Decentralized systems and human creativity and corruptibility

This post originally appeared on ZeMing M. Gao’s website, and we republished with permission from the author. Read the full piece here.

An ideal decentralized system can be divided into three layers, namely:

(1) a base ‘core-purpose layer,’
(2) a middle ‘rule-enforcement layer’ and
(3) a top ‘application-execution layer.’

This general model is applicable to all systems, including human organizations, joint cognitive systems, technological systems, and natural systems. For example, in a joint cognitive system, the core purpose layer corresponds to a standardization/knowledge-base, the rule-enforcement layer corresponds to a planning/rule-base, and the application-execution layer corresponds to a mutual adjustment/skill-base (John Flach, “Polycentric Control”).

However, human systems are different from natural systems. The general principles of complexity should apply to both, but they are different in actual dynamics, because the feedback and subsystem interactions are different.

More specifically, humans have a unique combination of creativity and corruptibility.

This truth/fact has fundamental implications for the system designs.

Bitcoin is a human economic system. It is not a natural system, nor even just a man-made system like an IT system.

As a result, Bitcoin was designed with optimizing considerations of both maximizing human creativity and minimizing corruptibility.

This is why Dr. Craig S. Wright (Satoshi) designed Bitcoin to have all of the following characteristics:

(1) a locked base protocol to minimize human corruption at the core;
(2) prudent consensus rules (including PoW) to increase reliable rule enforcement
(3) unbounded scalability to accommodate free economic participation and to maximize human creativity.

The above three characteristics correspond to the three layers identified above, namely the base ‘core-purpose layer’ (protocol and the BSV Association), the middle ‘rule-enforcement layer’ (nodes), and the top ‘application-execution layer’ (the infrastructure-application ecosystem).

Watch: Decentralization is pushing data to the edges