Nobody would argue that the very philosophy of blockchain relies on the “network effect” when the number of members determines the value of a network, the more the better. That’s why the creators and owners of all blockchain-based projects are continually attempting great efforts to promote their projects via social networks and media. The collective outreach must be maximal — all kinds of marketing and promotional methods are worth applying. Pre- and post-ICO tokens are given away for gifts, referral programs are flourishing, Slack chats are pumped with newbies etc, etc. That’s all right, everything goes well, and networks gain extra value with new participants.
There is only one tiny remark: who are those new blockchain adherents? What are they? Are they those common people we meet every day in the street? Do they belong to the majority of the global population?
Even a superficial understanding of the blockchain technology requires a particular IT background. An average mobile user (your grandma, as they say) can hardly grasp the smart contract appliance or the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum. The fact is that the average mobile users who are familiar with Facebook and Tweeter but not related to programming or financial speculations are unaware of blockchain and crypto economy at all.
It is almost unbelievable for many skilled blockchain proponents that all those super interesting and exciting topics they discuss on the blockchain-related forums and chats all day long (hard forks, ICOs, tokens, DApps, cryptocurrencies, web 3.0, decentralization, and so on) do not exist in the parallel universe of the average people. The overwhelming majority of the population of this planet do not even know what those geeky slang terms are all about.
The statistics showing how many people in the world are aware of blockchain is barely available. My biggest assumption regarding the global blockchain literacy covers less than 5% of all active day-to-day users of the Internet, let alone the rest people.
It means that the seemingly huge community revolving around blockchain, cryptoanarchism, and decentralization constitutes rather an obscure cult, a sect of “Blockchain Witnesses” whose highly specific discourse builds an almost insurmountable entry barrier for “lamers”, say, non-geeky ordinary people. Where may this lead the whole blockchain industry apart from being merely inequitable?
The “public coverage” aspirations of all blockchain-based projects are destined not to achieve even 1/1000 of the popularity Uber and Facebook possess. Know why? Because unlike crypto projects, Uber and Facebook focus on the social component of their applications. They both do not load their users with the narrow-specific subjects such as programming stacks, frameworks, or any other technical issues that provide running of their services. There is GitHub along with other various coding-specific resources for those users who are eager to know how Uber’s mobile application works, for example. For the average users it is enough to know how to order a taxi with only a few taps on their smartphone screens. Uber and Facebook succeed just because Kalaniсk and Zuсkerberg clearly realized how to make their projects following the KISS (keep it simple stupid) paradigm for the mass introduction. In contrast to them, many blockchain-based projects emphasize the very technological aspects of their services. What the hell difference does it make for the end users which blockchain (Ethereum, Bitcoin, or IOTA) you are going to use for your application? The end users should clearly understand what value your application can add instead of being figuring out in the technical peculiarities.
The libertarian social values such as the decentralization, direct democracy, and cryptoanarchism should prevail over any technology even if the technology is the most progressive and promising. Blockchain should become just a tool, an inner instrument providing cryptoanarchistic solutions with an unprecedented efficiency. The blockchain-based decentralization platforms should enforce their network effect by offering newcomers clear ideas how to improve their life. The new customers should not be redirected to GitHub and Google Drive for learning numerous whitepapers and smart contract-related documentation before joining the blockchain projects’ communities. Decentralization is meaningful when it is simple-to-grasp and easily comprehensible for everyone, especially for those social strata who need it most. I strongly doubt that it would be reasonable to urge a Syrian refugee to spend a lot of time on the Internet learning what blockchain is and how smart contracts work before offering him a decentralization service which can simplify his employment, traveling, or legalization. People should get the ready-to-use solutions and finished products without having to be trained or educated beforehand. Combating blockchain illiteracy is a commendable objective, however it should not be the most important one when it comes to the promotion of decentralization: technologically-inept common people should not be left behind cryptoanarchism.
My own experience in communication with those people who have just discovered blockchain suggests me that the current ICO hype compromises crypto economy badly. Many blockchain newbies mention their frustration when the blockchain projects overfocusing on their ICOs make blockchain too transactional. Their apparent desire to earn quick income diminishes the social effect of crypto economy. Besides, the enormous amount of money usually collected during quite rapidly running ICOs exceeds any reasonable cost of even the most complicated software development. From the outside it looks like either a financial bubble or money laundering. It seems this is all about money — just business, as they say, nothing social. If we add the poor practical use of many “decentralization” projects (multimillion ICOs allow their owners to create various disneylands on the Internet just to spend a good time creating purely virtual worlds if social networks, online games, and other non-blockchain projects happen to be too boring and primitive for the “true cryptoanarchists”) the entire picture of the contemporary blockchain environment looks really discouraging.
The only decentralization project that looks different and really promising (nonetheless, having some of the drawbacks mentioned above in addition to some logical contradictions available in their whitepaper that are pushing me to create a new updated version of The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto!) is Bitnation. Their upcoming Pangea software (which will be focused on mobile platforms, by the way) contains some “adult” non-toy-like services that would be practically applicable and useful for common people who therefore can be engaged in the actual decentralization despite their blockchain unpreparedness. Another matter of Bitnation which attracts and makes me take the project seriously is their ICO duration — 25 months. It means that during the next two years they will hardly disappear just after the first round of their ICO saying “thank you all and see you in the next incarnation”. Besides, a really encouraging section of their website is the proposals made by Bitnation citizens. Even though they do not always gain understanding and support of the majority (for example, crowdfunding to purchase real non-virtual lands for providing homeless people with habitation), discourse creates phenomena, as I used to say, and therefore the proposals make sense.
It seems Bitnation moves in the right direction. However the only project is not enough to hold cryptoanarchism and decentralization meaningful for the majority of common people. I hope on the netizens’ support in sharing my present concerns for preventing crypto economy from slipping into the abyss of pseudo-decentralization and trivial commercialization.