The Future of Blockchain event in San Francisco was a meetup of influencers, developers, and pioneers in the crypto space to discuss the future of blockchain technology. The event was sponsored by Reflective Ventures, RChain Cooperative’s partner fund, and organized by Ian Utile, whose goal is to better understand leaders’ visions for how blockchain could have a positive impact on the world.
The speakers discussed blockchain as a tool to help solve real world problems, to help us become better learners and teachers, and to collaborate on a wider scale. The event was a large social media experiment, with about 250 participants live streaming at once.
Greg Meredith, President of RChain Co-op and chief architect of the RChain Platform was the keynote speaker and spoke about blockchain as just one of many new coordination technologies we need in order to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
He remarked in his runway introduction that he’s trying to create a world that he can pass on to his kids. He also called math a communication event, something to express and share. He said, “if it’s just in your head, it’s not really math,” and compared it to playing music alone in your basement.
As the finale of the evening, Greg Meredith gave the Keynote talk
He started by saying, “There are a lot of technologies that we are yet to tap into, technologies that have to do with organizing our attention. A lot of what we’re going to have to do in the next several years is to coordinate with each other at a pace and agility that we don’t normally work with.” Greg said that part of that requires each of us to occupy the instrument of our individual self the best we can, and that when we do that, we begin to be able to occupy our collective self in a better way.
Greg suggests we think about blockchain technology as a coordination technology. He said that what is so challenging, and so awesome, is that we have to solve financial, governance, and software problems all at once.
Most of his talk focused on what he sees as three of the most important coordination technologies. Greg said we need to see a reboot in these technologies as follows:
1) Finance: The purpose of money and finance is to help us take care of each other.
We need to look at a lot of different models. When capital is stuck in the hands of the few, it limits the number of models.
2) Governance: Governance is inextricably linked with finance. You have to solve finance and governance at the same time. RChain chose the cooperative model to have the best beginning possible. One member, one vote is a good beginning for governance.
We are facing the consequences of how we’ve been living on the earth for the past 150 years. With all of the things going on in the world, we will have to learn how to coordinate with each other. Blockchain is the solution to coordinating right when we need it the most. It helps us reboot the financial industry by changing the model of how we take care of each other.
3) Social media: We need a decentralized solution, for a healthier and more responsive social media.
We need to tap into collective intelligence. Because of the environmental situation that we’re facing, “we need groups that can think with an expansiveness greater than Einstein or Schroedinger. We need groups that have the compassion of the Buddha!”
Greg said he was most inspired by people in their 20s like Vlad Zamfir and Vitalik Buterin “who are thinking about finance as a tool to craft coordination strategies” in a way that is hitherto unprecedented. He mentioned twenty-somethings and teenagers who can recognize that “if we don’t step up, then no one will.” “That’s the group that I’m most inspired by, and that’s the group that I’m working for. We are handing the situation over to them, and it’s important for us to support them in this moment of crisis, transition, and transformation.”
He expressed wonder that new technologies are coming in right when we need them the most.
Greg stressed the importance of the fundamental principles that are “baked into RChain” as necessary for effective collaboration. These are that of radical inclusion and radical transparency.
Greg ended with a call-to-action for others to Join the RChain Cooperative and participate. But more importantly, he said, just connect with others to create the space we need in order to face what’s coming.
To learn more about social coordination, see Games and Governance, where Greg demonstrates techniques that can be used to measure and improve group coherence and responsiveness to collective intelligence.
You can watch the entire Future of Blockchain event on Ian Utile’s Facebook page.
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