Blockchain - Harness the Power - Matthew B. Ketchum

Blockchain
Harness the Power

Blockchain & Sources of Truth

lockchain is a… cool… technology that’s been around for some time now. Most people have heard about it, but not that many know exactly what to do with it. And that’s not all that surprising: many blockchain projects are either poorly defined or overly technical, and the average person can’t get a good read.

This is very frustrating to me, as the technology itself has a very specific promise addressing modern organizational shortcomings. You see, there’s a scourge rampaging through business and society alike. It wreaks havoc on deals, dissolves trust, and reduces certainty. Be it business federations, social scenes, or even one’s own understanding of the world, you’ve surely run into it.

This beast has a name, and it is lack of provenance. In a nutshell, blockchain addresses this.

Crypto & Decentralized Finance

his is where shit gets tricky. See, cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, SOL, etc., result from blockchains doing what they do. These assets are supposed to be a big part of the decentralization push, but often get distracted. I like and support the finance aspect given the correct circumstances. Issue is, it hasn’t been decoupled from the predominant narratives that have produced the environment in which something like decentralization becomes attractive.

Matt Ketchum working on a blockchain project on a Japanese train

And so often enough, these projects go off the rails of liberation and right back to the banks they’re meant to usurp. Because there’s no other established method for your average user to interact with a blockchain or cryptocurrencies.

It repeats the sins of the father. But doesn’t have to. Its just that the people haven’t been shown another way to go about all of this.

Orgs I’ve Worked With

Exploring the Environment

urrently, the very large majority of blockchain and crypto users are focused on either trading or hodling. Which is fine, I don’t really mind that in principal. What bugs me is that not a lot of users are getting experimental. Sure, there’s any number of devs out there building something they think is cool but which actually has no use case, but I could give a fuck about them. The core technology is there, and ought to be used to uncover new methods of interaction and organization.

There’s a lot being played around with in nominally meaningful ways, though, which is good. Let’s take a look!

The Bad

Bored Apes Yacht Club & Cryptopunks lead the NFT pack because they’re expensive. That’s boring. Also, shit art.
Play-to-earn games are on the rise, with Axie Infinity heading that evil enterprise. Fuck you.
The Sandbox & Decentraland are hot in the metaverse landscape, and both not only have nothing to do in them, but also suffer from offensively juvenile naming conventions.

The Good

As you may surmise from my involvement with Akiya & Inaka, I’m no fan of Big Real Estate. But that Lifull is purportedly experimenting with blockchain solutions for the clusterfuck that is property data management in Japan is at least somewhat encouraging.
Some Japanese temples and shrines are getting in on the NFT game. None of them do it well, but their involvement suggests they at least see some kind of opportunity.
DAOs have been a real mess since their inception (The DAO, anyone?), but I dig the idea and am open to participating. The AkiyaDAO is one that’s caught my attention, and they seem to have at least a decent head on their shoulders.

Blockchain & The Future

espite the fact that blockchain technology has been around for 13 years now, it’s still in “early days.” Fuck I hate that phrase, because it excuses the shitshow that’s in front of us. There’s promising applications out there which aren’t being pursued because they’re not immediately financially profitable, and then a fuckton of garbage and usually predatory projects getting all the press. This should not be celebrated, though it should be learned from.

There’s much to be done with blockchain and crypto, and it can be, but only if we collectively take our heads out of our asses and make new narratives to pursue.

Let’s Discuss