What are some of the important things we have learned from crypto that are token/project neutral?

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Crypto market mayhem -

There can be no denying that the crypto token space is rapidly changing. The market dominance of Bitcoin is under assault on all sides, ICO scams and the vapourware that comes with them abound, miss-allocation of capital is rife and innovation is incredibly fierce and competitive.

Make no mistake, the crypto market represents nature at it's most ruthless and brutal. It must be because only the tech that survives and thrives, forged in the fires of natural selection, will unlock the incredible potential of blockchains. During this period of incredible uncertainty and volatility, anyone can win and anyone can lose. Dreams of riches are being realised and destroyed in equal measure. Resource and efforts to build are being wasted, subverted and diverted all the time. It's all fun if you stumble upon a project that suddenly jumps in price and manages to somehow convince the market of it's promise. It's not so fun when sentiment changes away from you as a result of competition, technical failure or manipulation.

The issues within the crypto market are plain for everyone to see, well those that are not blinded by the prospect of 100Lambos! Identifying a problem is the first step to resolving it but what can be done? Surely things must simply play themselves out with the chips falling where they may? I don't think so. We are learning all the time. Some of it is about what blockchains are, what we need from them and some of it is about ourselves and each other.

What have we learned that is of value to us all, no matter our preferences within the crypto market?

I'm going to list some of the valuable things I think we may be learning from observations of, or participation within these blockchain experiments. Feel free to disagree and/or add more in the comments!! I hope awareness of these more global lessons and insights will help early adopters of blockchain technologies to mobilise more effectively around common goals, preserve the greater part of the value they have brought and ensure delivery of optimised blockchain technology in the most resilient, efficient and open forms possible.

• No-one likes to experience force or theft and rules that prevent such things are fine if voluntarily agreed upon and applicable to all. It would seem the we are able to find common ground and therefore consensus over, at the very least, a handful of foundational principals bridging nationality, race, gender, age and religion.

• It seems we don't tend to like paying transaction fees to engage with an application.

• Our attention is exceedingly scarce and extraordinarily valuable. The present attention market is extremely immature and inefficient.

• We love giving. So much so that despite the predominant "asset" of the global economy being debt, we still find the means to give. We give so much more when we know where the value is going, how it is being used, when it gets there instantaneously and none of it is being intercepted along the way. We may very well rebuild the world and colonise space with the giving economy.

• TRUST in value that is defined by software is remarkably competitive with value that is defined by authority. The crypto market is presently very small compared with traditional pillars of the global economy. However, given that approximately 3 billion of the poorest people in the world have no access to any kind of financial services and the majority of the world's "pillars" represent the stored value of a tiny fraction of the worlds population.....is it any wonder? Perhaps trust has been absent for some time and it is opportunity that will allow consensus to reveal where we really prefer to place our trust and value?

• Economic incentives are complicated and critical to the health and unity of an economic system. It appears to be possible to build a system where the economic incentives are such that would be bad actors find they are incentivised to play by the rules for it is in their interest to do so. Perhaps there are some that would act against their own economic interests, thankfully this group may not be large and unified enough to have a measurable and sustained affect. For economic incentives to work optimally, the group over which they act must be as broad, diverse, decentralised and appropriately vested as possible. Distribution is key.

• Identity is critical to reputation and reputation is critical to the health of an economy founded upon finely tuned economic incentives. Identity sits closely with privacy as it would seem that you cannot have both at the same time. Identity chaos with sock puppets, sybil attacks and a myriad of other issues is yet to be completely solved. We like privacy but is it for the wrong reasons? We are all part of a sick economic system, perhaps we've become diseased? Transparency obviously supports accountability but what about a love e-mail or a will? Is it not true that the majority of private messages we send to each other are entirely benign? Perhaps in a more benign world, there would be less to fear from privacy. With respect to roles within an economic system where incentives are properly aligned and where reputation is of the highest importance, perhaps the greater the responsibility, the greater the requirement for transparency?

• Innovation that endangers other projects will continue until someone cracks the ability to scale. At that point, assuming other aspects are passable, network effect may ensure dominance beyond niche use cases. These are all experiments and regardless of promise, any one could fail for any number of reasons and any one could succeed. It is probably sensible to vest more in people than the tokens themselves. Hopefully the people will move to where it makes sense.

• The world is changing fast. It is reasonable to imagine a future now, where no-one has a "job." Perhaps people will simply find ways to contribute to the value of a community and for that contribution, will be rewarded by that community. Who's to say what will be valued?

• It is clear that when the barriers preventing and corrupting free and secure communications are removed, expansive, diverse, creative, generous and productive communities begin to form. Those communities immediately start to organise and build value.

There is clearly a lot more to be learned from everything going on in crypto than I've covered here. I mainly hope to inspire a way of thinking that helps to protect people's efforts to use blockchains and to add and preserve value within these experimental projects. By keeping an open mind, focusing on quality people and holding close the reality of how this technology could help everyoneon Earth and insisting that it does, it will be easier to weather the turbulent adolescence of the crypto market and it's mayhem.

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Happy Steeming