Since the beginning of days people have made the choice to “cling” onto belief of some sort. We are not going to discuss though whether it is a good or a bad idea believing in something. Rather, I wish to compare the way people view the “protocol” of belief and the blockchain paradigm, in a similar way.
There is some strong evidence to suggest that people believe in something, because it is tied to their moral compass. Other studies, go into discussing how belief in something is making you feel more certain about certain things, or even go as far as far as sublimation of some kind. Ironically, none of those studies agree on what people are trying to sublime, or on how they do it. But for our comparison, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t matter.
Just as with religion, the essence of our behaviour as human beings, requires us to choose things we belief in, fight for or stick to. We chose countries, currencies, brands, favorite actors etc. More so, we often blindly stick to what we pick and stay with it, even when there is concrete evidence, that we have chosen “the wrong side”.
Not many people are aware that the modern history of cryptocurrencies began with a single document back in 1993. The Cypherpunk Manifesto, which to some extent reminds of a document (https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html) with set out guides. Hmmmm. Where else have we seen those? Religion? Company philosophy? The magna carta? Well, not exactly of course. But surely, one can see some similarities.
Let’s make a small leap forward. A leap, to how people today argue about what protocol is more correct. Who has the “bigger hash” - BTC or BCH. What’s fairer - ETH or ETC (remember why they split up? Beliefs in certain moral aspects. Does it remind you of anything?)
There was one clever guy in the 17th century, a French philosopher, mathematician and a physicist - Blaise Pascal. His famous “Pascals wager” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager), said (in short) the following:
“Assuming I do believe in religion. There are many of them. Many gods. Each one claiming to be the only correct one. Each one claiming it is him I should worship…” You get the drill.
The point was quite interesting. Assuming, each says he is the correct one, what should I chose as the only one? In a way, this is exactly the matter of choice with protocols and cryptocurrencies.
Each protocol, not only has its followers, but builds its own technology on top of it. Though, there is no single, correct way to write a smart contract. No “single” way to implement consensus. Most of the things in our world, from governance, to code, to economy schools - always exist in plural, each with its own guides and rules. Its own downsides and upsides.
But, we are not discussing the correctness of a single protocol. Not whether the choice of one, is right over the choice of another. Rather, we are discussing the similarity in which people “cling” onto what they believe to be correct. And this is what we see in the crypto space, just like in the religious world. Try telling an ETC user that the DAO story was dealt with correctly, by the ETH “guys”. Try telling some users that IOTA’s implementation is a better distributed ledger than others out there.
Want a deeper leap? Check out Zero Ex Omega (https://futurism.com/blockchain-religion-matt-liston/). This is a decentralised religion in all its seriousness. Joking and comparisons aside.
“It’s a religious framework that could allow for belief sets to update much more quickly and also to democratize the relationship between membership and convergence on what everyone believes in this religion…”, says its creator.
I won’t go into discussing whether he is right or wrong by doing what he does. But he is certainly spot on in comparing how religious frameworks, are almost identical with the way some decentralized projects are being run, from a philosophical aspect of things, of course.
So is there a similarity? Well, there certainly is. There are guides, followers, there is a code (of conduct) and there is the most important aspect: hope. Hope that “to the moon” is closer then it might be (and our favourite altcoin of course, will get there quicker).