View source for Zero Knowledge Technology To Create Multi-Chain Autonomous Political Formations

=Discussion=

Amir Taaki:

==Autonomous Political Formations==

"Totalitarianism cannot be defeated through compliance. Compliance
only emboldens regimes of power. Totalitarian terror is let loose when
opposition has died down and the rulers are no longer afraid. Compliance
feeds totalitarians and never leads to normality. Resistance is
essential to counter the rise of totalitarian rule.

Parallel societies offer pockets of freedom that nurture ideologies of
resistance and form the basis of a new society. They can be societies
oriented around technology, economy, education or culture.

With DAOs and DeFi we can bring to life the democratic nation where
multiple cultures, ethnicities and political formations coexist with a
confederalist structure.

     DAOs + DeFi = Autonomous Political Formations


With APFs multiple parallel nations can exist online free from external
coercion. These nations are owned by their community. Decisions flow
from the bottom.


==Multi-Chain==

There is a story of money that goes like this: it's the dawn of
history. People are trading their surplus goods. You have an apple. She
has an orange. Trade necessitates a medium of exchange. Money emerges.

We've all heard this story. Except that it's a myth. This never occurred
in history.

In Ancient Mesopotamia there were sophisticated banking networks long
before money existed. These networks offered all the modern operations
associated with a bank, such as loan operations, deposits, forex, and
debt settlement. Babylon, the cradle of human civilization, was home
to the flourishing banking center of the region and an active futures
market. Money emerged out of this system of credit networks. Deposit
slips and futures contracts were traded in the form of clay tokens that
could be broken. It was only much later with the emergence of the
Persian empire that the gold and silver bimetallic money was standardized.

The lesson history teaches us is this: economic networks are primary.
It is the transfer of value within networks that gives money its
meaning, not money itself. Money inherits different properties from the
financial networks they exist within.

In 2010, the concept of universal sound money was central to Bitcoin's
emergence. As crypto has grown, we have seen the emergence of other
asset classes. First, we saw the rise of blockchains with their own
unique features such as Monero. Ethereum was the first to generalize
this architecture, which was followed by the growth of ERC20 and the
initial ICO boom. But the nature of crypto has changed fundamentally.
DeFi has ushered in a new, ecosystem-based thinking that sees not just a
single coin in isolation but examines networks in a holistic way.

Previously we use to think about crypto-coins and their blockchain. This
is Bitcoin, this is Monero, this is Ethereum. The way people reasoned
about crypto was as self-sovereign atomic entities. But DeFi is enabling
a new kind of reasoning. We think in terms of ecosystems and endpoints,
networks and liquidity flows.

With DeFi we are seeing the sophistication of crypto and the emergence
of a parallel financial system. Blockchain-specific coins are being
de-emphasized in favour of instruments and networks. Financial
engineering allows these networks to interact, to lower volatility and
transfer assets seamlessly. This is the emergence of a proto-banking
layer for crypto. With it, crypto has gained a radical advantage.
Banking is more powerful and more fundamental than money.

Currently 1% of all Bitcoin exists inside Ethereum and this number is
rapidly growing. We expect this trend to further continue.


==Zero-knowledge==

Crypto anarchy is the tactic of using cryptography to create a space of
freedom which cannot be penetrated by power and capital monopolies with
coercive force.

This space of freedom is the nascent seed of a democratic society. These
social structures are resistant to state control and totalitarian power
from the start. They are programmed with the code of resistance. They
are spaces which counter social atomization and promote voluntary
communal bonds by those who cherish freedom.

They are dark spaces used by an alliance of democratic forces.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) is a powerful technology, one that if used
effectively opens vast frontiers of freedom.

ZK allows us to create anonymous smart contracts. Anyone can write
an anonymous program which is called a proof. Even though the data on
the blockchain is encrypted, the proof makes a statement about what is
happening with that data. It cannot be cheated and is completely secure.

It opens up an entirely new design space of anonymous applications that
previously we could not create. The technology is mature, waiting to be
taken up and applied.

Now you might be thinking there is a performance penalty for ZK, but
actually ZK is fast. It is faster to verify a ZK proof than it is to
compute the actual non-ZK function itself. And no matter how big is the
data, the proof is always a constant size.

For example, we can compress an entire blockchain into a ZK proof.
Rather than downloading 300 Gb of data on initial sync with the network,
you can instead download a 22 Kb proof that the current state has been
correctly computed from genesis. There are already projects offering
this. This property of ZK is called succinctness."

(https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20211021.123016.3dccaf0c.en.html)


=More information=

* [[DarkFi]]

[[Category:Cryptoledger Applications]]
[[Category:Crypto Governance]]
[[Category:Peergovernance]]