What is C/ACC (crypto acceleration) about? I made it up after being inspired by e/acc which is basically techno-optimism (technology helps us build a better world.) I think of Crypto accelerationism as upgrading our society for a world of hyper productivity. AGI basically breaks modern society and it doesn't seem like governments will be able to keep up. Which is why they're trying to regulate to slow it down. I say this is unnecessary. This tech is too sweet to deny. We don't need to slow down. We have the technology to build an AGI compatible world. Crypto. I'm tired of only seeing people building exchanges and wallets agreeing how important UX is for onboarding the next 1 gazillion while pretending this is a contrarian take.
Side note on why c/acc and not d/acc (decentralized acceleration): I went with c/acc when I first wrote the call to action because d/acc wasn't a thing at the time. Shortly after Marc Andreessen went all in on d/acc as the terminology for accelerating decentralized technology. Coming from the guy behind a16zCrypto this was annoying.
But after thinking about it more, I realized this is a good thing. c/acc can be specialized on upgrading society using crypto. I expect c/acc to be a mix of decentralization where power is concerned and centralization where efficiency is needed. Instead of just trying to decentralize everything which is what d/acc sounds like it would be about.
So how do we in crypto accelerate our society to be ready for a world of AGI and acceleration?
Step 1: Come up with some general categories.
Step 2: Take a bunch of new startups and see how they map to the categories and change accordingly. We’ll start by covering step 1.
The 4 categories where Crypto can upgrade society off the top of my head are:
1. AGI Guardrails
Solving for p(doom)
p(doom) just means the probability of doom. The idea that a super intelligent entity could randomly wipe out humanity the way we would wipe out ants (which by the way we aren’t able to do and aren’t even close to being able to do.)
It’s a lot of fear mongering, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some rules around AGI eventually. For now, long as the stochastic parrots are not connected to the Boston dynamic robots I think we're fine.
Proof of Human (Identity)
A human could use AI to shape online discussions and manipulate online public opinion. It could be one person with a bunch of programmed LLMs that make it look like it’s different people agreeing. Captchas and Turing tests are no longer good enough. We need cryptographic proof of humanity. The default will soon be that someone is AI until proven human, as opposed to the other way around which is what it currently is. There is a lot of work being done in crypto around identity and even specifically proof of humanity. This is an area that will need to have mature solutions in the market very quickly. The most promising solutions are hard and require real world work. Things that are difficult to artificially copy. Like scanning an eyeball for Worldcoin. Or having a crypto wallet with lots of quality transactions over time.
2. Equitable Resource Distribution (Inputs to Means of Production)
Think of this as the “Rules of the Game” for capitalism. Equally applied to everyone and the reality everyone agrees to work around. A fairer competition means a higher level of competition and a higher caliber of athletes.
Video games can be a good reference. Yes, I am being serious. Imagine everyone being airdropped 3 eth when they turn 18 for example. Or raw material stores being held by a group contract. Like all American’s working in hardware tech in SF with <10,000 users have access to the (A) raw materials in (B) storage stored in (C) country.
3. Decentralization of Power (Governance)
Decision making close to those being affected by those decisions. Moving closer to a greek city state model. Moving governance decisions on chain from a bottom up seems the most logical way. The more that municipal level decisions move on chain, the more quickly and locally we can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Any project based on polling public opinion would fit in here. These tools could be used to make decisions at a local community level if onboarded properly.
4. Meritocratic Reward Functions (Compensation)
Most crypto startups are here. Distributing rewards based on merit. It’s the scoring method of capitalism. The better and more equitable the scoring/reward system, the more fun the competition will be. Important to think about when more and more of the “need to do” things get out sourced to A.I. and we’re left with “want to do.”
Think Money, but money is the most basic version of this. Programmable money allows for more creative solutions.
Fundamentally we aren’t built to lie around and do nothing our entire lives. Retirement is against our very nature. When AI and Robots can do all the work, we’ll need to still have things to do. The mechanisms here will greatly decide what that future world will look like.
Do any of those domains make sense? Do they actually work as a framework for c/acc?
The easiest way is to take real life crypto projects and see how they work with the above domains. There is a list of hundreds of projects on Farcaster. I’ll be going through them and seeing how they perform/match up along our 4 categories. Either it will go nicely or I’ll see the categories aren’t useful in practice and some reorganizing will need to be done. Either way, we should have a useable framework to evaluate how crypto projects fit in c/acc and how good they are in preparing us for a world of AGI. It might also help to find where the opportunities and gaps are which would be nice. So that will be the next article. But for now this article is a good resource for us to look back to.
Want me to look at your startup? Comment on Farcaster and I’ll move it up the list of projects to look at.
How to join c/acc?
This isn't a formal organization. It's more a feeling. About crypto's ability to make a deep and meaningful change. A feeling of optimism about AI and accelerated technology and a world of miracles. If you feel the vibe and are excited about building for it, you're in. Let's build for the exciting new future ahead!
