Table of content

1 – The Vision

2 – The Most Valuable Resource on the Planet and How Spyce Is Connected

3 – Anuvys OS, Liberty Search Engine and Osiris Browser

4 – Architecture and Governance

5 – Decenternet Vs. Internet
Edit: part 6 (Net neutrality) was removed (will explain later)

The most valuable resource on the planet – Introduction

I will usually strictly follow the introduction presented in the whitepaper itself, but I’ll make an exception here. I strongly believe that the article will make more sense that way. I’ll share my point of view first, just to have it confronted by the arguments presented in the whitepaper soon after.

I guess that most of the crypto enthusiasts do study economy on their own. We mostly concentrate on what actually affects our own beings, which are cryptonomically active. I also am biased in my own way. Ever since I become information scientist (long prior becoming bachelor) my metaphysical understanding of value has changed forever. Basic explanation of what is information, information explosion, information age, information society etc. will be explained in my Bachelors thesis that I currently am translating and publishing on Steem. I highly recommend reading at least the first chapter where I define information itself if you want to understand the academic background that affects me.

I’ll try to create a very fast forward explanation here tough. After the last information explosion (never-ending boom of information), caused by the internet, the civilization changed. Majority of the civilization’s value was no longer physical, but rather non-physical (information in form of energy). The whole civilization is thus becoming ever more “knowledge-based” one (whoever does not keep up the pace perishes or doesn’t stand the chance against competition that does). People living in cities are connected to information every single day for 8+ hours (both for formal and informal purposes). If you still need the answer to what the most valuable resource on the planet is – it is information. I believe that I will need to further support this claim by going deeper when reacting to the individual quotes. If this little paragraph though caught your attention, make sure to go through my bachelor thesis. Around 12 pages are dedicated to this topic and you can find additional information sources in there.

The second important fact was realized a bit later when I studied Austrian economics. I didn’t read the original, but the so far unrefuted theory (and probably irrefutable whatsoever) would loosely translate as “interpersonally incomparable value”. This theory claims that commodities (information is today no exception) do not have an intrinsic value. The value of each commodity strictly succumbs to the subjective opinion of any given individual.[1] In other words, the most valuable resource can only be uncovered if all the people on the world joined the free market and expressed their appreciation. It would most likely be some sort of information. As the time will go by and civilization continues its evolution into information society, the probability of that will only increase.

Spyce – Introduction

Spyce will be the cryptocurrency backing the whole project. Spyce will be mined through POR (proof of reliability) which supports variety of possible contributions. According to the whitepaper, almost all of the activities human being can do could possibly be monetized. Just to mention a few, people could mine Spyce through lending of their hard-drive space, CPU, RAM, or the internet speed. Only technical possibilities were mentioned now. If I got the whitepaper correctly, one could monetize even their content in format similar to Steem (that will be explained further in the text). The technical methods could further be boosted by providing a full-node by using an Anuvys OS.

Spyce is then used on the Decenternet to purchase host services, apps, goods, etc. It also is used to interact with the smart contracts within the platform.

Quotes analysis

Quotes – Most valuable resource (chapter 3):

„Notice how gold, rhodium, plutonium, tritium, californium, and even antimatter that could potentially fuel rockets would naturally seem to be valuable as well. One can understand that if there is a transparent currency that is backed by a valuable resource, it may be considered as one that holds the most “intrinsic value.” But what is value without “the people” who use those resources? What is value without the knowledge or information of how to process these resources to practical use? Suppose we had an abundance of the above-mentioned resources, yet there was no one to discover the information required to process these substances into practical usage. Suppose there was no one left to use them or have any reaction to their effects. Suppose there were no people left on this planet. A deep understanding that “people” are the most valuable physical and ethereal resource on the planet may be a breakthrough realization in your economic understanding as a civilization.“

 

Well where to begin...I shall begin with the metaphysical reaction. Earthians are not only humans. “Interpersonally incomparable value” surely affects all the species on the planet. Free market may be human term, but all the animals (or rather genes?) engage in it. The sex itself is an incarnation of the free market [2]! So first of all there is no intrinsic value. Without the people different resources would be valuable, but it would mainly still be information (genetic information to be more specific [2]). People MAY BE the most valuable resource on the planet, but only for the people themselves. Surely dead species that were killed due to the human’s actions would disagree that they are so valuable…and they wouldn’t be the only specie to disagree. Heck even the planet itself would maybe disagree.

But on the less philosophical note, I understand why backing a resource to humans could prove to be very useful. People do see great value in themselves for sure after all. Therefore even though I do not agree with the philosophical background the author presented I still believe that in human’s free market the conclusion is valid.

 

“Still, a human being may age and die, yet the information that a human being left behind may remain forever on the Decenternet. The real socio-economic value of data can vary tremendously depending on the type of information it contains. A piece of data such as a blueprint for a nuclear bomb can have tremendous destructive value, while a blueprint for a solar-powered portable water condensation device can save millions of lives in certain places. They may represent different directional experiences for humanity, but none can argue that both pieces of data may be worth millions of current fiat paper dollars. Then who has control over all the data on the internet?“

 

The author fluently transits to information as sort of the most valuable resource. I got a bit confused there. So it is the human or the information? Now when I think about it I remembered another pro-information argument in this regard. No human being (or rather any living organism) would ever exist without the “initial” information – genetic information. According to Dawkins “human being” is just a vehicle for information that tries to develop and reproduce over-time. It is not the “human being” that consciously decides to reproduce. It is the genetic information that tries to motivate us to reach that conclusion by variety of methods. Information is thus more important aspect of life than metabolism, breathing, etc.[3]. Information is therefore at the very root of the human being – it wouldn’t exist without the information. Evolutionary speaking, information has to be more valuable than human being. But enough of the metaphysical talks for now.

 

“We have handed out the very right to decide what is defined as valuable, on a silver platter to third-party organizations. Awaken your mind to the fact that the ownership of data is actually the ownership of people. He who controls and owns data controls and owns the people. It is time we allow ourselves to discover that the organizations that monopolized data control the most valuable resource of the planet, the human mind.“

 

When people do not own their own data, they are prone to a lot possible dangers. In the already referenced thesis I wrote, I proved, that ownership of data can reduce information overload, or vice versa, that the lack of data ownership hinders our ability to effectively operate with the information. That is though nothing compared to for example being prone to propaganda, misinformation and manipulation. Search for example for Cambridge Analytica and influence on the USA elections to get the bigger picture. The further the society will evolve into information society, the bigger dangers will appear concerning the lack of data ownership. And by the way, suddenly the most valuable resource is our mind?:P

 

“Question: What content holds more monetary value for a centralized content delivery intermediary group who owns and controls all data, a DYI free energy generator video or a viral phone prank video earning ad money? If you know the answer, you may see how the internet looks pretty on the outside but is currently held hostage by these organizations. Unconsciously, the internet is being used monopolistically as a tool for profit. When have you awaken to the realization that this monopolistic internet is the only internet you have every experienced? When will you know that the internet of the near future will be open, transparent, fair, and decentralized? If the internet affects the minds of the global population, regardless of what a person would say, shouldn’t it be more of a public property? In reality, what content do you think is pushed by these profit-hungry network content delivery cartels to be exposed more at the top of your computer screen—a DYI free energy generator video or a phone prank video? Are you capable of noticing that content with a significant deep impact of this magnitude in our society would never go viral in this environment?“

 

Just few sentences later the author states that on Decenternet the (in my eyes) more valuable content would go viral. I am not convinced here. I do agree that money-hungry corporation do profit from fucking useless pathetic prank going viral. I perceive different cause though. The cause are the people. Less than half of the population is even capable of following different logical patterns than A + B implies C (basic conditional…meaning they know the A and the B and they “uncover” the C). If they were presented the C right off the bet, most of them would only follow their well-known bias, imagining A and B that would (in the best scenario) logically fit, but that doesn’t have to be the case at all [4]. That doesn’t really speak highly of the humanity. Luckily the study didn’t prove that the inability is intrinsic (we still have hope).

What I’m trying to say here is that people mostly lack the ability to seek the “not selfish needs” and uncover correct patterns that would lead to the right remedy. And that (from my point of view) means that viral videos of today do only go viral because people give them their attention. It is not like an evil corporation restricts us from seeing hard topics that could save the world. People just do not care to think about problems and their solutions and often they are not even capable of doing so. If they do, they only pick one problem, rip it from the context and according to their bias visualize a completely irrelevant solution. It’s much easier to just watch fucking useless pathetic prank (or anything similar), therefore people opt for pranks over hard topics. No technology can help it. People themselves have to change their attitudes. The author, I’m afraid, imagined that all the people would think like him. That is not the case (it’s actually quite the contrary). I tend to think that everything humanity can use is just a tool. Decenternet as a tool can help humanity (or at least its part) to get to a stage where they would care. The tool itself won’t make the difference for them though I’m afraid.

 

“I wonder if you know that the demand of a content on the Decenternet natively influences the demand for spyce. The more precious content it holds, the higher the demand for goods and services on the Decenternet will be. Spyce is the libertarian currency used to purchase or 31 exchange goods or services on the Decenternet. Naturally, you may notice that the value of the content will be priced in the value of spyce on a macroeconomic scale. In order to organize this concept mathematically, let’s suppose Decenternet data is the digitized information or creative content (CC) with an undefined amount of financial value. The Value of CC can be defined through data value (Dv). Dv is the average value of all Cv (content value) in the Decenternet in a span of one day. Content Value (Cv) is the value of an individual CC in Decenternet in a span of one day. Old content such as videos on how to install Windows 97 is less valuable now than in the past. This is why when calculating the Cv we must also put a time constraint on content value appreciation. Notice how regardless of the nature of a particular website on the Decenternet, the value of the overall content depends on the number of contents published, emotional engagement, total and unique views, stickiness, relevance, the number of links built, and the number of requests from the users of Decenternet to the nodes.“

 

As you can see the “mining” mechanism is much more complicated that the one on Steem. Let me breakdown the individual influencing aspects.

 

“Emotional engagement (E) is a measure of how much engagement a content received through interactive emotional indicators on the Decenternet. This is why content delivery businesses such as Facebook invented “Like” and emoticons.“

 

Or in other words upvotes and downvotes.

 

„View count (Vc) is the number of times a content was requested per day. For example, a two-hour movie on YouTube with two million views could be a numeric indication of how much demand there is to view the content, thus making the view count add value to the content.“

 

“The unique view count (Vu) is the number of unique views per day. This is the total views in all content on the Decenternet divided by the number of contents viewed.“

 

Very important anti-gaming mechanism is to take in account the unique views too. Good job.

 

„Stickiness (S) is the average time (in seconds) a visitor stayed consuming the content/page/website.“

 

As you are slowly probably getting, Decenternet aims to target all the measurable data of any content.

 

“Relevance (R) is how relevant the content is. Relevance depends on how transparent the search engine is with its algorithms. As we all know by heart, search engines like Google are designed to earn ad money for the SE (search engine) provider. As mentioned a few times, this is why it may display the results that do not have the user’s best interests at heart. It may also end up over-compensating the wrong CC parties with low creative value. But for the Decenternet’s Liberty SE, it may actually display the content that has the highest (Dv). This is more probable than not because Liberty does not have a third party to report profits to. Notice how 10 percent of spyce produced by the mining activity is used for maintenance and further development of the Decenternet ecosystem (more on page 41). This is where funding for Liberty comes from, instead of from ad money. It is self-sustaining by design.“

 

Google (I have no clue about how inferior search engines work) is not designed to earn ad money. Sure there sometimes are ads at the top, but they are presented as such. Google uses google page rank to decide what information goes to the top [5]. It by no means is perfect, it has any flaws and negative implications (mainly that the relevance sucks), but it is not as bad as the paper implies. The search engine is designed to get as much data from the users and then sell them as big data to wealthy corporations. It causes many problems, but I namely studied how it causes information overload (and other negative implications) in my linked thesis. I also presented an idea there, how decentralized searched engine could work using digital pheromones. Unfortunately that part of thesis will be published on Steem in several months, since it’s at the very end of the practical part. I will though take deeper look at the Liberty search engine and how it decides the relevance later in this series.

 

“Linked (L) simply means the number of times the content was mentioned/referenced in Decenternet.“

 

This on the other hand is a perfect idea. Directly rewarding referenced articles is just the future in my eyes. If Decenternet can be the first one to implement that, it would mean a huge boost for the platform.

From this picture we can see that all the above mentioned aspects will be equal to each other, if I understand the operation correctly (no mathematician here). Every aspect on its own is gameable, but together, they are much less prone to gaming mechanisms. I believe that the distribution does have a bright future, but it will need a lot of “battle testing” and tweaks.

 

“According to reports by the UN, there will only be 8.5 billion human lives available by 2030. 12 This is why, only 8.5 billion grains of spyce will be in circulation until the year of 2030. No more new spyce will be produced afterward. Beyond 2030, the value of spyce will be solely determined by the free market. Of the 8.5 billion grains of spyce, 4.25 billion will be distributed to the early contributors who participate in the Decenternet spyce donation event. The other 4.25 billion grains of spyce will be earned as a reward for mining operations until the year 2030.“

 

Interesting mechanism. This means that there will be a LOT OF spyce. That isn’t either good or bad from my point of view. It is just something to take into account.

 

“We do not claim that everything we say here is correct or incorrect.“

 

I’m glad to hear that. It should mean that we could have a nice discussion:).

Conclusion

This article turned out to be a bit more constructively critical than the previous one. I had several problems with the 3^rd chapter. First of all the author couldn’t seem to decide what really “the most valuable resource on the planet” is. From my humble point of you this could undermine the credibility of the paper and needs to be edited. There has to be firm claim of whether it is the humans, the mind, or the information (data). It can’t be all, otherwise it would be a contradiction.

I then had some problems with some of the author’s premises. I tried to always bind my arguments to a (from my point of view) highly scientific sources across scientific fields such as economy, biology and philosophy (logic). Those sources pretty much helped to form my metaphysical opinions and they are vital in order to understand where my opinions come from. If we were communicating via Decenternet the authors would be financially rewarded. Shame that is not the case:).

At the end I took deeper look at spyce and how its “social mining” mechanism works. I’m open to any mechanism that tries things differently than Steem. It will need it’s time to get to know its bugs and weaknesses. I am willing to give it the time it needs.

What do you guys think about the premises I confronted? What do you think about the spyce? Share with me your opinions in the comments below! And as always, do your own research.

Lear more at:

www.decenternet.com

www.anuvys.com

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Sources

1. VON MISES, Ludwig. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 1. United States: Yale University Press, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1949. ISBN 9780865976313.
2. RIDLEY, Matt. The red queen: sex and the evolution of human nature. New York: Perennial, 2003. ISBN 978-0060556570.
3. DAWKINS, Richard. The selfish gene. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 9780199291151.
4. RUTH M.J. BYRNE. The rational imagination: how people create alternatives to reality. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2007. ISBN 9780262524742.
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
6. Decenternet’s Whitepaper

7. Information Overload and Methods of its Elimination in the Modern Information Society - (Thesis I referenced in the text...it is not fully translated yet)

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://localhost/wordpress/2018/07/18/decentralization-to-the-rescue-decenternet-the-most-valuable-resource-on-the-planet-and-how-spyce-is-connected-pt-2-of-6/