In many ways, Moore's Law - the observation made by Intel's Gordon Moore back in 1965 that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit tends to double every 18-24 months - was the fundamental law of abundance for the Internet Era.
The law was so powerful that it eventually became the reason that Silicon Valley became known as Silicon Valley. As long as Moore's Law continued to hold true, it meant that digital devices powered by silicon would shrink in both price and size while improving in performance and efficiency.
If you think about it, Moore's Law is a very profound observation, and the reason why there was so much wealth created over the past 50 years. It's not just that price and performance are improving at a rapid rate, it's that the rate of that performance is also accelerating. In short, the computers powering the computers are getting faster and faster, and that's leading to new exponential technologies and new forms of abundance:
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A new law for the blockchain era
Now, more than 50 years later, I'm wondering if we need a "new Moore's Law" for the Blockchain Era. Instead of transistors on a circuit board, of course, we'd have blocks in a blockchain. It's still too early, of course, to declare some kind of ironclad rule for the blockchain (or, more likely, I'm just not as smart as Gordon Moore), but it's a good bet that the bigger and more powerful the blockchain becomes, the more that can be built on top of the blockchain. Blocks on top of blocks on top of blocks forming new and bigger chains of blocks...
So... just as being able to shrink more resistors on an integrated circuit meant that computers could be shrunk down to the size of your hand, will something just as extraordinary happen when more transactions are crammed into every block of the blockchain?
What will growth look like in the Blockchain Era? And what would we even call such a "law of abundance" -- maybe Ned's Law? Or Larimer's Law?
It all makes me very optimistic that the blockchain will usher in a new era of Peace, Abundance and Liberty. In the comments, let me know what you think!
Image 1 via Pexels
Chart 1 via Wikimedia Commons