The Many Chain, Many Token Future

Presented at Monage Conf Fall 2017 in Boston

https://fall2017monage.sched.com/event/bb31e25c72af50969054490578e5f908/edit

Transcript

1. The Many Chain, Many
   Token Future
   Monage • Boston • Oct 24, 2017
   

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2. Boris Mann @bmann
   • Open Source 1.0
   • Online community, Social Media pre-hashtag
   • First Startup Accelerator in Canada
   • Seed investing
   • Now: Blockchain, Open Source & Community with
   a business model
   

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3. Three Definitions of Blockchain
   • Blockchain as Innovation
   • Blockchain as Public Chain
   • Blockchain as Ethos
   Credit: Lisa Cheng, Co-founder Vanbex / EtherParty
   

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4. Three Definitions of Open Source
   • Open Source as Legal Innovation
   • Open Source as Collaboration
   • Open Source as Ethos
   

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5. Bitcoin as first chain
   • Next coins / chains
   all “alts” — fork
   Bitcoin code base
   • C++ is hard…
   • Miners wanted
   

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6. Ethereum: the token chain
   • Ethereum defines ERC20 — a token
   standard
   • An explosion of tokens — no C++, no
   mining
   • Or: the WordPress of tokens?
   
   

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8. “33/ You could argue that investing in
   Ether is betting on the total economic
   value of all the tokens built on top of
   Ethereum.”
   

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9. What do tokens give us?
   • “direct communications between people,
   which are capable of storing and
   transmitting economic value.”

   — Vinay Gupta
   

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10. Tokens as Fashion?
    

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11. “2014 $DOGE noob explosion: attracted
    by creating own value parallel to
    #bitcoin w/ consumer equipment,
    against libertarian maximalist ethos.”
    

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13. “Crazy thing is $crypto could monetize
    this megaphone multitude, and make it
    the 2020 paradigm. I guess we’ll see
    what’s in store for ICO OGs”
    

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15. “Our brains evolved to value scarce
    objects to achieve fit and adapt to the
    environment.”
    

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17. “[tokens are] backed by our collective
    appreciation…as we gain certainty of
    [their] future value & circulation we use
    [theme] more and more”
    

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18. “the entire world of humans is the
    history of stories. Religion, gold, clam
    shells as currencies, gold, and
    democracy.”
    

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19. Does your dapp need a token?
    • …for dapps that require coordination to
    succeed it is indeed sustainable and that
    dapps that have tokens will succeed over
    those that don’t, as long as the cost introduced
    isn’t more than the gains in coordination.

    — Simon de la Rouviere
    

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20. “23/ So, when you’re betting on [tokens],
    you’re betting on the Gross Economic
    Value of the economy in the future.”
    

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21. “38/ $meme Rare pepe’s proxy is the
    total amount of demand for collectibles
    across the world. Estimates range from
    7B to 200B annually.”
    

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22. The Future Contains Multitudes
    • More chains: optimized for consortia, different use
    cases (like bulletin boards?)
    • easily cross-linked into each other; public APIs
    • MOAR TOKENS: BorisCoin, MemberCoin, etc. etc.
    • Worth nothing until they’re worth something
    • Power laws or website logins, apps on your phone?
    

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23. Boris Mann • @bmann
    https://frontierfoundry.co
    

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24. “Do you want to be a crypto cowboy or
    a pig farmer?”
    

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25. “So, how does the conversation go with
    your mom. ‘So mom, I’m now a crypto
    investors! Which is the equivalent of
    investing in pork.’”
    

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26. Vinay Gupta
    • Programmable Blockchains in Context https://medium.com/humanizing-
    the-singularity/by-the-end-of-this-article-youre-going-to-understand-
    blockchains-in-general-and-ethereum-a-next-e11df6a1d7cf
    • What does Ether $100 mean? https://medium.com/humanizing-the-
    singularity/what-does-ether-100-mean-bb58522f781e
    • “A smart contract is a tool for changing the world.”
    • “direct communications between people, which are capable of
    storing and transmitting economic value.”
    

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28. References
    • @NelsonMRosario https://
    twitter.com/NelsonMRosario/status/
    921570093552820225
    • Donald McIntyre @TokenHash
    https://twitter.com/TokenHash/
    status/916381789815320577
    • Simon de la Rouviere, Does your
    dapp need a token? https://
    medium.com/@simondlr/does-your-
    dapp-need-a-token-39412fd3c62c
    • @notsofast https://twitter.com/
    notsofast/status/
    920790486574649345
    • Sizhao Yang @zaoyang https://
    twitter.com/zaoyang/status/
    901099062254030848
    • Shelling Out: The Origins of Money,
    Nick Szabo http://
    nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
    

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