The official Principles of Medical Ethics as well as the American Psychiatric Association’s Annotations that are especially applicable to Psychiatry, were consulted in the construction of this document.
The bullet points in “Expectations” and “Outcome Measures” should be checkboxes in the final PDF format. Feel free to adopt or modify this document for your own purpose if you find it valuable.
Dear Interested Web3 Settler,
You have made the courageous decision of opting to invest your time and attention into learning about “Web3.” As an investor you have intuitively integrated the concept of yield, and naturally expect a return on your investment (ROI).
Similar to the manner in which ERC-20 tokens can be “wrapped” to facilitate composability and capital efficiency across Decentralized Finance (e.g., ETH can be wrapped into wETH for additional programmability; or rebasing ERC-20 tokens like AMPL can be wrapped into wAMPL to become non-rebasing), our educational content is also multi-layered and multi-disciplinary. It entails understanding the world from various perspectives, embracing new digital culture(s), adoption of certain values, reconfiguration of heuristics, and integration of Game Theory basics. Exposure to positive-sum games is likely to fundamentally upgrade your Models of the World. This technology can give you the tools to change your life; being an investor, you further recognize that any change can come with risk.
As such, this agreement:
- reviews ethics and morality in the context of Web3.
- clarifies expectations.
- outlines the nature of your investment pertaining to time and attention.
- specifies educational scope and outcome measures geared towards understanding “Web3.”
- Quotations reflect the dynamic nature of social consensus/narratives/memes which are prone to virality, change, and instability, i.e., because “Web3” was previously understood as “crypto” or “DeFi” at separate times, a different moniker may come to replace it in the future.
Ethics and Morality
If you’re reading this document, by now you might have wondered why Web3 isn’t more widely adopted. There are many reasons for this, including the adversarial relationship of Web2 with its users which directly dis-incentivizes the lay person from onboarding Web3. Because early adopters gravitated naturally towards the erstwhile “crypto” space, certain ethical and moral values came to unify the bottom-up emerged community. We won’t be going so extreme to adopt the Cypherpunks manual, but we can summarize them into the following principle:
to behave in a way such that we bring the greatest amount of benefit to the greatest number of people.
This principle is mathematically summarized by the Nash Equilibrium (A Beautiful Mind). Simply put –
In order to achieve the best outcomes, each member of society should do what’s best for themselves AND everyone else.
Technology is a tool, and any tool can be used for good or evil. This duality applies to fiat currency (cash) as well. While Bitcoin has been used for criminal activity, it has also saved people from complete financial ruin in nation states like Argentina and Venezuela where the local currencies have been debased through reckless money printing/inflation. The Bitcoin network codified trust - that no authority or entity could unilaterally inflate the holder (bearer) of the asset away - and provided a superior alternative to those seeking a hedge against inflation and negative consequences of the Cantillon Effect.
Cannot do Evil > Will not do Evil
Likewise Decentralized Finance (DeFi) enabled by smart contracts has unfortunately resulted in multi-million-dollar losses from pseudonymous developer rug-pulls. But Web3 is also empowering people by uplifting them out of poverty, economic insecurity, stress, and anxiety; this results from permissionless and censorship resistant access to financial tools. The significance cannot be overstated:
Minimizing global neuro-cognitive uncertainty can unlock the doors out of a scarcity mindset. Enabled then to advance up the hierarchy in a bottom-up manner, one can become hopeful and optimistic of the future.
As Web3 progressively disintermediates rent-seeking behavior (removes middlemen), power and responsibility ultimately begin to fall upon the community. These communities are comprised of individuals like you and I, and in many ways resemble the ethos of the Founding Fathers who rejected tyranny to create a new world for everyone in the great nation where we find ourselves today. They felt their freedoms and liberties were restricted in Great Britain, much like most people today find themselves gated out of access to essentially… a better life. So, they took a risk and crossed the Atlantic to the Americas: to build a new world with their own rules; separating the powers of Church and State, decentralizing power and authority between the Federal governments and the United States, and codifying rules into the United States Constitution to the best of their abilities at the time.
In Web3, Code is Law.
With new (smart contract) rules come new (smart contract) risks. There is also greater responsibility to bear. The freedom from regulation enables innovation, but at the expense of legal protection against risk. Moral and ethical values previously enforced by the legal code of a nation state, now instead demand every individual to step forward and intrinsically uphold these values. One way to do this successfully in Web3 is by playing long term games with long term people.
Community is Layer Zero.
Expectations
For the remainder of this document, the words “I” and “you” refer to the patient receiving treatment. As you read through the following, please check the boxes (required) to indicate your understanding of each point.
- This is not financial advice. It cannot be, because Dr.________ is not a registered financial advisor.
- This is education about Web3.
- You will learn how to navigate public blockchain infrastructure, interact with smart contracts, transfer value, build on-chain reputation, and develop a digital identity with property rights. Importantly, a distinction is made to emphasize: no specific advice related to investing value with an expected return will be provided.
- Due to the complex and voluminous nature of Web3 content, a personalized plan may be developed for you.
- Though Web3 and Decentralized Finance can unlock the doors out of a scarcity mindset towards financial independence and self-sovereignty, no such guarantees can be made. If hopelessness for the future does not resolve as expected, other explorations will need to proceed.
- Though Web3, NFTs, monetized culture, and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations can provide a social structure to integrate with, no guarantees can be made regarding the resolution of loneliness or social isolation. Loneliness is an Epidemic.
- You attest Dr._____________ cannot be held liable for any losses or damages incurred due to the experimental nature of Web3 technology.
- You acknowledge Dr. _____________ is a medical professional and has taken the Hippocratic Oath. He abides by the Principles of Medical Ethics and puts your well-being first.
- Should this opportunity result in a dramatic life change for you, you will do your best to be a steward of Web3 and pay it forward.
- You attest to this statement: “I, and only I alone, am responsible for everything that happens to me.”
Investing
We will primarily focus on investing Attention and Time, as that is the prerequisite to investing Value.
Attention
- One of the scarcest resources; arguably, even scarcer than time.
- Top-down vs. Bottom-up attention; we will learn to leverage both.
- If you cannot invest your Attention, you cannot invest Value; only invest in what you understand.
Time
- Another scarce resource; potentially and periodically scarcer than attention.
- Time is a “deflationary asset,” and its supply is fixed.
- If you cannot invest your Time, you cannot invest your Attention - if Time is not deliberately reserved for attending to something, then both Time and Attention are essentially wasted.
- E.g., if your time was not reserved for something that you deemed to be important, then you might find yourself mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed(s).
- If you cannot invest your Attention, you cannot invest your Time – if Attention is not directed volitionally towards effectively utilizing Time, then both Time and Attention are essentially wasted.
- E.g., if attention was not directed towards something that you deemed to be important, then you might find yourself mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed(s).
- The circularity of Time and Attention are purposefully highlighted here to emphasize how they are intertwined.
Value
Myriad objective metrics have been devised to quantify valuations such as Market Capitalization (MC), Price-to-Earnings ratios (P/E), Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA), Stock-to-Flow ratio (S2F), and so forth. But it is equally if not more important to understand Value conceptually. Examples:
- If denominated in United States Dollars (USD), Value is characterized by a centrally controlled monetary policy, perpetually inflating supply, decreasing purchasing power, and no scarcity.
- If denominated in Bitcoin (BTC), Value is characterized by fixed supply, decreasing rate of emissions, and programmatic scarcity.
- If denominated in Ether (ETH), Value is characterized by democratic monetary policy and future deflationary supply with negative issuance after ETH 2.0 Merge.
- Ultimately, Value is subjective to each individual.
- NFTs.
- Therefore if you have not been able to invest Time and Attention to understand something, then it is not recommended to invest Value.
- Once you master the ability to invest your Time and Attention, you will begin to Value yourself.
- Valuing yourself will help you to Value invest in the world. Why? Because “We Model the World, and World Models Us.”
Educational Scope
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Blockchains and Distributed Ledger Technology
- Rebase
- Connecting to Web3 with Ethereum
- Digital Wallet Security and Management
- Digital Property Rights
- NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)
- Privacy
- Financial Literacy
- Decentralized Finance
- Decentralized Governance
- Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
- Public Goods and Gitcoin
- Regenerative Finance
- Fundamental Analysis
- Technical Analysis
- Tokenomics
Outcome Measures
Track your progress by checking off the following items on your journey to Web3 (optional):
- Create multiple digital wallets.
- Designate a wallet as your “Main” to integrate with your real-world identity (comes with privacy trade-offs).
- Select another wallet to be used pseudonymously/anonymously/in a privacy preserving way.
- Transfer value from fiat currency into virtual currency and/or digital assets.
- Plug-in to Zerion, Zapper, DeBank, and other wallet management tools.
- Acquire Rabbithole skills.
- Connect to Open Sea.
- Collect an NFT.
- Bridge value to at least one Layer 2 scaling solution on Ethereum.
- Use at least one Layer 2 decentralized application to increase airdrop eligibility.
- Bridge value to at least one Layer 1 chain other than Ethereum main-net.
- Verify your humanity via Proof-of-Humanity and gain access to Universal Basic Income - $UBI.
- “Mine” $IDENA by proving your personhood to the Proof-of-Personhood Human-centric Idena Network.
- Make a trade on an orderbook centralized exchange (CEX).
- Swap on an automated market maker (AMM).
- Provide Liquidity to a decentralized exchange (DEX).
- Join a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
- Obtain a Proof-of-Attendance Protocol (POAP) badge (e.g., by participating in a DAO community call).
- Stake ETH or another digital asset.
- Deliberately get “scammed” by sharing seed phrase/private key. *
- Invest in at least one speculative instrument. *
- Leverage a small amount of money to experience a liquidation event. *
*Reflect measures of Anti-fragility designed to minimize tail-end risk/black swan (low probability, high magnitude) events.