There are many ways to conceptualise, or otherwise attempt to understand, blockchain networks. You can think of them narrowly as digital asset ledgers. Alternatively, you could choose to understand them as new kinds of collective computers. If you broaden the aperture even further, you could also view them as a novel, emerging class of social network (e.g. network state). That blockchains are different things to different people, or different things at different levels of abstraction, is precisely what makes them so hard to define. But blockchains aren’t unique in this regard. As with anything of intellectual interest, they contain multitudes and thus transcend any singular classification. However, while there are many -- equally valid -- ways to conceive of blockchains, and their web of human relations, my more recent and now preferred way of framing them is as a new kind of -- intrinsically financial -- media network.

Media networks are, as the name suggests, networks that deal in the supply and distribution of media (or information more abstractly). Newspapers are an example of a media network. So, too, radio and television stations. Of course, the dominant media networks of today are “social media” networks, and what sets them apart from their analog counterparts is the fact that they rely, almost exclusively, upon ‘user generated content’ -- that is, the uncoordinated, bottoms-up contributions of the network’s participants as a whole -- rather than the efforts of any single company or entity. Similarly, the media that blockchain networks facilitate the exchange of is entirely user generated in nature. However, where blockchains begin to diverge from traditional social media is that there is no single company responsible for the provision of the underlying service. There is no Ethereum company “running” the blockchain. Instead, the network is provisioned by thousands of independent node operators around the planet.

Beyond this difference in architecture, though, the core difference between social media and blockchain networks, is the type of media these networks deal in. Social media as it exists is predicated upon “free media” that takes the form of ordinary digital files of various formats, that is monetised, indirectly, via advertising. Blockchain networks, in contrast, deal in financial -- aka ‘tokenized’ -- media; that is, media that has, by default, ownership rights and associated economic value. As a consequence of these properties, this ‘socioeconomic wrapping’, blockchain-based media -- ‘cryptomedia’ -- enables a radically alternative economic logic to social media. That is, rather than monetising media indirectly through advertising, cryptomedia can be monetised directly, capturing and representing value in the form of its underlying token. In other words, where social or traditional digital media is valuable insofar as it commands attention, cryptomedia can be valuable in and of itself, analogous to art or real estate or traditional IP. Moreover, by virtue of the fact that cryptomedia exists in the context of open data repositories -- i.e. blockchains -- they enable the possibility of a free market for the discovery, curation and distribution of content, as opposed to the walled gardens of the past and present.

Consider Bitcoin as the canonical cryptomedia network. While it’s not generally appreciated as such, the token itself is a form of media, as is the underlying technical implementation (the software). At the foundation of this network exists a whitepaper (a PDF); an expression, not only of the technical details of the Bitcoin system, but also an implicit set of values, beliefs, and ideas (i.e. memes) that serve as a kind of cultural foundation or framework that shapes the community of evangelists as it evolves. The network as a whole can then be viewed as a global media network that shares in the evangelisation of the network’s core memes -- i.e. digital gold, non-sovereign money, decentralized finance etc. -- and captures the value associated with the memes in the form of the underlying asset, BTC. Participants in the Bitcoin network, on this view, are not only those that hold some amount of BTC but anyone who is promoting or otherwise talking about Bitcoin, whether IRL or some explicit media platform (new-world or old). That is to say, the ‘media network’ that is Bitcoin extends to include, not only the active users of the Bitcoin network, but the entire social and cultural apparatus that surrounds it -- the ‘layer 0’.

Now consider Ethereum as the logical extension of this same concept. Where Bitcoin has historically been the domain of a single asset, BTC, Ethereum enabled the creation and exchange of any arbitrary piece of cryptomedia, fungible and non-fungible alike. Thanks to Ethereum, and other general purpose smart contract platforms, anyone anywhere can issue a piece of media and fractionalize and financialise it however they so choose. Put slightly differently, where Bitcoin was a content platform designed solely for the exchange of a single piece of content, BTC, Ethereum is a general purpose content platform, designed to facilitate the creation and exchange of any arbitrary content. However, in both cases, there is a single commodity-like asset or “money” that is used to pay for access to the network’s compute resources.

Interestingly, though, in spite of its original conception and associated technical limitations, Bitcoin has recently begun to converge on the same functionality as Ethereum, with its own standard for creating various kinds of media in BRC20’s, ordinals and now runes. And while, as a system, it’s not nearly as performant as Ethereum, and certainly other “next generation” blockchains, like Solana and Sui, it’s illustrative of the ultimate utility, the overarching “use case”, of these networks that Bitcoin should evolve the way it has. They are, as I’ve argued, media networks! And as with any other media network, the more media the better.

In the end, blockchain networks represent a new form of community owned, digital media network, built around a new conceptual schema and associated vernacular. At the centre of this new schema are notions such as “minting”, “collecting” and “earning” that, together, supplant -- or at least augment -- traditional social primitives like views and likes. Underlying these new constructs is, of course, the concept of ownership. However, while blockchains serve as a new socioeconomic substrate for content, what remains to be developed -- or what we’re in the very early innings of -- is the consumer interfaces that sit ontop of these networks that facilitate delightful experiences of these new features and constructs. Blockchains provide the database and underlying monetary system of these emerging digital networks, but where is the Facebook and Instagram?