Protocol Tokenization
Consider BitTorrent.
I’m guessing most of you have used BitTorrent before. To be clear, BitTorrent is not an application — it’s a protocol, which all BitTorrent clients implement. Specifically, BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol that allows users to obtain files from a swarm of other peers. While you download files, you also upload the chunks you’ve already downloaded. And if you’re a good user, after you’re done downloading you’ll continue to upload, which pays the bandwidth forward to other users.
There’s an obvious weakness in this protocol — the free rider problem. Someone can download less than they upload and refuse to pay it forward. BitTorrent’s solution to this is…
… well, it doesn’t really have one. It tries to throttle the download speed of free riders, but this doesn’t work very well. Some torrenters tried to solve this problem by creating invite-only communities with persistent reputation, but most users prefer to use BitTorrent in total anonymity. Without any incentives around the exchange of bandwidth, BitTorrent is vulnerable to this tragedy of the commons. If BitTorrent functions well, it’s only because its citizens happen to be well-behaved.
Modern democratic theory arose出现 in response to precisely恰恰 this problem: given that you need a central authority权威 to enforce incentives奖励, how can you prevent that authority from itself becoming corrupt腐败 and misbehaving行为不端? By default, each actor’s incentive is to exploit its own power. So we invented elections, we invented constitutions宪法, we invented checks and balances and impeachment proceedings弹劾诉讼. We did all this to try to cage the Leviathan, to prevent the inevitable必然 drift of central authorities toward corruption and rent-seeking寻租.
Up until now, central authorities are the best solution we’ve come up with to this problem.
But protocol tokens may now change that. They may offer us a new way to solve incentive alignment problems.
Protocol tokens, such as Filecoin, serve as an intra-protocol incentive scheme. By calibrating the incentives and how they align with the token, you can create a protocol just like BitTorrent where instead of merely hoping users do the right thing, you pay them to do the right thing. And instead of hoping users aren’t assholes, you charge them money to be assholes.
No central authority required, no checks or balances, no elections or impeachments, no laws or courts. The incentives simply work without them.没有中心权威部门，没有支票与余额，没有选举与弹劾，没有法律与法院，社会体系是靠通证化协议的激励机制自动运行。
(The analogy I’m making between pay-to-play BitTorrent and Filecoin is a loose one, but nevertheless instructive.)
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