Intra-Jurisdictional Blockchains
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Bitcoin, BitShares, Steem, EOS and most blockchains are designed to be inter-jurisdictional, spread out over many jurisdictions, under the theory that if some rogue government shuts down nodes in one jurisdiction, the network will simply heal itself with nodes in the remaining jurisdictions. This is much like the Internet itself which was designed to survive nuclear war by routing around smoking craters.
But there might be advantages to engineering "intra-jurisdictional" blockchains that can guarantee that all actions and transactions take place completely inside a single jurisdiction - removing all doubt about which laws may apply. This could be very comforting to organizations of all types who find the current regulatory patchwork too befuddling to contemplate. The legal viability of such a strategy is certainly untested and your actual mileage may vary depending upon where your physically incarceratable body may reside, but I'd like to see some platforms deployed where this could be tried.
For example, what if you could guarantee that all actions and transactions took place inside the state of Utah where its legal tender laws reign supreme. Or Wyoming, with its new crypto-friendly laws. Or, eww, New York with it audaciously intrusive Bitlicense regulations. (Hey, if you've gone to all the trouble to comply with that environment, why not make sure that its regulations are the only ones that apply to you?)
Quintric.com has developed a solid legal foundation based on the use of Utah law to control its regulatory footprint.
The US federal government is famous for abusing the Interstate Commerce Clause to intrude into every area of human endeavor that, according to the 9th and 10th articles in Bill of Former Rights, belongs to the states or to the people. All they have to do is find a tiny part of any transaction that takes place across state lines and, boom, they're in! Maybe your cross-county transaction between Hooterville and Petticoat Junction got Internet-routed through New York... Gotcha!
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The Commerce Clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” The Constitution limits the federal government to certain enumerated powers and this serves as a giant catch-all to get around those limits.
This is not just an American issue. Some people, for valid legal reasons, choose to locate their businesses on Caribbean Islands or the territory of one or more indigenous peoples. Some do business in international waters. Some seek to disappear into the virtual jurisdictions of encrypted networks. International space may be the final frontier.
In the realm of EOS, there is the goal of being able to create or join your own jurisdiction where only the laws you have agreed to will apply. This is promising, but still subject to the worry that if a single action or transaction or message crosses jurisdictional lines, even at the physical network layer, it may open the door for power crazed regulators to assert their demands to regulate all activity there.
Sheesh. This is a never ending arms race.
No worries. Our industry is in essence a group of freedom-loving "digital arms suppliers." We seek to profit from such arms races, either financially or to advance our Noble Agenda for the Greater Good.
So here's what I'm contemplating these days.
What if certain businesses were safer ensuring that 100% of their activities were guaranteed to take place inside a jurisdiction of their choice (or explicitly outside of a jurisdiction not of their choice)? Designing to meet that need could require us to completely rethink everything we now take for granted as conventional wisdom of the industry.
It might be that having the entire "decentralized" blockchain sitting in a single computer center in a single computer rack completely off the conventional grid and never interacting with anything outside that rack somewhere deep in the Amazon jungle or the dark side of the moon might be more secure than a blockchain scattered uniformly onto thousands of nodes all over the world in every jurisdiction we can find.
Now decentralization purists will instantly dislike this notion,
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/15/article-2218263-00C3FFBE00000578-865_634x384.jpg)
... but I'm betting that regulatory uncertainty and the costs of universal compliance will make intra-jurisdictional blockchains of great interest to institutional and enterprise level users.
Nothing says that you can't decentralize who controls the software on each of the nodes in that rack. In fact, for all we know all of the witness nodes on the BitShares network could have coincidentally wound up on the same rack at Digital Ocean or Amazon. Heck, the two nodes that sign over half of Ethereum's or Waves' blocks probably DO lie in the same jurisdiction. Just sayin'...
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Why not make that potential physical centralization explicit and even mandatory for certain blockchains seeking to cater to enterprises who want guaranteed jurisdictional control of their operations? You can still have decentralization within a jurisdiction - a fleet of cruise ships while they are in international waters, for example. (Cruise ships are used to shutting down their casinos when not in international waters, they could also pull the plug on their blockchain nodes when in port.) A constellation of satellites is another obvious option. You might have to go through a central owner to get access to such platforms, but after that they could be pretty thoroughly decentralized in terms of who controls each node.
This opens up a whole new world of reasons for having multiple chains - while taking advantage of the interchain communication and platform independence technologies we are now discussing among the BitShares and EOS communities at The Interblockchain Telegram Channel
I'll leave the details to your imagination, for now.
Cheers,
Stan
About the Author
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I agree with your words and am confident in the amazing potentials that lies in the aforementioned Cryptos in your post
Plus I had equally pondered in past about what becomes of the decentralized community and Cryptos if Government should shut it down
I believe I am well informed now
EOS is my favourite though😀😀😀
Would dig deep about bitshares...Hope to get some tokens of BTS
Thanks. This is a growth area in the BitShares Dynasty (BitShares, Steemit, EOS, et. al.) I think. Especially since over 80% of all blockchain transactions happen there.
nation states are gonna die soon.So hell with their fucking regulations backed by vested interests and smelly corruption. Cryptos will accelerate the inevitable process. No nation state on Earth will be able to match a space-based space-faring ever-expanding empire-building civilization that will emerge soon out of the global crypto movement. We are building the infrastructure for that here: https://orch.network and here: https://orcs.fund But we respect experienced people like you. Autonomous weapons(Unmanned weapons?) are gonna be the new trend from now onwards.
90000 people on telegram nobody talking, starcash blockchain is secret, yet you are giving discounts of up to 80% to buy orc for 5 million $. No identities showing but you are adviser is co creator of Ethereum.... video links are connected to wrong video’s..... Located in Swiss, yet the way Ren (advisor) pm’s me and writes to me, is of indian nature.
Make up your own mind people about orch.network
Since government regulators are nothing more than 3rd party verification entities, I vote that we simply replace them with blockchain and be done with it. Do you think they will go for it?
An interesting idea and one that will get the purists upset but might be required. I like the analogy to a cruise ship. How difficult would it be to take a part of Bitshres and do this? Is it possible or will it require a completely new blockchain? I am sure an EOS fork would be rather simple.
Or, as I put on my tin foil hat, is @stan thinking about this potentially being a part of the BENCH project where a chain is created in a few minutes, yet is resides only in one area, say Salt Lake City as an example?
The wheels in that head are always spinning.
I dont know about BENCH project. Do you have any links? BTW our Orch is a realtime unforkable blockchain. It can't practically be forked and it's technologically enforced. Not enforced by some crappy govt regulations or US patents which neither China or Russia would respect. So any dapps built on it can potentially can monopolize its game unlike those running on top of traditional forkable blockchains. Plus token buyers/investors of Orch (ORC tokens) may reasonably expect much higher RoI and valuations as unforkablity is bullish for them while forkable tokens are bearish in the mid to long-term as anyone can replicate their hard works just by forking it.
adding to my previous message. Here is a comparison table of Orch (ORC) vs EOS vs ETH:
https://steemit.com/eos/@orch/here-s-a-technical-comparison-chart-that-compares-orc-vs-eos-vs-eth
Wat an enlighting and educative post...
Bravo
#cryptocurrencies all the way
So I am new to Crypto as I am sure there are others who have come into the wine harvest off of the streets in the final hours of the harvest.
I for one am open to the centralization into a single open jurisdiction to "intracentralize" the source.
I heard a story of patching an old garment with a new patch, and it makes complete sense to put the new wine from the harvest into new wineskins.
I am a believer.
Whoever has ears let him hear.
The last will be first
Hi Stan,
I've just listened to your recent Blue Rock Talk show (recorded 8 days ago), and I'm stopping by to say that I would very much like to strongly support the new BEOS chain with my modest collection of BTS.
I don't want to miss any of the rain, and so I'm asking for a little guidance as to where and how to find the right gateway to do the required transfer?
My BTS currently are all HODLed in my wallet at bitshares.org, and I would vastly appreciate some direction as to how to use them to support the advent of BEOS.
Thank you in advance for any guidance you may wish to offer.
Blessings,
- @creatr
😄😇😄
![@creatr](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWvzuqZ51DoiSjXXf8bukb7JeeVV1eAJJhGBkDiYc8ajj/creatr_ap.gif)
will the bitshares website get an upgrade ? the XBTS https://ex.xbts.io/#/ website runs so smooth, I don't want the XBTS site to run better than the bitshares website. I Love bitshares.
can't people just use a VPN to circumvent intra-jurisdicational blockchains ?