The Future of Business, Education, Art and Governance is the Community

There has been a lot of dreaming being done since Dan Larimer coined the phrase, "Distributed Autonomous Corporation or (Company/Cooperative/Community)". I'm not sure when it was originally talked about, but I'm sure he wasn't the only one thinking along those lines. I'm a big believer in Multiple Discovery. He was the man with the vision and know-how to bring it into existence though, with both bitShares (a truly distributed exchange) and Steemit, the glorious experiment you are reading this post on.

I was one of those dreamers connecting the dots in my own head a bit late. I did an interview about what I was, at the time calling Crowd Founding and a dream I had of creating what I envisioned as a crowd founding hub. I didn't have the talent and know-how to bring it about, and looking at where things are now, I'm glad it didn't happen at the time.

Where are we now?

Today we are in a strange state of crypto frenzy. Anything that even remotely associates itself with blockchain is automatically pumped by the hype around the technology. This resembles the dot com bubble that I lived through as a young developer.

There are so many promises being made and so many misinformed folks out there, that it's hard to tell what is real, and what is just high level dreaming or outright scams. It's the wild west right now and I can understand some of the arguments out there about regulating the industry. I am not for government regulation into crypto, period. It's no one's place to attempt to protect me from myself. I'm for self governance, but we in the crypto space have done a terrible job of it so far. I'm in a high level of agreement with a post done by Dan recently entitled, Proof of Good Governance.

What are we being promised?

Currently we are on the cusp of something that I believe will be an amazing invention. If you know me at all, you know I'm a huge fanboy of Dan and EOS. EOS is the first platform that I know of that is offering ways to fix problems we have seen in the past as they relate to forgotten private keys, stolen funds, and accounts. Not to mention the advancements in the planned governance and the huge feature of EOS, in that it's fee free. The following quotes are from the latest dev blog by Dan.

Every account will have three special permissions: owner, active, and recovery. The owner permission should be configured with N of M multisig (2 of 2), and has the power to change all other permissions instantly. Updating the owner permission should be configured to require a 30 day delay. Ideally the owner would require the active permission of a recovery partner. To hack the owner permission would require the user and their recovery partner to be compromised at the same time. If the recovery partner's active key is compromised, then the recovery partner can use their owner permission to recover. In practice, this forms a web of trust among all users that would require everyone to be hacked at once for accounts to be compromised.

People forget passwords, computers break, and stuff happens. Murphy's law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and this applies to the best laid plans of mice and crypto experts. With EOS.IO you are not out of luck. Every account can specify a number of recovery partners that have the ability to update the active authority (with 7 days delay), but only if your account is inactive for 30 days. As long as you specify some friends and family you trust to return your account to you if you lose your keys, then you never have to worry about getting locked out forever.

EOS is being promised to be a platform where any modern web developer will be able to create distributed applications. Blockchain technology and distributed application development in general, is hard for enterprise developers to wrap their heads around. At least traditional ones like me. Until now we haven't been given the tooling necessary for the masses of web developers to come on board. EOS promises to change this.

0:55 "The idea of EOS, is that if you’re able to build a basic website, you should be able to build and launch a decentralized business."

What will this mean?

When you have this level of tooling and protection available, we will start to see a new group of smart folks in traditional development start to innovate in the blockchain space. Many of them will start connecting the same dots that us early adopters have been connecting.

Where I Predict We Will Go

I started this post by talking about Distributed Autonomous Communities, and I'm going to end it there too. I predict that the amount of innovation coming, will eclipse everything done in crypto up to this point in a relatively short amount of time, all because of EOS. Yeah, that's a pretty bold claim but I believe it's true.

I think this innovation will ultimately mean that most and potentially all viable companies, and potentially government services, in the distant future, will be a form of what is today called, a not-for-profit business or organization. Though I don't think they will be called businesses or companies at all. I don't know what name will eventually stick, but something along the lines of "An Autonomous Service" might surface.

These services will NOT be owned and operated by a company. Instead these services will be self funding and governed by the people using them. The communities governing these services will vote to "pay for" the resources that will be needed to administer them. The profit model might eventually go away entirely, and if not, at least be changed drastically. The future will not only change for finance, but for every industry, including education and the arts.

What I'm Doing in Preparation

First I'm investing heavily into EOS and I hope you will do some research yourself to see if it's something you want to be a part of too.

Second I'm leading the creation of a virtual model of this future I'm predicting. This is being done in the form of a game. Games can be tools for helping people build mental models around concepts they don't yet grasp. They are fun, instead of stressful. They are communal and organically grow. I think my talents are not wasted in this endeavor. You can learn more about it by visiting the blog (@sfeos). Join us or at least follow the progress and help encourage the team.

Lastly, I'm going to continue to write about EOS and consider supporting the platform and potential developers who start to see the same things the way I'm seeing them. I want to start a local EOS meet-up in Western Michigan if there is enough interest. If you're interested let's talk.

That's it for now. Until next time, keep innovating, keep dreaming, and let's create the future together.