I’m writing this article in an attempt to bridge two cultural bubbles: crypto community and Leftists. I’ll dig into what I think some use cases are for crypto and blockchain technology from a leftist perspective as well as review some common criticisms. This can only be the beginning of a broader conversation and I'd love to hear your take whether you agree or disagree.
What is a Leftist? Someone who believes society should be structured to meet the basic needs of all people, resources should be shared fairly and structural inequalities must be dismantled. The Left acts against Fascism, imperialism, colonialism and other forms of domination and control. I have spent many years participating in various ways from antiwar protests to mutual aid, helping organize a march, signature gathering and various volunteer positions. I’ve met thousands of people who simply want to help build a better world. There are so many immediate problems such as poverty, hunger, access to water, housing for all, full healthcare for all and so on and it's imperative we come together as humanity to solve them.
“Crypto” refers to cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, and related innovations and communities. Blockchains can be decentralized open source community tools which are the focus here. Cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others but I generally consider the primary cryptocurrency to be Ethereum. The crypto community values freedom, decentralization, censorship resistance, global inclusion and innovation. It's made up of developers, investors, entrepreneurs, artists, collectors, community organizers and communicators, front end designers, social media participants and others all over the world. For now just I'll say if you'd like to learn more check out the Ethereum.org website and other educational resources. The technical details are only relevant if the technology is helpful for humanity in the context of the problems described above.
What is crypto really useful for and is it worth our time to learn about and participate in? Here are some aspects of crypto worth our attention:
Open Source code. Crypto developers put a great deal of effort into building open source software tools for anyone in the world to use. This is a collective effort to create a public goods library you or I can use to build the applications we can imagine. If you care about preventing dystopian corporate monopoly and ensuring tech is in the hands of the people without gatekeepers, you should care about open source software.
Global money. Ethereum is the closest thing humanity has to a neutral global money. It's not a perfect money and it's development isn't finished so I'm not saying it solves our need for a global anti-bias money but it is a very interesting experiment. To work as a global community we need money that's not run by any particular government or military or central bank. This is a massive task and very long term but worth watching.
Art and art community. NFTs are sometimes derided as just a link to a jpg. That is often true, they can be simply a receipt or tracking number showing that you bought a particular piece of digital media or other good or service. As such they are simply a new medium for enabling the sale and collection of art around the world. They help artists build community with their fans, and help fans showcase their collections. NFTs can also be an artistic medium themselves featuring dynamic art that responds to changing variables or is stored as on-chain SVG data rendered in browser as an image. Crypto art is a culture with a distinct art history and global community. Now that Ethereum is using a negligible amount of energy so the environmental concerns are addressed, it's time for leftists to take another look at NFTs. This topic needs to be its own article because there's so much to say.
Transparency. Ethereum and other public blockchains are by definition public ledgers. The accounts and transaction histories are all easily viewable and traceable by anyone. This is important because crypto protocols cannot operate in secrecy like the world's Oligarchs and their private companies are used to doing. It is a complete myth that crypto is good for financial criminals, quite the opposite. Beware of companies that say they are crypto companies but operate without this on-chain transparency. Transparent financial protocols like Maker, Aave and Uniswap are potentially revolutionary and worthy of consideration as economic tools.
Global coordination. Crypto makes crowdfunding easier, faster and more borderless. It allows for tools like cheap and fast remittances, community bid pools for art auctions and supporting public goods like open source development. Check out what Gitcoin is doing with crowdfunds using quadratic funding which encourages many people to make small donations rather than a few people to make large ones. Quadratic voting mechanisms are also interesting. DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are a way to put cooperative organizational structures into code to help people collaborate remotely. People are experimenting and brainstorming for how best to use crypto for coordination but it's something to watch for sure. Look up Kevin O'Wocki's Green Pill book and podcast for more discussion and browse the Gitcoin grants website.
Now I would like to address some of the criticism of crypto and Ethereum you may have heard. Please add more in the comments so I can broaden my perspective and maintain critical thinking. Ethereum is becoming more fully developed as we speak.
Many of the issues you've probably heard about from greenhouse gas emissions to high transaction or gas fees to inability to scale for millions of users are being solved or have been solved already. The Ethereum upgrade called The Merge which happened shortly before I published this article reduced Ethereum's emissions by very nearly 100%. A second layer of blockchains built on top of Ethereum provide a lower transaction fee environment. Next will be what's called data sharding which will further address scalability. Several other upgrades over the next decade will essentially complete Ethereum as a world financial computer. We have no idea what will be possible to do on top of that layer, we are only in the very beginning stages of that experimentation.
Many people trying crypto apps have user experience issues. As outlined above the protocols and apps in crypto are still very experimental. Even the most well developed, battle tested, peer reviewed protocols like Aave and Uniswap should be considered in beta testing at this point. I'm advocating for people to learn more about crypto and Ethereum but that comes with a huge disclaimer attached: this is all early stages, anything could theoretically fail, experiment and learn but be careful and use good security practices. There are test nets you can practice on, lots of tutorials and resources available. Well-polished apps that are mainstream ready and have top notch user experience and customer service will take time to develop and rise from the crowd.
"Isn't crypto just a big scam?" As a leftist this is the primary message I hear from other leftists about crypto. That it's a financial pyramid scheme similar to a multi-level marketing cult and ultimately useless except to scam people out of their money. Certainly there are many scams in crypto and on social media, but whether they are more or less prevalent than scams in other sectors I don't know. I've been scammed by phone in the past and I've known many people who fell for scams or phishing in one form or another over the years. In crypto it's critical to take responsibility for your own security practices: learn to use good password management, identify phishing attempts and false links, check URLs and take other measures to protect yourself. This is inevitable as we become more and more online. The same goes for financial and investment scams, we all have to take part in educating ourselves and our communities as best we can to help each other make informed decisions. The best way to combat predatory scamming in my opinion would be to eliminate global poverty. As for whether all of crypto is one big scam, you’ll need to consider the use cases I’ve outlined above and decide for yourself but clearly there is much more to crypto than investment schemes.
There are many ways to participate in crypto or "web 3" without making any financial investment at all. I recommend starting that way. Mint some NFTs that are free or cheap to create, try out a decentralized finance app like Aave on a testnet with fake money, join the Discord for an educational DAO to connect with people and ask questions. Crypto is a tool, or a set of tools. It's not inherently capitalist or plutocratic. Our collective economic future is what we make it. Do we leave it up to the governments and corporations to build our economies for us? I believe it's important to participate, imprint our collaborative values into protocols and open source code. It's important for us to build the open internet of the future together.
Oh, and Happy Merge Day!
Stuart Reed, @financioly on twitter, @olystuart on Lens
9/15/2022