Bees At Your Service
“Mining Bitcoin” has caught on as the defining moniker of the first blockchain decade. Every technology that Bitcoin (or Ethereum) built upon is very hard to comprehend by the general public (cryptography, distributed systems, algorithmic game theory), yet mining bitcoin is so simple and straight forward, many people could participate without much technology background, just like people in the 19th century gold rush. However, for the next phase of the blockchain economy evolution, we need to break out of that impression of mining as a 19th century gold rush, as raw material production. Actually it is more appropriate to think of blockchain mining as a service, e.g., like the Internet access service or cell phone service. This way we can base our imagination and innovation of DAC economy on side-effects like that in a computer system, which is epistemologically closer to blockchains than traditional stratified economy.
Therefore, blockchain mining as a mechanism design pattern could be generalized as providing service. On the layer 1 blockchain, POW and POS provide consensus service, and people/network nodes executing said consensus service get token reward. Built on top of the layer 1 consensus service, Rollups and extended Rollups such as Metis DAO[1] can provide more layers of induced side-effect services as DAC economy. A metaphor for such scenarios of DAC economy (or “DAC garden") can be imagined as bees working flower fields in a garden – while mining nectar bees also provide side-effect service of pollinating plants.
Viewing blockchain consensus production mechanism as a service is not merely relabeling. It can help inspire us toward better mechanism design in order to develop a thriving blockchain economy looking forward, instead of the rampant speculative schemes (some call cryptocurrency gold rush) we’ve seen and hated during the first decade in blockchain history. The closer we look at nature’s mechanism at work in what bees do for a living, the clearer it reveals to us that this mechanism is far superior than layer 1 blockchain consensus production as a broader economy stimulating mechanism.
We get that rewarding side-effect service is a good mechanism design pattern. This is where Ethereum did better with its more powerful smart contract engine than Bitcoin – Bitcoin’s smart contract engine is weaker and limited compared to Ethereum’s. Observing the difference between the kind of blockchain economy stimulated by their (Ethereum and Bitcoin’s) different smart contract implementation, it stands to argue that if a mechanism design pattern rewards
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stronger, more powerful side-effects, it will be more effective to foment the kind of complexity
that is absolutely necessary for a vibrant blockchain economy.
A stronger and more powerful side-effect service is what Metis DAC economy brings to the table – to propel Ethereum’s economy strata to their next evolutionary stage, a stage with super growth potential. So what special ingredient did Metis bring to enhance its side-effects service? The individual-centric DAC[17] – it is the pollen, the gene-pool to spread even more spores to grow blockchain business plants in the exotic DAC economy garden. This new mechanism design pattern can be called the cross-pollination pattern.
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