Synchronized State

Contextual Quotes

1.

"The transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is absolutely inevitable. To summarize, Nation States will enter into a prisoners dilemma with each other, in which, absolutely all of them will be forced to transition into Synchronized States."

- Society Protocol [1]

2.

"Our organization will not be starting any Synchronized States. We aren’t politically motivated. The Society Protocol Foundation, DAO, and core team all have absolutely no interest in being the kings of a new world. Our organization is much like the Linux Foundation—we are the stewards of infrastructure. We are not looking to conquer the world, we serve the world from a position of neutrality. We serve the kings and queens of a new world, and help them achieve their aims of better coordinating their societies by providing the secure, modular, and neutral infrastructure, which all Synchronized States will use."

- Society Protocol [2]

Definition

Society Protocol:

"There are two distinct things we are talking about when discussing Synchronized States.

• synchronized states – can synchronize a state for a community, binding them to a shared reality, but not fulfilling all the essential functions to bind a State.

• Synchronized States – can synchronize a community, binding them to a shared reality, and fulfill all the essential functions to bind a State.

For a lack of a better way to express it, we will sometimes lump the term synchronized states as Synchronized States, because they share essentially the same properties, except for their dimensionality and their ability to form a State.

Synchronized States are a subset of synchronized states: all Synchronized States are synchronized states, but not all synchronized states are Synchronized States.

At Society Protocol, we view all synchronized states as evolutionary steps into Synchronized States. Therefore, we expect them to all to become Synchronized States in due time and for synchronized states to disappear19 over the course of the next 75 years. When this occurs: Synchronized States will merge the clock and State into one entity—a duplicated computer program."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)

Description

(Ashton Keys on the Evolution from Nation States to Synchronized State)

Society Protocol:

1.

"Synchronized States are a relatively new invention borne of blockchain technology which can synchronize the state worldwide—enabling superior coordination9. Originally an evolution of the clock (for elaboration please read 4-Dimensional Synchronization)—these technologies include: Bitcoin, Web3 protocols such as Ethereum, CBDCs, and Web4 in Society Protocol.

People fundamentally misunderstand the nature of these new technologies. They are not immutable ledgers, censorship-resistant, trustless, nor credibly-neutral. What they are is: Synchronized States (or states in some cases): a group of people trying to coordinate around a shared state. This shared state can evolve to form a shared State.

Synchronized States merge the clock and State into one entity, allowing society to coordinate at levels unheard of throughout history and hard to currently fathom. These data societies are bound together by shared state and the algorithms governing it. For the first time in history, every participant can equally, instantly, and transparently share control of the state (and therefore, the State). This isn't just a fix to humanity's coordination problem—it's an order of magnitude improvement.

As the technological rails for tyranny increased throughout the 20th century via telecommunications, the Internet, AI, and CBDCs—enabling Surveillance States, a counter-balance for human agency and thriving had to emerge. Synchronized States are the counter-balance to the deepening coordination crisis created by these technologies.

We are currently finishing up the double-entry age of duplication, which began around Medieval Times, and dawning upon the triple-entry Age of Synchronicity. The transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is already underway. It is inevitable and will occur for very obvious reasons.”

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)

2.

"Synchronized States are protocols with rulesets for a community to share and synchronize a state. By synchronizing the state between individual nodes of participation they allow a community to share a reality in unison, where every individual operates in the same context. When these protocols incorporate all the essential features of a State—including identity systems, property rights, monetary systems, decision-making mechanisms, and coordination frameworks—they transcend mere shared reality tools to become fully-fledged States—fully capable of binding communities together through a shared synchronized reality rather than geographic boundaries.

Nation States are borne of contracts created due to the allowance of duplication early in the double-entry period, and still tethered to those assumptions. If we reason from first-principles…the whole root need of that system (duplicated contracts to establish shared reality15) are unnecessary after we establish Synchronized States—allowing us to CRUD16 the state that binds (STB) worldwide in unison (while retaining privacy). There is no more necessity to create duplicated contracts separately, as we can fairly establish control of a global Synchronized State. It is then optimal to join every duplicated state contract together—allowing us to coordinate better, move as one, and for every piece of state to retain a verifiable history. Everyone benefits tremendously, even though no one in particular should have an exploitative advantage (like no one has an edge in using the clock). Once we understand this is possible, the entire root of Nation States becomes obsolete and we realize that a new paradigm is coming to replace it. Synchronized States inherit all the potential of Nation States and more due to worldwide synchronization, distribution, and algorithmification of the shared reality.

This is a horse vs. car invention–the horse (Nation State) is simply not necessary for the main means of transport (coordination) anymore and the car (Synchronized State) will replace it with a new roaring engine (paradigm) for society.

Synchronized States are purely data & algorithm societies—existing solely as duplicated computer programs. They do not share Nation State borders and will expand anywhere that general computing exists and data can flow: across borders, to the moon, and into outer space. All of this is possible at nearly the speed of light. Elon Musk desperately wants to colonize Mars, Synchronized States can fully synchronize the state of reality for a society between Earth and Mars in an average of ~22.3 minutes (lossless communication). To achieve this with Nation States, would be impossible, they do not have a path towards synchronizing, only towards duplicating data (lossy communication). Would you be more willing to fly to Mars if your existence is controlled by technocratic elites on Earth or if each individual had full control (agency over their identity, assets, and data) and synchronicity with all of society? Synchronized States are likely a prerequisite to becoming an interplanetary species17.

The need to decide on which Synchronized States are necessary arises from the social layer. We have already covered how these needs arise and dissipate in The state That Binds (Shared Reality). The core premise of shared realities, including all Synchronized States (which are just a means to uphold and synchronize a shared reality)—is that people will participate in them (and thereby, hold them up) as long as the need to maintain a shared reality is greater than the effort required to hold it up. The more state and identity data that the social layer places into the Synchronized State, the more powerful and sticker the shared reality grows. Meaning, Synchronized States are networks and their value grows in accordance with network effects, superlinearly with each additional user. Finally, and this is the same for all Synchronized States—when the need to continue maintaining them disappears from the social layer, they just collapse."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)

Status

Step 1: Building a Web3 Outpost

"The Web3 Outpost will serve as the Schelling Point around which the Society Protocol movement will gather. It’s purpose is to keep our community aligned and together through this journey, by using the censorship-resistant, “immutable”, and economic qualities of Web3; as we build the transition to Web4.

...

Ultimately, the Web3 Outpost is designed to: bind us together, keep track of individual contributions, provide an economic substrate to finance and manage our organization, and provide a censorship-resistant space for hosting our community and content."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/how-we-are-building-society-protocol/)

Typology

"Types of synchronized states

The total list of synchronized states includes: clocks, Bitcoin, Web3 blockchains, CBDCs (Social Credit Systems and Traditional), and Web4 in Society Protocol.

1-Dimensional: Clocks

2-Dimensional: Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

3-Dimensional: Web3, CBDCs (Social Credit Systems, Traditional CBDC, and Central Banks using Web3 rails)

4-Dimensional: Society Protocol

...

Clocks (1D): The original synchronized states for humanity were clocks. We still use them today, they’re incredibly important for our societal function—the gears of the clock are the gears of society, but they have very little to do with Synchronized States or the evolution of the State.

Bitcoin (2D): Satoshi was the first to create a 2-Dimensional synchronized state. A truly legendary character and network. Although it revolutionized finance and is on its way to becoming the most valuable asset in the world—it cannot store assets or become a State, due to its 2D nature.

...

3-Dimensional Blockchains (Web3 & CBDCs): Web3 and CBDCs are built on the same technological rails invented by Vitalik Buterin in 2015. Both series of protocols are 3-Dimensional and synchronize a cube of programmable property globally.

Where they differ, is that Web3 is permissionless (anyone can participate in the network) while CBDCs are backed by Nation States and permissioned (accounts in the network are controlled by Central Banks or a similar division of the Nation State).

Technically speaking, that is their only difference: Web3 is permissionless and independent of the State, while CBDCs are permissioned and controlled by Nation States.

While that is their only difference, in reality, that places them worlds apart. Web3 and CBDCs have completely counter opposing communities and ideologies. The prevailing perception is that Web3 is about freedom and CBDCs are about control (even though they are both actually about control by different groups/

4-Dimensional Synchronized States (Web4): ... 4D Synchronized States form identity and have an economic system of value in Energy redistribution out of the box. As you witnessed with CBDCs: once we start with an economic system and identity system—we can get everything else.

Each 4D Synchronized State can decide for itself how to use and redistribute Energy to coordinate its people. The freedom of the 4D Energy systems allows us to get everything else in any fashion we desire—each society has its own value system.

Web4 Synchronized States inherit all the ownership and control of property that Web3 synchronized states have, but it is controlled by individual actors who exist within the system. Individual Actors control their identities, property, and data. This returns agentic control back to the hands of the individual by making identity, property, and data bearer assets.

Web4 Synchronized States fundamentally store, synchronize, and coordinate people—not only their property. Unlike CBDCs, which require Nation States to bootstrap identity and permissions, or Web3 protocols that rely on ineffective sybil resistance methods, Web4 Synchronized States generate genuine identity organically through time-based participation. This flips the model, Nation States can use Web4 Synchronized States, yet Web4 Synchronized States do not need Nation States to bootstrap them the same way that CBDCs require identity from the Nation State. For the first time, a synchronized state protocol can function as a complete sovereign entity (a Synchronized State) to coordinate its users, without needing anything from existing institutions."

Society Protocol (4D)

"Society Protocol is the only known protocol for Web4. It is the inheritor and evolution of the Web3 ethos and cypherpunk values. While Web3 protocols champion decentralization, pseudoanonimity, individual agency, privacy, and fairness, they fundamentally cannot form a State due to their architectural limitations. Society Protocol represents a superset of Web3 protocols—preserving their core principles while enabling the full functioning of a Synchronized State. This distinction is crucial because Web3 itself has become a cabal and is being co-opted by technocratic elites to appear decentralized while it is actually only distributed (as detailed in Fake Everything. Society Protocol breaks free from this paradigm, delivering on the original promise of decentralized coordination.

Society Protocol is the first true Synchronized State protocol (it can function to truly bind and coordinate a tribe together, and not just their assets). While CBDCs can eventually evolve to form Synchronized States, it is designed to do this, out of the box."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)

Characteristics

Society Protocol:

"You might be wondering, “How does the rebalancing societal pyramid decide what's valuable?”

The pyramid of Society Protocol (SP) instances automatically rebalances its explicit social hierarchy, Energy, based on the unified value system of the SP instance contained in the SSC—called Value Functions (VFs). You can read more about VFs in Re-distribution! (Value Systems). Each SP instance is able to implement its own unique assortment of Value Functions, and adjusts the knobs of how they redistribute Energy via Protocol Parameters.

Philosophy of Value in Synchronized States

Although various instances of Society Protocol will each have different philosophies on what is valuable to them––there is one underlying philosophy of value, which must be followed by all Synchronized States, in order for these protocol to work. It is Survival.

Survival of the societal pyramid must always remain the singular primary value of every SP instance. Before it can differentiate itself with other values, the instance must fulfill this criteria.

What does survival mean in this case? It’s very simple. The Synchronized State must, before anything else, value producing activity (social interactions).

If the SP instance has activity (interactions) happening inside it, then it’s alive and surviving—meaning, participants find that instance valuable by interacting with it. Synchronized States must always consider this core criteria for optimization, before they branch off into any unique value optimizations. Their value system must always optimize for activity (social interactions) before expanding into anything else.

After that is complete, each instance can theoretically choose to optimize their whole value system however they would like....25. Practically, as a secondary consideration, the Value Functions should be able to achieve all the generalized interactions that humans partake in, in all societies—such as: property rights, governance, indoctrination, social relationships, cultures, organization, communication, state storage, etc...

Society Protocol uses Value Functions to achieve this.

Value Functions define what the instance finds valuable (what it rewards and punishes in its Synchronized Social Contract (SSC). The aim when creating Value Functions is to fuse the individual's interest26 together with the collective interest. For example, the Curation Value Function in Society Protocol fuses the individual's desire to share their opinions about subjects they care about with the societal interest for accurate discovery, which all participants want, using economic incentives. The more powerful the economic incentives used to fuse every individual’s interests together with the societal interests present in the Value Functions —> the more powerful that Value Function and variant of SP becomes as a coordination mechanism.

Each Value Function coordinates all the participants inside of the SP instance and redistributes the total value of the societal pyramid. All participants agree to these functions (implicitly) by interacting with the protocol. Value Functions form a core part of the SSC—the explicit social contract inside of the SSC is what keeps societies together. The perceived value of the SSC is what brings active value to everything else in the protocol, including the monetary system (Energy) and the shared reality of identities (Actors) which exist inside an SP instance27.

Blockchain Pyramids (Web3) vs Rebalancing Pyramids (Web4)

The core difference between Web3 blockchains (pyramids) and Web4 Society Protocol instances (which are rebalancing pyramids), is in their perception of value.

Blockchains are operating by using the assumptions of value from the end of the DEAA—where value is still stored as static assets. Society Protocol operates under the assumption of value from the beginning of the TEAA—where value is an ever-changing measurement flowing between each identity in the system.

The differences in the two systems create a staggering divergence in their coordination incentives.

Web3 Adoption Cycle

If you leave a Bitcoin or Ether token in the state machine for 200 years, and then come back…it will be there for you. Exactly the same as when you left it (assuming that the network is still alive and functional). Your tokens may be worth more or less upon your return—depending on the success of the network while you were absent. Their value is not tied to your contribution and will greatly diverge. The value a participant contributes to the network doesn’t correlate with the value that participant holds in Web3. These are flawed economic incentives, which create disaligned societal coalitions.

As a result, Web3 participants are incentivized to join pyramids they perceive as being successful in the future as early as possible, speak loudly about how much they’re contributing (to get other people interested) and contribute little value. Web3 pyramids produce a constantly degrading curve of adoption incentives throughout their lifetime, which is only counterbalanced by their success, but at a certain point…this degrading curve creates a game theoretic scenario where it’s more beneficial for participants to join a newly formed degrading curve at the start, rather than participate in the bottom of an established successful degraded curve of adoption. At that point in the curve, blockchains start to lose members to a new curve and collapse28.

Web4 Adoption Cycle

If an Actor leaves Energy in the Society Protocol state machine for 200 years, and then comes back…their Energy will be drained proportionally to the value they contributed during that time period and likely not be there when they return. In the case of Energy, their value is correctly following economic principles. It is directly tied to each participant’s contributed value to the coalition at each point in time. At whatever point they return in the future, their value will remain proportional to their contribution to the coalition.

As a result, Web4 participants are equally incentivized to join the rebalancing pyramid...at any point in time. There is no “good” time to join, and no “bad” time to join, whenever a participant enters and exits, their value will always reflect the value they contributed to the network. Web4 participants are incentivized to contribute real value AND speak loudly (to also get other people interested).

Web3 systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be compared to infantile versions of Society Protocol––with only 1-2 Value Functions embedded in their system. All of Web3 networks already must have a Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) to decide what’s valuable for their network (in addition to their free market aspects). The only difference is some social contracts are more refined than others.

In the case of Bitcoin: The SSC contains only one Value Function: mining. The entire social contract agrees to keep the scarcity of BTC at a certain supply and to reward newly added value to winning miners who solve a cryptographic puzzle. That’s it. That’s the SSC of the Bitcoin network. The rest of the network operates on the free market of individual interests.

In the case of Ethereum: The SSC evolved to have two Value Functions (VFs): staking and access to the EVM. The first VF is staking, where the network has decided it values and will reward users who participate in securing the network and inputting transactions. The second VF is in access to the EVM (the equivalent of the Property VF in Society Protocol), it allows users to pay Ether (gas) to access the programmable EVM (in order to CRUD their property).

That’s all it is. Bitcoin and Ethereum are simply infantile versions of Synchronized States like Society Protocol with a simpler SSC. Unlike Society Protocol, their SSCs are unable to accomplish all the functionality necessary to run the coordination of a State, such as: identity, governance, social relationships, organizations, cultures, laws, and taxes. But they both have a value system in mining, staking, and access to the EVM. All blockchain networks are simply infantile versions of Synchronized States with fewer and less optimized Value Functions (VFs) in their Synchronized Social Contracts (SSCs).

Since blockchains can’t effectively store identities...which are the source of scarcity in the TEAA...they cannot produce sybil-resistance on account creation. As a consequence...they can’t govern themselves effectively. As a consequence...all of their decision-making must happen off-chain at the social layer—requiring hard forks to make updates to their networks. As a consequence...this makes it essentially impossible to “steer the ship”, a.k.a coordinate, on these networks as a group. As a consequence...they are forced to set perfect parameters for their networks from the outset of the network (essentially an impossible challenge).

As a result:

1. Web3 systems: Read – Write – Own
2. Web4 systems: Read – Write – Own – Coordinate
3. Web3 systems are DEAA chains acting in a TEAA world.

Their foundations are stuck in the past. We must evolve to Web4 to enter the future of human coordination."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/rebalancing-pyramids/)

Overview of Expected Advantages

Complete Alignment of Direct Representation

Society Protocol:

"Synchronized States fundamentally transform how we coordinate. Every participant—without exception—interacts directly with the Synchronized Social Contract (SSC). This marks a radical departure from the double-entry accounting age (DEAA), where we depended on intermediaries, such as governance representatives, to facilitate our societal interactions. All participants individual interests are represented equally. This fundamental transformation is a big deal.

When applied to governance, it means that the complete combination of individual interests of all participants can align to theoretically equal the collective interests of the pyramid. When applied to societal interactions, it means that the system becomes less prone to the censorship which can be imposed by intermediaries––everyone interacts directly (P2P). It results in a fair social contract that's transparent (illuminated) for everyone and applied equally to all parties for everyone to interact with. Everyone becomes illuminated by this shared contract (SSC), not just the Illuminati at the top of the pyramid.

When applied to the important question of "What does it take to capture control of the societal pyramid?", it makes it much harder to capture than a representative governance system, where only a few powerful nodes at the top need to be captured to capture the system. In a direct representation system, ideally the majority of the population or more would need captured in order to capture and corrupt the system. That's a big difference! It was never possible before.

Direct representation can eliminate the Illuminati top quirk of the DEAA. The top slots in TEAA social pyramids are unable to opaquely form alliances with each other to avoid rebalancing...at a minimum this would be visible to all. If the value system of a Synchronized State is configured optimally, it can make all parties compete with each other, without any benefit to forming into cabals and only a downside really (in the same way that stock market traders don't form into cabals, because they're economically incentivized to compete with each other). Governance is the exception, political parties are inevitable and use cooperation between large groups to enact change––this is normal. Even that dynamic can be alleviated a little bit, to protect against malicious cabals and cartels... As systems designers, we can improve this dynamic by occasionally directly double checking the will of the Governors against the wider will of the entire populace via direct interactions. That's about as good as it gets. It's pretty close to the theoretical limits of governance.

Escaping Goverance capture: Even in the case of Synchronized State capture, it's easier for people to fork or Portal out than it is to exit in the case of Nation States, which requires physical war or diplomacy over territories. I expect Synchronized States to be more competitive and interoperable than their predecessor, with lower switching costs.

Aligned Incentives in Every Value Function

Believe it or not, the only difference between the images above is the proper alignment of incentives and the power to enforce them.

A thorny fundamental issue recurrently appears in group coordination called the “tragedy of the commons." It’s basically a way of saying “when nobody is in charge of communal objects…everybody takes advantage, nobody is able to marshal resources effectively, and the communal objects themselves go to shit.” This is simply the manifestation of individual interests not matching up with the collective interests.

In the current DEAA paradigm of Nation States, civilization doesn’t have a way to make society-wide decisions without invoking a small group of representatives—each with their own individual interests. Since we don’t have a unified social contract for the societal interests, a decision-making process which can equally consider the interests of everyone inside the societal pyramid, or an enforcement mechanism to automate the enforcement of whatever social contract is created, the tragedy of the commons remains a large and unsolved problem.

Synchronized States break through this pattern... For the first time in history, societies are able to form a Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) which is: transparently and equally shared and governed by everyone (equitably considering collective interests), unified into one coherent object (not a patchwork of separate duplicated contracts), and automatically enforceable with modern technology (for example, algorithmically enforced sensors in parks automatically adding a fee to an individual participant’s identity for littering).

What does this allow us to do? We can equitably make rules for the commons which are transparent to everyone and enforce those rules in an automated fashion (accountability), with real monetary value, society-wide, tied to real identities, property objects, and data. This allows entire societies to create a virtuous cycle of incentives for just about everything in their vicinity—including the societal commons, and all social interactions between their participants. This functionality is truly evolutionary, it's not revolutionary.

This was never possible before. In past and current epochs of human civilization (ZEAA–DEAA), incentives haven’t been able to be transparently created in a unified SSC, instantly applied society-wide, automated and tracked using computation, nor created and governed fairly and equitably in the direct interests of the public.

Value Functions comprise the value system of Society Protocol instances, each of which is designed to align the incentives between the individual interest and the societal interest as closely as possible. Although the 9 Value Functions we present at Society Protocol are extremely powerful and should be adequate to facilitate all the societal interactions necessary, Value Functions will themselves grow more refined over time as Society Protocol instances evolve, experiment, and our community discovers more robust ways to design them. Each discovery will bring the individual interests and societal interests closer together on a society-wide basis—affecting every individual participant within a SP instance positively. Each new valuable Value Function discovered gains compounding productivity increases for everyone inside the societal hierarchy pyramid at the same time. They affect every participant in the societal coalition, scale superlinearly with network effects, and compound, multiplying productivity—making these societal productivity gains exponential. That’s what we mean when we say humanity is entering a new age, The Age of Synchronicity.

Automated Rebalancing of the Social Hierarchy

In the modern world, every social interaction requires us to manually calculate and update status hierarchies. We've invented millions of tricks and decision trees to navigate these situations, constantly assessing "what the social contract is here", "how it affects the other patchwork of social contracts", and "how to best exploit it."

Humans are opportunistic. Every little power vacuum must be filled with people negotiating over status hierarchies––which is essentially a zero-sum game. It doesn’t create or destroy anything tangible, but status hierarchies must be established and updated for us to function as a society. Remember…each human behavior must adequately form or update the social hierarchy before it can do anything else. But where is the resulting status hierarchy that’s adjusted located?

In the modern world, civilization has learned three status hierarchy mechanics, which are used in a layered fashion:

1. Physical social interaction from the ZEAA
2. Vertical social hierarchy rules inscribed in permanent records from the SEAA
3. Duplicated contracts between “equal” participants of the DEAA

All of these status hierarchies are manually updated—this means physical energy must be spent in societal interactions of some sort, which all come with highly complex mini-games, merely to adjust social hierarchies. The amount of energy spent here summed up between all participants and civilizations is a good chunk of all human energy ever spent29. All this work happens at every interaction and upholds an ethereal ever-mutating mesh of social hierarchies. The costs of creating and upholding this mesh for civilization are enormous. All participants combined pay these costs with their energy everyday.

As participants, we're constantly creating this mesh of social contracts—then forgetting them, rewriting them, fighting over them. We manipulate and deceive to gain advantages. We enter political confrontations over their meaning. We think on multiple levels about how others will interpret our moves…while staying aware that everyone else is playing the same complex game. All the time. it's how we manually uphold the social contract as a society.

There’s no clear, unified, nor enforceable social contract ruleset (outside of those dictated vertically by the top of the pyramid). Even the vertical rules don't fully propagate across society. Just because they’re written on paper somewhere doesn’t mean they are known by participants, enforceable, or evenly applied––it all depends on the manual attention and subjective interpretation we as individuals give to them. Our vertical social contract rulesets are just some words on a page...its enforcement entirely depends on the subjective interpretation by various participants...especially the judges, who are responsible for deciphering the intentions of laws, they hold the ultimate power with their interpretation in this situation.

A historical example:** In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, they wrote: “All men are created equal” in the words of the social contract––yet those are just words. They don’t mean anything without an interpretation and enforcement mechanism. Great, now that we have some words...it’s time for participants to argue over what they actually mean! This imposes high energy costs across society and produces subjective results. Finally, the judges decide with their subjective opinion and individual interests what it means. Well, it seems to mean that slavery is a-okay! As you can see, they're just words, they hold no power or meaning without a manual subjective interpretation. All manual subjective interpretation will differ. Well...so are you a slave or equal? Results may vary!

This process can be automated. Creating a singular unified social contract was never possible before, because humanity never had the technological capabilities to construct such a thing until now.

By unifying the social contract into a singular SSC, civilization doesn’t remove, but vastly downsizes the need for everyone in society to participate in this game of manually creating, updating, and interpreting social contracts on a daily basis—thus, saving all individual participants an estimated 25%30 of their total energy for more valuable pursuits. The SSC becomes unified society-wide, and can be updated globally instantly via Governance decisions in the Synchronized State.

The SSC synchronously and automatically rebalances the explicit societal pyramid algorithmically for all participants based on its objective ruleset. This functionality is layered in addition to the tools of the previous ages. The ruleset is transparent and agreed upon by all participants. The cream rises to the top, and the garbage sinks to the bottom of the system automatically—benefitting every stakeholder in the system.

Additionally, the SSC balances what society wants (the coalition’s interest) on a society-wide basis. By sharing a unified social contract, participants are able to clearly articulate and direct what their collective interest actually is—automatically balancing the roles desired within their unique societal pyramid. Society Protocol instances can easily optimize their coalition’s societal towards their desired proportions of roles: military, asset creators, creatives, curators, governors, merchants, infrastructure workers, etc… in a comprehensive and unified way—by simply updating their SSC's Value Functions to incentivize the value of those roles in the right proportions.

Meritocracy

We can define a meritocracy as: “a system where the optimal entities for each vertical have an unequal amount of decision-making power, and thus are favored in making decisions for the coalition.”

Civilization has always wanted meritocracy as its decision-making mechanism, because it produces the most intelligent decisions compared to other forms of group decision-making. The difficult part of the process has always been a way to ascertain “who are the optimal entities for each decision?”. Without a unified SSC, all participants in the system are incentivized to play status games for claims to their merit. If a coalition wants to implement meritocracy, then it must have a way to decide who has merit. Society has never really had an impartial unified way to deciding this part, because it lacked a shared SSC to define merit.

By codifying a concrete value system in the SSC's Value Functions, coalitions become able to derive a hierarchy of merit from that singular value system. The initial hierarchy of merit present in all Society Protocol instances is Energy. Energy rebalances the explicit social status of Society Protocol instances, based on the Value Functions defined in that instance.

By using Energy as the base metric of merit…additionally, all SP instances can ascertain what constitutes merit in various other verticals, by pulling from all the data accumulated in their instance and algorithmically creating and agreeing via Governance to a singular formula for “merit” in any vertical. Meaning: once we have a base formula for merit in Energy, we can use group decision-making (governance) in order to create custom precise formulas for merit in any other vertical.

Not everyone has to participate in everything. Meritocracy is the TEAA’s evolution of the group decision-making process. It’s more resilient than a dictatorship (which can make quick decisions but fails when the single ruler node goes bad), and more robust than democracy (which must give everyone decision-making power, giving all sorts of clueless individuals equal decision-making power in everything).

This evolution was never possible before, because society had no globally synchronized equitable method to decide on “what is merit” in a concrete way, without a unified SSC. For example: if society lets a dictator emperor of the SEAA decide on what is merit…it would still be a dictatorship, because the dictator decides merit. If instead society lets a democratic governance system decide on what is merit...it would still be a democracy, because the democracy decides merit. The root of the system needs to have merit imbued for it to be a meritocracy.

The governance of a system should generally not be perceivable, it should be frictionless (not engulfing the lives of unrelated ordinary citizens) and ideally effortless (saving everyone energy). Meritocracy enables this combination. It allows group decision-making systems to operate without involving everyone (saving energy), while retaining the best decision-makers to come to a consensus on group decisions (optimizing decision-making).

These systems can only be made fair with a complete alignment of the constituents and the governance, which requires direct access to the social contract. Society Protocol is the first system able to offer such an alignment.

Synchronized Automation of Incentives and Accounting

In order to create valuable incentives in a coalition, there must be an accountability and enforcement mechanism. Accounting is required for the upkeep and transfer of all these societal incentives. Society Protocol automates the computation, synchronization, accounting, and enforcement of all incentives. Since everything (identities, assets, and data) is merely an object in the same unified system of digital data, the protocol can effortlessly target and affect these objects, but is restricted according to the rules set by its SSC.

As a comparison to the manual accounting abilities of the DEAA, anyone that’s spent time filing taxes knows how long it takes to do all the accounting for receipts manually, and we attempt to synchronize all this data on a nationwide level once a year. Even after all this...the unified results always come out very mangled, because it’s extremely difficult and time consuming to do this amount of accounting manually and match it all up accurately across the system separately for each individual entity using duplicated contracts. It takes our current DEAA Nation States a year to attempt to synchronize all of this data––whereas Society Protocol instances would synchronize it all instantly and effortlessly.

Just imagine what societal coalitions could accomplish when all this manual work is offloaded, and all this societal data is automatically immutably stored and synchronized for everyone (in addition to just saving energy). This synchronicity of incentives combined with automation will create a hive-mind effect similar to a swarm—allowing society to move as one, while directing its entire value flows and energy in an intelligent manner. This swarm effect will be a drastic improvement in coordination, but it will then combine with butterfly effects—completely changing the world. **It will usher in The Age of Synchronicity.**

This was never possible before. Even if these effects of synchronization and automation of incentives weren’t accomplished in an entirely fair manner (meaning: some parties had inherent advantages)—it would still be ridiculously powerful coordination. We’re happy to inform you that Society Protocol can also theoretically accomplish these qualities in a fair and equitable manner31.

Fully Immutable Societal History

For coalitions to coordinate effectively, they have to share the same reality. Currently, shared realities are maintained through a fragmented patchwork of physical presence and communication (ZEAA), permanent records (SEAA), and duplicated contracts (DEAA). In the TEAA, societal coalitions will add a fourth layer of methods to uphold the shared reality: an immutable Timeline of societal history. Society Protocol instances retain the entire public history of every public interaction in a quasi-immutable Timeline for their entire lifetime.

Sharing a singular unified immutable history as a shared reality for the lifetime of the Synchronized State is powerful. It allows coalitions to coordinate in more sophisticated ways because the amount of public information about every identity, asset, and piece of data in the system is unprecedented. All objects in the system will accumulate vast public histories over time. Unable to obscure, or hide from the shared reality—their true colors will be revealed over time in an unforgeable manner. This was never possible before.

Up to this point, our history has always been a mutable story, which absolutely every individual actor in society can benefit from mutating into their favor…and they do! As a result, we’re all living in an illusion. A patchwork of mutated history, which we use as a shared reality to make decisions (without this shared reality we wouldn’t be able to retain our sense of identities or know how to make decisions). This happens as a consequence of the patchwork nature of the DEAA. Before then, during the SEAA and ZEAA…it was even worse!

Two things occur as a result of the mutable nature of our history:

• Everyone in society is incentivized to manipulate history, and spends some significant amount of energy doing so, recreating stories a little bit in their favor. When we add up all the societal energy spent on this…and the distortions it causes…and realize we can eliminate those…it’s like wow! That can save us all a lot of energy and make life better.

As a result of all these individual distortions, we’re all living in a lie. A singular accurate version of historical events would fix this problem for everyone at once. Just this one feature alone, would cure society of the veil it must currently live under—creating a different illuminated world.

The Timeline won’t remove the duality of human nature, that’s here to stay. Humans are naturally dualistic (you can read the introduction of The state That Binds for a better understanding). What it will do…is make it harder to maintain absurd dualities when matched against the immutable public history of society, which is transparently visible to all participants. Duality should become less powerful.

In today’s world (DEAA), power is mostly derived from informational advantages. This makes secret societies very powerful. It’s very easy for individuals with informational advantages to create a dualistic story and take advantage of their informational advantage (based on what others believe and perceive with lesser information) because our current reality is a patchwork of overlapping shared realities. We face this issue everyday in the modern world. The information is presented in a distorted way in our media channels specifically for this purpose. There is a lot of power in informational advantages, and dualistically distorting the information of those around you to retain an advantage is a winning strategy (which brings value to some individual’s interests at the expense of ruining the accuracy of history for the whole societal pyramid32). It’s one of many perverse incentives we currently experience.

In the TEAA, all these dualistic stories will have to match up with the entire singular history of shared reality to be effective. Everyone can perceive where stories originate from, who is propagating them, and can easily verify a mis-matching story against the shared reality. It becomes very difficult to propagate dualistic stories throughout the shared reality, especially over time. I believe that while power in the DEAA is derived largely from informational advantages; in the TEAA power will be derived largely from doing valuable things that are in the societal interests. This is due to a combination of the inherent incentives alignment in Synchronized States combined with the fact that coordinating in private against the speed of the joint coordination swarm will be both too slow and treacherous in comparison.

Metaverse of Coordination

The coordination pyramid superstructure of Society Protocol will manifest in the real world in real-time. Using modern hardware, such as this AI enhanced helmet, all the data will come alive to create an overlay over life at all times—illuminating every social interaction. The overlay will show all sorts of relevant information about the entities participants interact with (identities, assets, and data objects), pulling from their entire public history (which is stored in the Timeline). This vast knowledge-base will be presented to each user in a personalized fashion—to give each user the personalized heads-up-display (HUD) they desire.

In the not too distant future, life will become very similar to an interactive massive multiplayer online game (MMORPG)—where everyone’s identity is loaded into the “game of life” and interactions occur directly between everyone’s self-sovereign identity (SSI) stored in Society Protocol, like playing a video game character. This feature will greatly increase trust and coordination in society. It was never possible before.

Modularity of Value Systems

The root of culture and politics is economics. (Economics ––> Culture ––> Politics)

Societies all have different economics, a culture forms based off those economics. Then culture defines the politics of the society33. This process creates unique value systems for each society. The value system of a tourism heavy nation like Costa Rica is nothing like the value system of a military superpower like the United States. Fortunately, Society Protocol supports a modular composition of Value Functions in order to create unique value systems for each instance. These value systems are defined in the assortment of Value Functions34 of each Society Protocol instance.

Each instance’s unique value system defines a formula for how explicit social value, Energy, is redistributed—which is how the societal pyramid is rebalanced. You can learn more about this aspect in Re-distribution! (Value Systems). The value system is very important, seeing as it’s the algorithm responsible for redistributing Energy, which equates to: explicit social status, money, currency, ownership, and access to control in the shared reality.

Each SP instance will define its own value system, but at the root of it is this question: “What does this coalition find valuable, and how can we create a system that can redistribute Energy towards that aim and away from the actions we don’t want?”

At Society Protocol, our distributed community hosts an official forum where users can discuss the merits of various Value Function, value system formulas, and create custom modular templates for various Value Functions and “builds” of entire value systems.

Each Synchronized States value system is only limited by their community’s imagination, Value Functions technical need for sybil-resistance, and computing power. New Value Functions, which participants agree to use for coordination purposes, can instantly be added into the system upon the decision by the Governance and implemented globally without destroying the previous state accumulated in the immutable history, while simultaneously taking into account the current state of the entire system. This wasn't ever possible before.

Upgradeability

It’s very difficult to change ossified parts in our legacy systems. Societal pyramids collapse because they are unable to change. Laws swell on the books but are impossible to remove. Concrete buildings line the streets, but are challenging to demolish and create space. Cultures permeate the public mentality, but are very difficult to modernize.

In addition to rebalancing the social hierarchy inside of them, Synchronized States can update their infrastructure to rebalance the structure of the societal pyramid itself with relative ease. Since their nature is simply a duplicated computer program, changing (updating) digital code is relatively easy (as long as we can avoid technical debt 😂).

Everyone can clearly see and define what the update will do, it is controlled as fairly as possible by the Governance of the system, and execution is computed and synchronized all across the world automatically.

Additionally, the public immutable history stored in the Timeline allows for clear analytics of the past and debates about "what are the optimal changes to be made?". Coalitions can accurately track the past to see what’s working, what’s not working, and make changes based off an accurate version of history. This was never possible before."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/rebalancing-pyramids/)

Discussion

Reasons Nation States will transition into Synchronized States

Society Protocol:

"Duplication – Information duplication is breaking reality. Our systems are currently overloaded with state of all sorts. This state is not tracked or harmonized together, and this unsustainable paradigm is causing reality itself to collapse. Every real piece of data now creates 100 unconnected copies, followed by 1,000 deepfake versions. This pattern is accelerating exponentially—meaning next year will produce 1,000 secondary copies and 10,000 deepfakes for every original. The authentic signal gets buried under exponentially growing noise. Our systems can't effectively track where information comes from, where it's been, or who's responsible for it. Without synchronization, we're drowning in incoherent data that floods every aspect of our lives from all directions. This unsustainable duplication doesn't just overwhelm our information systems—it destabilizes the shared reality that holds society together. Nation States will increasingly become delusional—unable to tell real from fake, until switching over to Synchronized States (which attribute ownership and track the transfer of all pieces of public state).

Alignment – The will of the representatives isn't aligned enough with the populace. As the control of technocratic elites entrenches and grows in power with Surveillance States—the populace is becoming disenchanted and don’t naturally support them due to a misalignment of interests. The populace deeply fears giving up more control, and will do everything in its power to stop the continuous erosion of its control over the state.

Today, people fear virtually every system under technocratic control: fiat currency, surveillance infrastructure, social media platforms, media companies, the pharmaceutical industry, multi-tier justice, the military-industrial complex. The result is inevitable resistance. Intent is everything, and the people are (and will increasingly) not let these systems progress due to it tightening the noose around their own necks10. Instead, they will actively strive to create Synchronized States because Synchronized States offer a full overlap between control of the State and its citizenry—where they can regain power via control of the state.

Automation – Synchronized States can algorithmically enforce taxes, laws, and monetary systems with unprecedented fairness and efficiency—something Nation States fundamentally cannot achieve due to their lack of technological rails and reliance on duplicated data.

Consider the current tax and legal system: every individual must independently track disconnected accounting data, navigate labyrinthine tax codes, perform complex calculations, make subjective decisions about legal write-offs, and submit their findings to authorities who then apply laws inconsistently due to their system's inherent limitations. This broken process forces governments to continuously expand regulations until virtually everyone becomes technically a criminal, under full enforcement—creating systematic inequality where outcomes depend on connections, knowledge of tax loophole enforcement, or physical features such as race.

This represents the antithesis of fair coordination. Synchronized States eliminate this dysfunction entirely through algorithmic automation. Taxes, laws, and regulations become transparent, automatically calculated, and applied equally to all individuals—removing preferential treatment based on arbitrary factors. What currently requires armies of accountants, lawyers, and bureaucrats becomes a seamless, fair, and efficient automated process.

Coordination – Nation States operate at industrial-era speeds in an information-age world. Their decision-making systems are fundamentally bottlenecked by their inability to synchronize, as consensus requires synchronization. Nation States lack the infrastructure to achieve synchronization at the speed of modern civilization. They are unable to coordinate a society at 21st century speeds. Their decision making quality deteriorates with scale. Since they cannot make decisions quickly or effectively, encompassing the entirety of their populace, they will be surpassed by the more fluid and coordinated nature of Synchronized States—which will naturally overtake them in decision quality. Nation States will be forced to switch to Synchronized States—being the only way to increase their decision-making capacity.

Bureaucracy – Nation States maintain vast bureaucratic infrastructures requiring millions of personnel, countless government buildings, and enormous financial resources. Despite these massive expenditures, the resulting systems are riddled with waste and corruption, and fundamentally inefficient. As sovereign debts mount and fiscal pressures set in, Nation States will increasingly offload these processes to Synchronized States11.By merging the clock and State, Synchronized States will save trillions of dollars on bureaucracy. The costs of running and coordinating a State will come down from trillions of dollars to the costs of running a duplicated computer program. The Nation States which embrace this transition will watch their bureaucratic overhead collapse—while those that resist it will watch in envy…and eventually plainly disappear if they don’t switch.

Power – A way to explain it is, Synchronized States will replace Nation States for the same reasons that people fear CBDCs: because they’re powerful. If there wasn’t power over the individual there, the populace wouldn’t fear CBDCs—and CBDCs are simply infantile Synchronized States. Optimized Synchronized States like Society Protocol are tremendously powerful, and if adopted by neighboring tribes, the populace of a Nation State would fear not switching over or starting their own. This fear will transform into enthusiasm because the same populace (or any group of people for that matter) can deploy Synchronized States to gain agency—seeing that they are just open-source duplicated computer programs.

Prisoners Dilemma – Synchronized States do not see borders in the same way that Nation States see borders. They will develop trust quicker, more efficiently, and encroach on the lower trust thresholds of Nation States. Nation States will enter into a prisoners dilemma to switch to Synchronized States to preserve their continuity and survival—after which they will all defect from the Nation State paradigm—and the ones which do so earlier, quicker, securely, effectively, and legitimately—will have more opportunity to thrive in a new age.”

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/synchronized-states/)

The Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths

Society Protocol:

"In his classic essay] David Chapman brings to light a very fundamental concept of human organizations, which can be summarized as,

< “Nerds build new things, which attract the normies (MOPs), and then sociopaths show up and figure out how to capture and maximize the most value from the MOPs.” >

This dynamic is all there is. It’s an absolutely inevitable natural pattern of ALL movements and organizations, and absolutely what will happen with Society Protocol.

So, what does this mean…?

It means that we are going to build the most balanced codebase that we can—our organization is the nerds…we aren’t here to exploit anyone. Then the sociopaths will come and imbalance their instances to maximize value from the MOPs. This cycle is inevitable, we cannot stop the ruthless political battles that will occur and ensue over Society Protocol instances between rival sociopaths afterwards. They are absolutely necessary, and will absolutely happen, in the same way that Nation States battle today, and none of them are “balanced” … it’s all for the best, it’s the only pattern available to humanity to evolve. Please value our organization for what it is: we are nerds, building the most balanced potential codebase…Sociopaths will come and do battle with it, it wont remain perfectly balanced in the end for these reasons, they will compete to attract different segments of MOPs. Absolutely normal, absolutely going to happen.

Since the codebase is always source-available, any sociopathic entities who capture our organization (not to be confused with the SP instances) using politics, but don’t correspond with actions that our movement & community approves of, can always be forked off… upon capture. The source-available codebase stewarded by our neutral organization is not a game sociopaths can capture and win—that will theoretically always result in a fork towards a more balanced stronger codebase, aligned with the community and movement. The sociopaths play the game of SP instances, the nerds play the game of building the strongest codebase. Everything is aligned, everything runs smooth."

(https://societyprotocol.io/articles/how-we-are-building-society-protocol/)

The infrastructure for humanity's next epoch: the Age of Synchronicity

Society Protocol:

"We stand at one of humanity's rare inflection points—a moment where the trajectory of civilization can be fundamentally redirected. The transition from Nation States to Synchronized States is not a matter of if, but when and how. The polycrisis we face—from governance capture, to surveillance states, to environmental degradation—stems from a single root cause: the coordination limits of our current systems have been reached. Nation States, built on the duplicated contracts of the double-entry accounting age, simply cannot handle the complexity and scale of modern civilization.

Society Protocol represents more than technological innovation—it's the infrastructure for humanity's next epoch. The Age of Synchronicity isn't a distant dream—it's an inevitable destination that we're actively building, step by step, with every community member, every line of code, and every affiliate who joins this movement. The alternative is centuries of techno-feudalism where technocratic elites control every aspect of our existence. You choose.

This journey will not be easy. We will face obstacles, setbacks, and resistance from those benefiting from the current imbalanced system, even as it fails. Some Society Protocol instances will fail—there will be code errors, political challenges, and moments of uncertainty. But the prize is a world where individual agency is restored, where coordination happens at the speed of light, where every person has direct access to shape their shared reality—is worth it, and we'll overcome every challenge.

To those reading this who feel the pull of something greater: you're needed. Whether you're a developer who can write code, an investor who can provide capital, a community builder who can gather people, or simply someone who believes in the movement—there's a place for you here. We're not just building a protocol; we're building the next epoch of human civilization and the infrastructure for human flourishing. The voyage has begun. The only question that remains is: will you join us on this journey, or will you watch from the shore as history sails past?"

https://societyprotocol.io/articles/how-we-are-building-society-protocol/)