mentioned Deleuze, I want to say, can we call universities meta-narratives? that, For example, GCAS or other new kinds of institutions, as a kind of post-modernistic resistance, go against these meta-narratives? That was my last question about your wonderful praxis as I’m previously engaged, but I don’t know if you want to end the conversation with the describing of GCAS. Shayan, what do you think? Would you please come in?

Shayan:

I have a question regarding the globalization of value that you mentioned something there and I have this. So a quick background in next week, there is this conference called Defi discussions, decentralized finance discussions and I’ll be there in a panel with someone from Cuba and someone from Venezuela and talking about how Bitcoin moves values in and out of closed economies. We had some talks with them before and it’s interesting that we realized that the Western view of an authoritarian government is this one cliché top-down hierarchy, but it’s usually not the case and even if it’s different in these three different countries and places. We really wanted to have someone from North Korea too, but there are some technical issues there.

So I really wanna know your opinion about this, where do you see the closed economies fall in the globalization and is there any questions or points that you want to see discussed in that panel?

Creston:

Wow, that’s a great question, thank you and good luck with that conference, it sounds really amazing. Again I’m not an economist, so I have a hard time maybe understanding notions of closed economies, although I can guess with Venezuela and Cuba as a kind of quasi-closed economies of course. Anytime you have closed economies like Cuba, no doubt other economies are parasitical on them. They’re not totally closed, but yeah, I get your point, there’s an embargo like Iran for example and so on. But wouldn’t it be incredible if a cryptocurrency of some kind, Bitcoin maybe, I am very critical Bitcoin for very ecological reasons, but wouldn’t it be incredible if there would be digital assets in a way that could permeate and pop holes in the closure of said economies in ways that can start to open up value structures for individuals, coding, poetry to art, all these various ways that we can possibly open up new forms of value. It’s the Nietzschean, who is a German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, about a 100 or 120 years ago in which he was trying to think through what it would be like to re-evaluate the notion of value itself and I think we stand at a crossroad with decentralized technologies as being able to think through that very question maybe even go further with it. What is it that shapes notions of value? What are notions of desire when you have foreclosure to a consumerist economy?

I think that’s gonna be over the days of consuming and debt are going to dry up and this is gonna be the meta-narrative of the central state, the bailing outs, are all going to be used against the people. We bailed out and therefore our deficit is even greater and because of the deficit being more and more, they’re gonna use that as an excuse to implement ominous forms of control. And why stand by and trust the government? It’s never like if you think about it, the government, with very few exceptions, it never really sides with the people, and it has never done that. The kings and queens before the nation-state developed in Western Europe in the fifteenth 16th century, and it’s interesting when you think through the history of the birth of the nation-state and therefore economies, you have the birth of the corporation, West Indies, East Indies Corporation 1609. West Indies Corporation had founded the city of New York on the fur trade. So, what I think we’re starting to see here is a kind of fragmentation with the drying up of the consumer and of course there’s this attempt to push back with the socialist agenda with Bernie Sanders, Corbyn in Britain, to some although much less degree, your president and the president in Canada, at the end of the day, either you’re gonna have to have a massive uprising. Psychologically speaking, when you just calculate the psychology in the history of psychology from the 70s until today, the psychology in the 60s was right for taking the control of the means of the production, because it was cheaper to live, you could live in a car, you could live on a dollar a week. Nowadays, in terms of the expenses of living, you’re not gonna have that ability to protest for long extended periods of time and at the same time eat. So it’s a humanitarian crisis, furthermore, the psychology protests, what does that mean and how can you persist? Sure, it’s okay to occupy Wall Street for a couple of weeks, but then again, you see the failure of the Occupy movement, it didn’t have a demand, it didn’t have agenda, it couldn’t sustain itself over a long period of time.

So when we developed GCAS as an idea, I was speaking with a former president of ours, Alain Badiou, the famous French philosopher, the question becomes: “How do you maintain the ability to reproduce yourself over a long period of time, over a generation or two?” That’s where you start to build psychology that’s different when you can maintain the conditions of your own autonomy. And so that was how we built GCAS to be able to keep sustaining ourselves over a long period of time and this can become a catalyst for sustained protests because now you have means of production to maintain itself and reproduce itself in order to carry on a sustained form of social solidarity.

Shayan:

Thanks, that was a really interesting answer. One thing I want to add to that, also like a link back to Salman’s question about data silos, one thing that we noticed is like necessarily there is closed economies because of sanctions, they’re not all just monetary values. You could see like information as a source of value and one thing we’ve seen like with slack GitHub just like banning users that have ever logged in in Iran, you’ve seen like companies do over-compliance meaning that they are using let’s say Google servicers for their servers. Google has this engineer that’s for some reason blocked traffic to Iran, Cuba and some other countries and even though this company explicitly is not blocking anyone in Iran, their websites are not accessible because of their stack or technology they’re using and it goes back to your topic that a lot of decentralized technologies help with these, but they need to be scalable. Right now, they’re not there yet, it’s less than ten years old most of them, Bitcoin is the longest one which it’s still not scalable and we are seeing more of this and I really want to know more about where we can read about GCAS and how someone can participate in this?

Creston:

Well, thank you so much, it’s really been a great conversation, I appreciate it again. I venture to speak about topics like economics and ways that an amateur does, so forgive about that in my lack of knowledge. But yeah, GCAS is a project that sees these trends happening in the globe starting with higher education with how labour is being organized, militarization’s happening. And we created a context in which we can continue reproducing ourselves as a mode of production in the knowledge exchange, but also in start-up ideas that have traction and then get behind those start-up ideas and then have an ownership stake and that’s where the venture side of GCAS comes in, in the start-up. So we help them start-up with some funding, they are successful or not. If they’re successful, everybody benefits because everyone who graduates from GCAS College becomes an owner of GCAS College. We give them a diploma and rather than having banks send them payments, we give them a diploma and stock certificates that is equal to the investment that the student has put in for tuition. And so, for us, it’s a collaborative p2p, and by p2p, you know this, but by p2p, you mean peer-to-peer cooperation so it’s horizontal and more horizontal things can be, the stronger they get quicker and you talked about that scaling. Scaling can happen in p2p networks much faster than top-down networks like one person owns and it’s in control of a hundred different sub-people, right? So p2p is a structure that works faster, but p2p doesn’t work perfectly, you still need ethos, you still need a culture, you still need a language, you still need the ability to trust one another and build that trust.

So you can read about us on our website, GCAS.ie, because it’s in Ireland, you can look up gcas.io. We have different nodes, 8 nodes around the world. We’re about to launch another one in Asia, here shortly and sort of being able to decentralize education and grow knowledge platforms and therefore, getting back to the notion of value, the re-evaluation of value. Think about all the time we have on our hands when we like something on Facebook, you’re not getting assets for that and we’re developing new ways to give assets for the time that you would spend doing various things, liking things and sharing information, so let’s see how it goes. So far so good, we have a FinTech, a Finnish investor, who’s on board with us and we’re doing really well and I really appreciate the time and the interest and if anybody is interested in taking classes and doing a degree with us, by all means, check us out. Thanks.

Shayan:

I really appreciate everyone’s time here especially professor Creston Davis. It was a fascinating discussion and I hope that we can have another session in a near future to get more in-depth of these subjects because we touched some of the aspects and we can just dissect the economy together here. Thank you and stay safe and two meters apart.

Creston:

Yeah, no kidding, right? Thank you so much, it was a real pleasure to meet you, good luck in Montreal Shayan and you Salman in Iran: It’s a real pleasure to get to know you and to work with you on an intellectual level, thank you!

This is the end of our interview with Professor Creston Davis from the Global Centre for Advanced Studies. You can read the first part of the interview here or watch the full video version of the interview on YouTube.

Intellectual resistance with the Blockchain, (Part 2) was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Blockchain came to address some of the most pressing problems of society. Just as revolutionary as the internet, the emerging of Blockchain triggered a rethinking of self, individual and society. These are all philosophical inquiries. In one of our previous episodes in ShirYaKhat, Shayan and I interviewed Professor Creston Davis from the Global Centre for Advanced Studies. Davis studied philosophy at Oxford and Duke and is a distinguished philosopher who has been working for many years on advanced technologies and human consciousness. Davis is also known for his work on French post-structural philosophy and Christian theology.

We prepared all materials for the interview in two articles. In the first article, you can read Davis ideas on Pandemic, decentralization, the power of intermediaries, capitalism and the tokenized economy! hope you enjoy the discussion.

Creston Davis is an Irish- American philosopher, psychoanalyst, and writer known for his work on Christian theology and continental philosophy. He is a prolific author whose last published book was Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology. He is the founder and the director of the Global Centre for Advanced Studies and the Chancellor and CEO of GCAS College in Dublin. A research institute and a graduate college created to experiment with collective pedagogy and crypto-economics. He currently researches future consciousness, sustainability and advanced technologies.

Salman Sadeghi is a Coiniran collaborator, and researcher at the GCAS College of Dublin focusing on French post-structural philosophy, political economy and Cryptoeconomics. He currently researches Money, Tokenomics and future consciousness.

Shayan Eskandari holds a PhD from Concordia University. He is the founder of the Shir Ya Khat podcast. He is a Coiniran collaborator who is now working as a security engineer with ConsenSys Diligence. He currently researches Security in Bitcoin and Ethereum Blockchain. He is a specialist in decentralized technologies.

Salli:

Adam Greenfield, in his book “Radical Technologies”, describes Blockchain as the first technology that is fundamentally difficult for otherwise intelligent and the highly capable people to understand. I as many suppose that Bitcoin, as the first use case of Blockchain technology, is an expression of extreme technological libertarianism, the school of thought that one may call anarcho-capitalism or markets anarchism. In this philosophy, you distrust a state in favour of individuals, somehow we can call it the sovereignty of individuals in the free market. For an anarcho-capitalist, neither states nor corporations are acceptable intermediaries.

So the first question appears here Professor: What is the problem with intermediaries and third parties?

Creston:

It’s a great question and I think at this time in history with these technologies coming to fruition and by technologies, I mean decentralized ways of organizing ourselves along with the World Wide Web. You do end up confronting new ways of thinking, new ways to interact with one another and as a result, new possibilities emerge with these new technologies and it’s always been the case, it’s nothing new under the sun. But what is especially interesting here is that when you look at the ways in which intermediaries function, oftentimes you have whether it’s an ideological structure in capitalism or even in communism, you have these intermediaries and another way to speak about them would be a bureaucracy. Of course, we all want equality, we want to be able to trust one another but then again where highly intelligent individuals need to be able to make decisions on their own without undue influence from intermediaries, such as bureaucracies and this slows things down ultimately the intermediaries. It slows things down, it also in some respects when you look at it from a bird’s eye point of view, a lot of times in societies where you have really smart people, a few one-twos per cent of the population becomes like genius level thinkers or innovators, but not all, of course, genius-level thinkers or innovators are courageous. So, that even narrows the percentage even more bold thinkers or creative thinkers, but also need to have the courage to do they think is right.

In a lot of times, you have these intermediaries preventing these geniuses with the courage to interact and to implement new technologies or new ways of doing things and in the end, it’s a conformist structure, it arrests creativity, it makes the creative minds shrink or going to non-existent modes. As a result, intermediaries have really I think been part of a major problem with advancing new technologies, new ways of thinking, a new consciousness, new levels of interactions. So, for me, although intermediaries can be healthy and good at minimal levels like namely making sure fraud doesn’t happen, but unfortunately, the state apparatus is such a monstrous structure. Asimov once said in one of his novels I can’t remember which, the great science sci-fi writer, his plot structure was humans have developed this machine that’s so complicated, they forgot where the on/off switch was and I think this is apropos to intermediaries where it’s so complex for anything new to happen immediately stifled by the tyranny of bureaucracy.

When you look at the state apparatus siding decisively with centralized entities, institutions like banks, the Federal Reserve or big corporations, like for example say Amazon or Apple or Google, you have the state apparatus side with them over against what’s good for society, what’s good for innovation and what’s going to advance us beyond some vexing problems that humanity faces and when the state apparatus decisively sides with the corporate structure bailing banks out, for example, bailing corporations out for example, what this does is it puts even more of a burden on the individual in that society across the horizon of society as a whole and as a result, it undermines and destabilizes new modes of creativity and again when that happens new decentralized formations should be constructed in a way that can advance us beyond the state apparatus.

Shayan:

So one thing you mentioned right before we start recording was about the measures, France is taking for the Covid-19 and the stuff, I want to link this conversation to the recent events a bit and we’ve seen a lot of privacy issues with the measurements that the governments are taking, and I really want to know your opinion about what implicit outcomes would you see from this enforced social distancing and this unprecedented economic measures that we’re seeing due to Covid-19. Clearly, we’re seeing some more out-of-the-box socialist movements from capitalist actors, but are they for the same reasons, are they sharing the fundamental values that many values origin, they just like kicking the can down the road and trying to like survive?

Creston:

The Covid-19 issue, the pandemic and all the critical structure, the post-truth, the media, the conspiracy theories, they run wild. This is in fact a petri dish for perfect scenarios for dystopian structures and one of the things that’s really important for me as a philosopher and people who are dedicated to truth is precisely being able to present truth, to understand and interact with media, with texts, with information and be able to make decisions based on the accuracy or the falseness of said information. And again, what you have here, especially with the new fascist structures and leaders in countries taking hold with isolationism, nationalism, the xenophobia that’s going on and this only exacerbates people with different backgrounds and different ethnicities and so on.

So you have this kind of a perfect storm for distrusting information more and more and as a result, you fracture in the epistemological structure of society, what we as a society can believe in, what we as a society is humanity with our minds can trust or not and this can only play in the power of those who have access to that power and that’s becoming more and more narrow, fewer and fewer people have more and more power whereas the many, the population has less and less power and so you have a perfect storm for major problems. I think what’s really most dangerous about this situation is how it can be used for power to be concentrated more and more especially with the militarization of the police force and so on. So, it seems to me that we’re in a pretty tough situation especially when you consider the way we’re communicating together now in this podcast through the World Wide Web and if you think about who owns the fiber optics that is literally connecting us right now is corporations or it’s States and you think if you do something incorrect or an error or something that might be challenging to the ones in power, your access to technology such as the World Wide Web could easily be canceled, just like you have Facebook jail, you have all these policing structures that oftentimes are arbitrary and so it can be really dangerous because this is the only way we can connect with one another and if that connection is severed, then who are you? Are you even in society?

As Aristotle once said in the beginning of politics book on politics, he says “the ones who live outside society are either gods or beasts” and for a society to function, you have to be able to trust and distrust post-truth structures are happening with Fox News, with CNN, even the New York Times, all the major media sources are all playing into this echo fragmentations of epistemological claims and this becomes deeply problematic which again gets us back to Blockchain in the sense of how do we communicate and what can we trust and distrust and decentralizing doesn’t mean fragmentation.

Decentralizing precisely is a way of connecting with other people that can circumvent false claims conspiracy theories, because precisely you’re talking to someone with whom you can check on their background, check their credibility and therefore trust factors are built into Blockchain exchanges, smart contracts or even education structures like the one that GCAS College has developed, so yeah.

How about you? What do you think? What’s your take on the virus in Montreal?

Shayan:

That’s kind of thing like one of the fundamentals of the democracy is like gossip and social interactions that without that, there is no decentral communication, right? Like it’s interesting that before even this Covid-19, a lot of like future visions were dystopian and now even a lot of those are happening right now, like even walking the street and seeing everyone walking in masks, like if you go back in 90s movies whenever they show any future dystopian. It’s really scary regarding like the fake news and like media, it’s really sad to see. I would consider myself an open-minded that let go through the details of like news and now even if someone with a PhD degree comes to me said like this is the vaccine, I would say be like I’m not sure, how can I verify? And that’s the hard and sad part that there’s no easy way to verify these days, unless you have these role models that you believe in and you can listen to. One of the things that we try to do and share podcast is kind of follow the radical exchange movement if you know about that, it’s more about like it says it’s not radical to criticize the society, it’s radical to come up with solutions. So one of the things we try to do is now we criticize what is happening now and we almost see what is happening but as for solutions, to be honest, I’m not sure what the solution is; one thing that we’re trying to do is to put everything out there, put information out there, point out to scams, fraud, say these are the things not to say, name them, just teach people how to identify them. But regarding the news and where to get the news, not to consider like investment and cryptocurrencies, that’s a whole different world, just like truth. I’m not sure these days what can be done.

Creston:

This is the quintessential question and it goes all the way back to civilization when we start to be able to communicate through letters, through distance and the trust factor has gone to be there and I think this is one of the reasons why in a way philosophy at least in Athens was so distrusted by the Senate and this is kind of a famous retelling of this was by Plato and his apology where his teacher Socrates, the great war hero, and by this time an old man was considered a big threat to the Athenian city because precisely, he was teaching students how to think critically and how to question whether what justice is for example and some very basic questions or thematic of existence and his very ability to teach young people how to think critically about social organization, about truth claims was considered a great threat. So when you put that together with the distrust that’s happening here is a good thing I think in general, what the enlightenment taught us to be skeptical of apparatuses of power in the sense that or at least critical of apparatuses of power, the church for example, religion, or the state with the French Revolution, the U.S. Revolution in the 18th century. In one sense, this is good, it’s really good to be critical, and the question is: what kind of critical apparatuses or structures or habits does one have and is it coherent, is it enough just to criticize? In fact, I think what philosophy has always tried to do is think through ways of solving, adding to the question of knowledge rather than simply just criticizing and the troll has emerged with the World Wide Web. We’re all familiar with the Troll.

So you’re familiar with Trolls, with the vulnerabilities in digital connections, and I think you’re right about the approach should be; how can we offer solutions and that’s one of the things that when we came up with this idea of a college, GCAS, was not simply to criticize the university structure and the debt that’s required for students to go through uni and to attain degrees, but rather to offer a solution that includes the students with the faculty together, working together in a way that the general goal or mission of the Global Center for Advanced Studies which I call GCAS College is working together as a solution in the very process of developing knowledge. So the end of knowledge isn’t simply enlightenment for an individual, although it can be an outcome, but here in the structure that we put together in GCAS, the end goal is solidarity with each other and offering a platform through which new innovations can continually be developed and so it’s not simply: “Oh, it’s me with my degree”, but rather it’s: us with new ways of communicating, new ways of developing the human consciousness and solutions.

Salli:

Back to intermediaries and our main topics, bank and the financial institutions work as intermediaries in financial capitalism. We’re familiar with the idea of exploitation by Marx: “You as a proletariat work hard and spend less to make some surplus value”. You work hard for money or as Marx said you exploited for it in the sense that you get less than you should, then you put this surplus-value in banks and institutions. Thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, you are exploited again here, first, it was your labour and now it is your money. What do you think Professor? Are they, I mean financial intermediaries, a secondary exploiter of human labour?

Creston:

Yeah, I mean when you look at the shift how capitalism and you were quoting Marx there with your intervention of his volume one of capital about the exploitation of the labor and you just give the laborer just enough to keep reproducing themselves but no more so they can’t grow as individuals, they can’t develop new possibilities, new real estate, new different ways of living their life, they’re dependent on the owners of the factories and therefore are enslaved. And I think when you look at the stretch of late capitalism and into neoliberal structures where things are more and more financialized, then you do have major corruptions that start to take place in ways that attempt to enslave the consumer, right? So first you train the consumer to want and buy more and more and more and this becomes a habit to buy more you need to go into debt so you create the debt margin in the 70s with the credit card and then over time you spin the consumer into a web of indebtitude that is financial. So in one sense, it doesn’t feel like you’re enslaved to the factory or to working conditions that might be horrible, although many still face that, but you’re indebted in an invisible way financially and this invisibility doesn’t register with the human consciousness, the brain, in a way that the physical enslavement registers and yet the dangers are surmounting. If you look at different court cases that have emerged in recent times where people are going to jail for debt and this can over time be used as a leverage to target specific individuals in society and it just gives the means of power in an imbalanced way towards those who are in power to be able to leverage that power in more and more ways. So yeah, I agree that the financial indebtitude is very much real, yes.

Salli:

And I think banking loan always goes to those who they don’t really need it. I wish everyone read the article wrote by the great British writer, Bernard Russell, “in the praise of idleness” . there he just brriliantly clarifies how the secondary exploiter of human labour works.

Back to the concept, the fact that you can still look for the emancipation of human subject within the market, I mean by you, those anarcho-capitalists who are still looking for salvation of human subjects within the market, Maybe itself at the centre of philosophical debates. what do you think Professor? will we be free one day, with the market?

Creston:

One of the things that the market does is that it really can if it was really for a free and open market, it can isolate and identify those who are really hard workers, who are clever, who come up with new ways of doing and solving certain situations and in a way that say communism could never do, because it would be a threat to the central committee the centralization. So yeah, I think that there can be ways that you can understand markets to work in beneficial terms but too often those terms are hijacked by the few and so in the name of the ideology of the free market, free and open unregulated market it’s really a code word for those who are in power and there are just a few should be able to continue increasing their power and this precisely what we’ve seen since neoliberalism began in the 70s that you have this privatization of public assets and it’s controlled more and more by fewer and fewer people, but this is where I think the promise of why we’re here meeting today and precisely the motif of this podcast is the heads and tails is precisely looking at decentralization, looking at the potential ways of disrupting intermediaries, disrupting centralization and connecting with one another across the globe in ways that you can build projects constructively with incentive. That’s the other thing, humans need incentivization, they’re not going to just sit on their fat ass watching The Simpsons all day long, that’s the general mode of a consumerist culture is precisely a passive mode, think of the grunge band, Nirvana, it smells like teen spirit, the main lyric is, entertain us entertain me, I’m a passive subject, I’m only good to receive and to consume rather than what I think our curiosity as human beings is discovered, to break open new horizons and to move forward, yeah.

Shayan:

That’s an interesting point you said about the free markets like one of the discussions that we had in the previous episodes was about exactly that. We’ve seen in stock markets that there is a lot of regulations like secret breakers preventing some stocks I guess, here some stocks while ago to go down more than 7% and all these and we’ll compare that to cryptocurrency markets that there is no regulation. It’s a bit chaotic; exactly a rollercoaster and we were discussing which one is closer to the definition of free markets. There is still manipulation in that, but isn’t that manipulation a part of the free market or not?

Creston:

Wow, that’s a good question and I’m no economist so my answer can only be really amateur at best, but yeah, when you look at like the Bitcoin market, its fluctuation. But then you map it on the recent oil market and you’re thinking wow the oil markets fluctuating dramatically, therefore the fluctuation in some flex reflects like the value of that market itself and in fact, I think one could argue that the more fluctuation a market has, its potential value I think can be seen as enhanced in some ways. Okay, sure you can’t predict it but isn’t that precisely what interesting markets do, it’s the role of the dice, it’s the whole thing of risk and you hear the capitalists’ ideologies or the ideologue talking about: “yeah we need risk, we need risk” and rather than the government backing us all up, but look what happened with the government badly now constantly bailing out the banks, constantly bailing out the corporate world. So I’ve got myself away from answering your question about the fluctuation of markets, but I do think there can be manipulation by thinking about what sorrows did in the early 90s into the British stock market he almost sank it. As I understand it. So there are actors who can manipulate things like the Republican congressman who pulled out of their investments a couple days before the markets fell and having some inside information. So I think you’re always going to have manipulation and I guess always the questions going to constantly be to what degree can you have a certain form of regulation that allows for the maximization of risk, the maximization of profits, of gain, but without it being deregulated where in which case it becomes mafia, it becomes just three or four actors at the end can manipulate massively. So where is the balance between regulating things and the pure free unregulated manipulative Mafioso market?

Shayan:

Exactly, one of the examples in short selling that it’s not possible for most people to do and short selling is basically going against a stock or some investment and you have to have some degree of credibility or investment portfolio to be able to do that and that goes against the free market.

Creston:

Absolutely, another example to that in fact is, it used to be the case when you started a start-up, only people who could invest in it because it’s not public, it’s not IPO, it’s a private company and the only people who could really invest were accredited investors and since been relaxed recently, in the past, couple years where you can have people, any average guy invest in a company that’s not your friend or family. Okay, again, you have possibilities of scams and frauds, they always will exist, but at the same time having the ability to crowdfund start-up is also I think a really good move forward.

Salli:

Thank you. Creston, this is what I get from you, about the market, that every economy is Libidonal, am I right? What do you think?

Creston:

Are you referring to Lyotard’s notion of the Libidonal economy?

Salli:

Yes, but the problem of the idea of Lyotard I think, is the distinction between these two facts, these two axioms, we should suppose that every economy is Libidonal or every libido is economy? And I think you mentioned that every economy is Libidonal, right?

Creston:

Yeah, that’s where I would go with that, although of course, Lyotard was a mostly literary philosopher of the literature, literary horizon, there’s something to that and in fact, there’s something to the notions that come out of psychoanalysis, they can diagnose or help us understand better notions of markets from debt drive to risk factors and to how we think and consciously process risk vs security, yeah, for sure.

This is the end of the first part of the interview.

Watch the full video on YouTube:

Is Blockchain a narrative technology? (Part 1) was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

اینترنت در شروع کارش مکانی باز و رایگان بود.

وب سایت ها به ندرت توسط شرکت ها ایجاد می شدند، این کار اغلب توسط افراد صورت می گرفت و اینترنت جایی برای عرضه آن بود. افراد دور هم جمع شدند تا در باره موضوعات مورد علاقه خود صحبت کنند و بدینصورت انجمن ها شکل گرفت و نمو پیدا کرد.

اما این رشد و نمو بسیار سریع و سود آور شده و در نتیجه بازیگران بزرگ عرصه فناوری شروع به بلعیدن وب کردند.

ردیت به عنوان یکی از پیشگامان این عرصه با همان رویکرد اولیه همچنان ایستاده است. سایتی با کامیونیتی های مختلف که توسط کاربران اداره می شود. جایی که هرکس می تواند به آن ملحق شده و ارزشی را خلق نماید.

اما حتی ردیت نیز برای ادامه این مدل با سختی مواجه است چرا که فضای وب پر شده است از تبلیغات و منفعت های مادی کاربران است که تا حدودی غیر اخلاقی است.

بنابر این ردیت مدل جدیدی به نام امتیازات انجمن ایجاد کرده به این امید که بتواند به کاربران برای رهایی از بازیگران حریص این فضا کمک کرده و آنها کامیونیتی های پادش دهی خود را ایجاد نمایند.

امتیازات انجمن چه هستند؟

مطابق اطلاعیه که ردیت منتشر کرده،

“ امتیازات انجمن روشی است برای کاربران ردیت تا بتوانند دارنده بخشی از کامیونیتی مورد علاقه خود باشند. این امتیازات به عنوان واحدی برای مالکیت در برگیرنده بخشی از ارزش کامیونیتی آنها خواهد بود. این امتیازات قابل خرج شدن برای امکانات حرفه ای تر ردیت بوده و به عنوان سنجشی برای میزان تعهد به کامیونیتی به کار می روند.”

تمام این امتیازات از نوع توکن های ERC-20 هستند که نوعی رمزارز روی بلاکچین اتریوم است.

کاربران این توکن ها را بر اساس میزان مشارکت خود در زیر شاخه ها (ساب-ردیت ها) کسب می نمایند.

هر زیر شاخه امتیازات خود را با نام منحصر به فرد طراحی می کند. مانند Moons برای زیر شاخه /r/Cryptocurrency و Donuts برای زیر شاخه /r/EthTrader.

هر توکن منحصر به فرد یک زیر شاخه به تعداد 250 میلیون ایجاد خواهد شد.

چگونه این امتیازات (توکن ها) را کسب کنم؟

کاربران با ارسال پست یه کامنت در یک زیرشاخه می توانند این امتیازات را کسب کنند. هرگاه کاربران به محتوای تولید شده امتیاز مثبت یا منفی بدهند، این امتیازات میزان توکن های پاداش دهی برای آن کاربران را در طول توزیع هفتگی مشخص می کند.

در شروع مقدار 75 میلیون توکن در هر زیر شاخه برای مشارکت کنندگان با سابقه وجود دارد.

در هر هفته میزان توکن های آزاد شده کمتر و کمتر می شود تا زمانی که به سقف مجموع 250 میلیون توکن برسد (تقریبا در حدود سال 2050).

کاربران کجا می توانند امتیازات یا توکن های خود را ببینند؟

کاربران می توانند امتیازات خود را در کیف پول ردیت که روی موبایل اپلیکیشن ردیت خود نصب می کنند ببینند.

کیف پول ردیت نوعی والت رمز ارز است که میزان موجودی کاربران را روی بلاکچین (مانند بیتکوین) نگه می دارد. به عبارت دیگر کسی نمی تواند توکن کسب شده توسط کاربر را در اختیار بگیرد (حتی خود ردیت).

این والت موجودی کاربران را در هر زیر شاخه جایی که آنها توکن های خود را دارند، نشان می دهد و به آنها نشان می دهد چگونه می توانند توکن های خود را خرج کنند.

کاربران با توکن های خود چه کاری می توانند انجام دهند؟

اولین و مهمترین امکان جدیدی که ردیت ایجاد کرده، امکان بدست آوردن قابلیت حق عضویت مخصوص در هر زیر شاخه با استفاده از این توکن ها است.

این امکان با ردیت پرمیوم (که می تواند در تمام قسمت های ردیت برای پاک کردن تبلیغات به کار رود) متفاوت است.

در عوض این نوع عضویت در هر کامیونیتی منحصر به فرد است.

این عضویت به کاربران اجازه اضافه کردن بج به اسم خود، استفاده از ایموجی های متحرک پیشرفته و پاسخ دهی به کامنت ها را بوسیله گیف های داخلی را می دهد. این امکان آخری هرگز تا پیش از این توسط ردیت پشتیبانی نمی شد.

پس از بدست آوردن حق عضویت مخصوص توسط کاربر، آنها قادر خواهند بود که بج ها و آیکون های اضافی را با توکن های خود خریداری کنند. این آیکون ها و بج ها فقط برای اعضای کامیونیتی در دسترس هستند.

کاربران ردیت همچنین قادر خواهند بود در رای گیری های وزن دهی به مباحث کامیونیتی برای کاربران فعال شرکت کنند. در این رای گیری ها کاربران نمی توانند دنبال کننده خریداری کنند زیرا رای گیری بر اساس وزن دهی بر روی میزان توکن کسب شده توسط کاربر در تمام مدتی که روی ردیت اکانت دارند خواهد بود نه بر اساس موجودی فعلی والت آنها.

کاربران ردیت همچنین می توانند از توکن های خود به کاربران دیگر ببخشند تا بدینوسیله از مشارکت آنها در کامیونیتی قدردانی کنند. بنابراین به جای نوشتن یک کامنت پر زرق و برق برای آنها، می توانند به به مشارکت کنندگان از محل توکن های در اختیار خود پاداش بدهند.

اما از آنجایی که این توکن ها روی بلاکچین هستند، کاربران می توانند از آنها برای مقاصد دیگری نیز استفاده نمایند. از جمله تجمیع آنها در وب سایت های خود، خرید یا فروش آنها و ترید در اکسچنج ها.

ردیت به عنوان ضبط ارزش به چه معنی است؟

هرگاه توکن ها برای عضویت، بج، آیکون و این قبیل استفاده شود، آنها سوزانده می شوند یعنی اینکه دیگر روی بلاکچین در دسترس نخواهند بود.

در زیرشاخه های خاصی، کاربران قادرند با کارت اعتباری حق عضویت خریداری کنند اما وقتی این کار را انجام دهند، ردیت مقدار برابری از توکن های در اختیار کاربر را می سوزاند.

به این معنی که مقداری از توکن ها از چرخه خارج خواهند شد و طبیعتا میزان تقاضا بیشتر خواهد شد که به معنی افزایش ارزش توکن ها خواهد بود.

یعنی اینکه توکن هایی که شما برای مشارکت در کامیونیتی در اختیار دارید بیانگر بخشی از ارزش ایجاد شده توسط آنهاست و از زمانی که بعضی از افراد آنها را به عنوان بخش ارزشمندی از کامیونیتی خود در نظر می گیرند این توکن ها ارزش اقتصادی پیدا خواهند کرد. بنابر این می توان آنها را به کاربرانی که نیاز دارند فروخت تا بتوانند در کامیونیتی مشارکت کنند.

ردیت امیدوار است این مدل با ذائقه کاربران، تبلیغ دهندگان و کمپانی ردیت سازگار بوده و مدل زیبایی برای ایجاد توکن باشد.

با تشکر از حمید رضا عسگری برای ترجمه این مقاله

امتیازات کامیونیتی ردیت چه هستند؟ was originally published in CoinIran on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.