Ethereum was built to solve two problems.
"…self-sovereign computation, and the computational
ability to coordinate at scale without violating
anyone else's own sacrosanct self-sovereignty."
— EF Mandate
A precise phrase:
coordination"
The sovereign's dilemma
Your keypair is yours. No one can touch it.
But sovereignty, alone, is lonely.
The inner monologue is lossless, but silent.
Stepping outside it is the hardest step.
How do you reach outside yourself
without giving up what you just gained?
The institutional game
Startup. Corporation. Foundation. DAO.
Normalised throughout society.
Seems there is no alternative.
The structure doesn't preserve self-sovereignty — it trades it away.
What if the playing field were level?
No one above. No one below.
A different perspective.
Inspiration
Paul Baran, 1964
Your sovereign network
A constellation of equal relationships.
Yours revolves around you.
Theirs revolves around them.
Your network. Their network.
Reinforcing from the grassroots.
The sovereign pair
Equal stakes. Mutual veto.
Preserves sovereignty.
Two children becoming friends
Two people falling in love
Two founders building something
— encoded onchain.
An Ethereum address = sovereign entity.
Value can accrue to society's glue.
Your network — a constellation of pairs.
2-of-2
h2h
human2human
How could this scale?
A meets B → A+B
A meets C → A+C
Maybe B and C coincide → B+C
Grown organically from below, not imposed artificially from above.
Source of legitimacy?
"Self-sovereignty stacks on top of itself on multiple overlapping scales:
individuals 🧍, families 👨👩👧, local communities 🏘️, enterprises 🏢,
nations 🏛️, religions 🛐, world-spanning internet communities 🌐…"
— EF Mandate
The current default
The inversion
We're not abolishing institutions. We're changing where legitimacy flows from.
Ethereum as the substrate
Social architecture, on technical architecture.
CROPS — what every sovereign pair needs to stay equal.
Run your own node.
No intermediary. Light clients, statelessness, lower hardware bar.
Prototype
Build your own sovereign network
oneplusone.bzz.link
Your first sovereign pair
https://oneplusone.bzz.link
What is Coordination?
Private communication
live-text — peer-to-peer over lcdp
https://oneplusone.bzz.link
Private communication
video — peer-to-peer over lcdp
https://oneplusone.bzz.link
Public communication
Mutually-agreed Public Text Posts (attest.org)
https://oneplusone.bzz.link
My sovereign network — right now
https://oneplusone.bzz.link
Feature request
listening to music together
"We built the World Computer.
Now we need to build the world
it was meant to serve."
— EF Mandate
Go to oneplusone.bzz.link
1. Connect your wallet.
2. Enter someone's address.
3. Click "create link."
The level playing field.
Thanks!
Special thanks to Kermit — github.com/kermit4/lcdp