• Fuller Crash course for concerned citizen-activists in general (with progressive emphasis) on uses of Blockchain and related technologies is this page below the main "Crash Course" heading.

• If you need though, there's also very short animated Videos/ Quick and painless intros (animated) to what Blockchain is and what it can do in general.

• Page on "Promises and perils" of Blockchain based voting might be added in future( But see Chapter 1, section 8, below on this page, for some examples, instances, trials)

New: Why You Must Know About ZK

Crash Course for Activists
Potentially Powerful Decentralizing Applications
of Blockchain and related technologies
Version 1, April 30, 2018
Clean-up/Graphics new links added Aug 2019
First created after being asked by veteran activists such questions as:

Harel, What do you mean by "the decentralizing power of blockchain technology, which goes way, way beyond bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies."


Below in one ~3 hour sitting (after many dozens of hours educating myself since 2017) I've summarized below some of main highlights of a year+ of research, and created a book-chapter length hypertext, organized section by section summary with sub-sections. Actually just two chapters, "chapter 0" and "chapter 1" -- you can  skip the shorter 0th chapter "if you promise to read it later", so the many complications (not just tech but   the many variables/metrics of how socially positive they are) which chapter 1 (mostly) leaves unaddressed, those are summarized in Chapter zero. I can eventually put this email up on one of my websites (maybe my KillFacebook) with new links added over time.
-HB

Chapter -- zero:
Disclaimers and one-time list of complexities, so the rest can be simplified

(If you don't want to deal with this, skip to chapter 1 but go back and read this chapter 0 later, please!)

A) Not all projects are equally good, not only technically speaking, but socially speaking;

Some are more decentralized than others, there's even disagreement which is more decentralized; at least one has, sadly, a privately held patent on it ("hashgraph") and one that I like (the tangle) is semi-centralized with "coordinators" but those are a temporary "training wheels" to bootstrap, jump-start the ecosystem.
[Note: the Credit Union National Association, CUNA.org has announced in fall of 2017 a partnership with these private patent owners, Swirlds, creators of the "hashgraph", for CULedger, "a credit union consortium supported by the efforts of CUNA and the Mountain West Credit Union Association (MWCUA)"]

Most cryptocurrencies (which are just one application of blockchain) are themselves per se nonprofit , but only one I know of is member-owned cooperative (www.rchain.coop).

So that's another (in this case social rather than technical merits) metric to measure projects by.

Yet another metric besides how technically strong, and the many social metrics, is "how far along" (maybe in 5 months project B will be way better than A but for now it's in early stages)

Bottom line: each project needs to be measured by *many* different metrics and not only do I not know all the answers to each metric and would even struggle to create a complete list of important metrics, but even if I had all that, it would mad reading a headache, when we want to survey which projects are out there.


B) More general than even blockchain.

Bear with me: Not only are cryptocurrencies just one application of blockchain, but blockchain itself is just one (the most famous) design structure so there's things even blockchain.

 (we'll survey the many many other "tricks" it can do) is just one way to do it.

There's alternative structures to the blockchain (it's a "chain" or linear) like the non-linear DAG

B-1) There's the blockchain alternative DAG:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Topological_Ordering.svg/480px-Topological_Ordering.svg.png

(Blockchain versus DAG: Directed Acyclic Graphs -- example cryptocurrencies using DAG are IOTA and NANO and ones called ByteBall and Dagcoin)
IOTA calls its DAG a "tangle" -- just branding I think, though of course not every DAG will be identical to others.

IOTA has done a lot of business deals in the real world -- so DAG is *not* just an "in theory" alternative to blockchain
https://cointelegraph.com/news/taipei-partners-with-iota-to-become-a-blockchain-powered-smart-city
https://www.finder.com.au/taiwan-to-use-iota-tangle-based-citizen-id-cards-data-marketplace
https://www.coindesk.com/city-of-taipei-confirms-its-testing-iota-blockchain-for-id


B-2) Then more recently I've found out about hashgraph (alas, patented, though they claim they will keep the patent while also making source code "open")
More Than Blockchains: Exploring Hashgraph & DAGs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUKuR8PLNs )

B-3) A fourth one called holochain (which considers the patented "hashgraph" a party-way between itself and the blockchain)
(What is Holochain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCtYrHJebs )
(Holochain versus Hashgraph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDxK8c-wbGo )


C) Decentralizing things that are "none of the above" --

none of (blockchain/DAG/hashgraph/holochain) but just non-profit, or open source free software etc alternatives to Facebook, twitter, etc,

see e.g. my own website KillFacebook.org

So our people-fight-back ecosystem will include not only one or more of (Blockchain/DAG/hashgraph/holochain) but also things listed on KillFacebook, just open source free (libre: "free as in free speech not as in free beer" though often cost-free) applications like GNUsocial, Diaspora, and "microblogging" alternatives (twitter alternatives) like Mastodon. Those are listed and linked to at my KillFacebook.org and are *not* focused on in this email.

D) Have your cake and eat it to -- cut out "middleman" for "trustless" systems.

Blockchain and its alternative use mathematics and computer science to let us "have our cake and eat it to" in several (imperfect but often powerful) senses of the word. In a nutshell it's this.

And yes we want to build social capital and trust between people.

That's great for community gardens etc, but if it's thousands of dollars, or more, or life and death effects of data being correct, we do need trust guarantors.

Before blockchain you had to use a trusted third party (corporate "middleman") but now we can use the "mathemagic" and computer algorithms to not need such a trusted third party but to have the cryptographic algorithms be the "guarantors"

(I'm brushing many other technical dimensions or metrics under the rug; like not only guaranteed correct, but is it private if I don't want anyone to know I bought this or that product in the store? But "decentralized" is the main common feature; you can then ask about other features like privacy; like is it nonprofit or patented / is it public or private etc)

Ok, end of Chapter 0. Just keep this complex but powerful ecosystem in mind and that there's many metrics and no project will be near-perfect on all (let alone perfect on all) technological/timing/social metrics, ok? But all social change is "messy" and no reason not to embrace remarkable powerful game changing projects, selectively.


Chapter 1 -- The (potentially) good (and powerful) stuff

Projects organized by Sector:

§ 1- (GREEN) Energy distribution --cut out the corporate middleman

** Brooklyn Microgrid (LO3 Energy / Consensys) and

**  WePower and recently found more recently another one --

**  Energo Labs, all blockchain-based I have links but want to keep this from becoming even more time consuming to type up -- but I'll probably later put a web page of this email with new links put in -- you can google any of the above names.

Long story short: No need to trust some corporate middleman -- your solar power sells energy to your neighbor. Can't we do that before blockchain? Yes, but you'd have had to use a "trusted third party" to do the payment/credit for the buyer/seller of electricity. With blockchain's DLT (distributed ledger technology) we can have peer to peer payments without needing a trusted "corporate-middleman", using cryptography and more tools of the trade of DLT.

Poor comparison to Uber though, as blockchain can eliminate the Uber
"middleman" so "more Uber than Uber". Authentic decentralization



§ 2- Electric Transport: Recharging

Electric cars that pay for their own self-charging, I've emailed to some activists about this on April 19th
with Subject line "Electric cars: World's first IOTA Smart Charging Station!"
With photo attachments and linking to https://mobile.twitter.com/iotatokennews/status/986939186681909248

I want to minimize "chapter 0" type comments but briefly: the Iota platform lets us avoid middleman payment systems to the extent they stick with a public blockchain (public DAG actually) and that's one type of decentralization. Of course, having community owned power (a second decentralization) combined with (as above) the third type namely direct sell-to-your-neighbors can then be combined with something like this so the: power generation; and distribution; and payment systems are ALL decentralized, plus with electric (possibly self driving, possibly even assembled at community-owned 3D printable manufacturing, to look even further into future) cars --  or electric mass transit, electric ride share rather than just electric cars.

See World's first IOTA Smart Vehicle Charging Station is Released by ElaadNL (Netherlands) and Iota's own blog post which reads in part:
When the charger was deployed and we did the first tests, I was amazed about how easy it actually is if 'plug & charge' works like it should. Right now it's kind of a hassle to connect your car, swipe a RFID card (which you get by signing a contract with a service provider, which in returns has to have a contract with the charge point operator you're using the charge station of...and in the end they have to settle the transaction and I'll get the bill of all sessions combined, each month). I was like: "I want this to become the normal way of charging, just plug in the cable and the magic happens!"



Of course I've brushed under the rug "peer to peer payment" which is THE MAIN HUGE thing that cryptocurrencies and related financial systems are about...they really deserve their own:

§ 3- Peer to peer payments -- remittance, lending &100 other financial sector decentralizations

[Entire universe here. But it will allow for much cheaper remittance payments to families in developing countries for example. Now, will some for-profit blockchain unit of like Wells Fargo do that? Is that any better? Ok, cheaper, and faster, but still corporate? Again, many metrics exist. Some projects (including --for obvious sad reasons of how capitalism works -- those that are better funded and earlier funded) may be corporate sponsored.

But don't throw the baby with the bathwater -- we can look at other metrics like, "it is non-profit?" and "is the code 'libre' type open source free software? Can we build -- or does there already exist (we just need to google more rather than just read headlines) public- people-owned version?" etc)


In other words in the coming weeks, months, years, we'll see projects that are tainted (or which initially excite us but later you realize are compromised) by being done by corporate types..but that's no reason to let go of blockchain/DAG/etc...just like in early 1990s I told folks about the internet-- and yes corporations wanted to sell you pizza over the internet and worse -- but that's NO REASON to say "never mind, I won't use the internet"

E.G.: We need to use the internet for social ends, and in social ways, while in parallel, yes, there will be negative, or tainted, or "grey area" projects. Seek out/create the best we can. Or make (small, justifiable) compromises, but which do not compromise any of our core principles. Make sense? I hope so, let me know if questions. But remittance payments is one. Peer to peer LENDING (need technical stability and all else PLUS solid algorithms so I don't lend to a heroine addict to never repays me etc so not easy to do but is not impossible either) and that's just two (remittance payments and peer to peer lending) ideas...there's lots of other financial aspects.

All the way to post-capitalist future ideas since we can combine VOTING on FISCAL matters over a global people-run financial DECENTRALIZED network, making global, national, local economic decisions. So I've listed two "narrower" but important (remittance;lending) and one huge "omni" one, and there's others]

** One blockchain-based remittance tool, not by Big Banks is: https://www.bitpesa.co/
    "Using bitpesa. Importers exporters. Importers and Exporters. Send and receive payments in multiple currencies; African and International currencies in the amounts you need to pay suppliers globally using web or mobile. Discover how Nigerian importers settle payments in the U.S., Europe, and China using BitPesa."

    OpenBazaar: "Sell Anything. Pay Zero Platform Fees. Create a store. Sell whatever you'd like. Reach a new audience. Get paid in cryptocurrency."

    OpenBazaar costs nothing to download and use. Unlike sites like Ebay or Amazon there are no fees to list items, and no fees when an item is sold. Because the trade is p2p (peer to peer), it's happening directly between buyers and sellers with no middleman to take a cut from each sale. It's completely free e-commerce.

    "Setting up your own web server for an ecommerce store is difficult and requires specialized knowledge. Many sellers end up paying someone else to set up their store. [In contrast] Setting up an OpenBazaar store is simple. Download the program, run the installer, and you'll be listing your items in minutes."

    "Is This Site (OpenBazaar) Like Ebay or Amazon? It is similar, but with this special software the users are completely in control. This means great freedom for buyers and sellers as they can transact apart from centralized bodies like Ebay or Amazon, but also great responsibility for all of their own files, data and transactions. Learn more about what this whole new landscape of liberated ecommerce means and how OpenBazaar can work for you on our FAQ!"



    Decentralized Data Storage (IPFS and Swarm) click on image below for an article
    Image links to (text) article overview of IPFS and Swarm; or, see the 10 minute technical video image is from.

    Origin Protocol "The sharing economy without intermediaries -- Origin is a protocol for creating sharing economy marketplaces using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS" (Internet Planetary File System, (Wikipedia entry for IPFS) IF can be used so governments can't censor by blocking wikipedia (like Turkey did) is the idea. But this is tangent on IPFS. Rather: "Origin does not own a database" of "where the listings are stored. Instead, all data is stored across computers around the world running open source software. Also, you don't need to register with Origin to participate, only a freely available Ethereum wallet." [New: IPFS to be more easily available? Internet security provider Cloudflare is introducing a new product to help users more easily access..IPFS

    "#IOTA Real World Usecase - P2P Music Streaming Payment:
    When you are listening to music, the artist is automatically and
    directly paid per second. No middlemen, no mothly fees    ." –Tweet by iota.org


    New Blockchain Phone: What You Should Know Before You Buy (including her (Heidi of Crypto Tips with 44k followers in May 2018) warning that the "backdoors" we now know iPhones have (with the age old government excuse of "getting bad people" as she says) mean someone could get at your money.
    Don't Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater!
    Given our current economic system, anything positive that can be done with Blockchain/other DLT, will be used also by amoral, only semi-enlightened, and even some malevolent actors...that's NOT a reason to not use it, any more than the existence of telemarketers scams or email spam are "reasons" to not use a phone or email. Use existing projects that you think are ok for now, or push them to improve in metrics such as those in Chapter 0 -- or create your own that are good by our/your own political values/metrics

    But let's NOT use the fact that some projects (especially the Finance/Economics section here and the Healthcare section below) -- are people selling shares to support the project (but maybe also to become rich) while in parallel using the powerful DLT to possibly (only partially!) liberate users -- let's not use that as excuse to stay out of this sector, telling ourselves we've seen this is "no good" and throwing the baby out

    It's like a 1990s activist deciding not to use email because some folks just wanna get people online to sell them stuff -- no, use the projects that are sufficiently liberating (until later there's a more free/democratic/decentralized version) ; modify/fix/pressure/contribute to change, the second group that's not there but could be improved to be there; and replace the third type of project, build a better/good one if it's too corrupt to be redeemable. But we should not ignore the power of blockchain/DLT. That's like boycotting all use of technology X because X can be used for ill. This "X" (blockchain/DLT) is powerful.

    Take it from me, the activist who in the early 1990s pushed others and organizations to get online, was there early enough to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time so with a lot of work and help from others we reached the "internet per-capita" equivalent of an 8 figure audience today. Don't click that yet, though. Much as it's important internet activism history, read the rest of this page first, then come back later to read about my "glory days" before becoming an activist has-been who does more modest-scale things today (but still have very big ambitious plans to change the world ;-).



    § 4-- Decentralized Alternatives to Uber etc

    ** Arcade City (I have not really looked into this one, it's just one) states: "Acade City is building a global network of local driver cooperatives called guilds. Guild drivers work together to provide reliable service to their ... Drivers and riders will earn our blockchain-based Arcade Token (ARCD) for actions that grow our global network."

    https://arcade.city/

    § 5- Blockchain and and non-blockchain Alternatives to Twitter:

    Unlike Mastodon above(which is microblogging but not blockchain based) mentioned above which doesn't use blockchain....

    ..these are based on blockchain or on one it its "competitor" structures(DAG etc):

    *5a* A holochain-based (remember, "holochain" is one of the 3 other siblings to Blockchain from chapter zero) alternative to twitter called Clutter

    https://github.com/holochain/clutter

    Might be further along:

    *5b* Peepeth

    "No corporation or government controls Peepeth, making it the perfect place to share what matters. Uncensorable & incorruptible. Data saved to the Ethereum blockchain. Open, decentralized, & uncensorable. Fun, fast, & easy. Post instantly; Nearly free with batch-saving; Tweet your Peeps; Email notifications. Prove it's you."

    But you need the Firefox plug-in Metamask (and have an, I believe, very tiny amount but some amount of funds to micro-payment for some things, if it's fractions of pennies of tweet, adjusted to local purchasing power, I'm more than ok with it...) to use it
    https://peepeth.com/welcome


    § 6-- Decentralized alternatives to youtube -- seriously


    To heck with governments and corporations censoring, violating privacy (I could have created a whole section on "Identity management systems" based on blockchain and related technologies with user owning their own data. Again, banks and corporations will create their own versions that have *some* advantages but keeping corporations still in the loop...we have to select the ones that really work for us) etc.

    **6A** DTube

    (i) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/youtube-and-facebook-are-losing-creators-to-blockchain-powered-rivals
    (ii) https://d.tube/
    (iii) Watch: Future Uncertain For Assange In Wake Of US-Ecuador Military Deal
    at: https://d.tube/#!/v/elizbethleavos/n2x20e2v

    (iv)Vid just now posted minutes ago: "Saudi authorities shut down women-only gym after video showing woman in tight-fitting attire emerges"
    Posted by "jadeed" so might be Saudi-based poster so example of something government might want to censor and ask a centralized company like youtube to remove permission (youtube does have power to disallow you to view a video depending on what country you live in -HB))


    **6B** viewly ;
    https://view.ly/
    "Viewly is a decentralized video platform, run by the people, for the people."

    The description of 6C below sounds more public-minded, but I've also heard that 6B wants to become a DAO -- Dencentralized Autonomous Organization -- see wikipedia -- but basically a semi-automated algorithm based "company" whose rules could be chosen to make it non-profit, people-run etc etc.

    ** 6C** Another one with similar name not to be confused with it: viuly
    https://viuly.com/

    No more middlemen! All payments on the platform are done automatically in VIU tokens and the transaction history is stored on the blockchain. VIULY tokens (VIU) are based on the Ethereum blockchain smart-contract and represent the main tool for transferring the value between advertisers, content creators and users.

    **6D** Lino
    Update: Lino is launching to be a crypto YouTube with $20 million from China's most famous seed investor
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/05/lino-is-launching-to-be-a-crypto-youtube-with-20-million-from-chinas-most-famous-seed-investor/

    YouTube on the blockchain is one of the Holy Grails of the crypto community. The new generation of video artists and their audience seem tailor-made for a blockchain-based distribution and restitution system — one that depends on micro-payments and digitally secured provenance.

    It'd also be a system that could get creators out from under the yoke of YouTube, Snap, and Facebook revenue sharing agreements that see platforms profit while the professional content creators that provide grist for the social media mill are paid cents on the dollar. The latest startup to tackle the imbalance and to try and wrest a pool of creators out from the grip of the big social media giants is Lino, a Cupertino, Calif.-based company.

    **6E** One called Flixxo but this is enough for now (Debbie "The Sane Progressive" uses Bitchute; not sure if that uses blockchain tech; it uses WebTorrent, whose Wikipedia says it uses BitTorrent (no surprise) plus "Distributed Hash Table" technology.BitTorrent is not described as blockchain but good old fashioned P2P file sharing/transfer *protocol* ; "A BitTorrent client is a computer program that implements the BitTorrent protocol" etc)

    More CryptoTips channel's intro to www.bit.tube ("ad-free, paid in cryptocurrency" and she claims cant' be censored but one comment raised question about that) It's Germany-based, "BitTube coin is a digital cryptocurrency. Initially, at the genesis of the BitTube blockchain, the maximum number of coins minable is set to 1 billion coins. Revenues from co-mining are passed on to the viewers and on to the copyright holders as content is consumed on the platform." — their "Guides is closest to a FAQ about bit.tube


    April 2020 Update: Comparative reviews
    of blockchain-based youtube-alternatives

    Note: "Dtube" is not "dtube.com" but "d.tube"' ; lbry is a .tv;
    and PeerTube is via joinpeertube.org (Videos shared P2P, really decentralized) click "instances"
    § 7-- What about STORAGE so we don't need to trust the youtube-alternatives to store for us?

    [Need to more fully research each, including *which* things exactly they 'blockchain-ify'; Identity-managements and who owns what content and payments for them etc, or also blockchaining/sharding/decentralizing *storage* of the video content, too? Other/more types of decentralization?]


    **7A** Storj
    https://coincentral.com/storj-beginners-guide/

    **7B** Golem
    https://golem.network/

    **7C** Holo -- watch their amazing video on indiegogo they raised a ton of funds.

    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/holo-take-back-the-internet-shared-p2p-hosting-community#/
    Holo: Take Back the Internet - Shared P2P Hosting
    Next-Gen Internet: Where we host the peer-to-peer web on mini-servers.
    $673,072 USD total funds raised
    263% funded on February 4, 2018
    Uses Holochain
    https://holo.host/



    § 8-- Voting


    Long story short: a (public) Blockchain based voting system would allow any voter to

    It could be implemented badly or a private one by a corporation that Congress wants to use and it could make things worse rather than better...so there's promise and peril here..But if done RIGHT...a non-profit free open source software public blockchain with the privacy done right and decentralized storage and control...

    ..would be almost a holy grail of voting: wrap your mind around this: any voter could use mathematics to verify that their vote was counted and counted right and they were not disqualified or had their vote changed etc etc....and could even verify that others' votes were counted and not changed etc (without seeing how others voted). Holy Grail. Not overnight, but that's what's possible.

    Do an internet search for: "West Virginia Becomes First State to Use Blockchain Technology in Election" --

    for local voting municipal etc, search for Ben Miller's January 2018 article "Blockchain Voting Startup Raises $2.2M" on Voatz for just one of the companies

     it's already happening in 2020 primaries there. Probably not done ideally. I keep saying: we have to be involved not only because of the "holy grail" if it's done right, but also without our involvement (just like non-blockchain basic 1990s/2000s "online voting") it could make things worse --

     But keep your eyes on the prize: if done RIGHT, then blockchain voting, see above in red on  yellow(above) how voting could be made so much better. No more us allowing 100,000s of Bernie voters in NYC being kicked off ballot!

    ...

    [Add links to Voatz and others, here]

    § 9-- Healthcare/Health Insurance

    As longtime supporter of both Medicare for All/Single Payer and locally/regionally of Health Cooperatives and Free clinics a la Paul Glover, I want to emphasize I'm not endorsing seeming for-profit version below (In fact I've only started to read it) this but like a lot about blockchain: (1) it's fascinating (2) let's study what's wrong with this (3) Then either push to improve it or create something separate without the downsides it may have, but with the upsides blockchain allows.

    Namely, could Paul Glover's PhilaHealthia mutual co-insurance / co-op model ( and the earlier institution he founded, the Ithaca Health Alliance, IHA in Ithaca, NY) similarly incorporate blockchain for the best of both worlds: citizen-controlled, and the power of the blockchain? Below are highlights excerpted from CitizenHealth's pitch:

    https://citizenhealth.io/the-plan/
    "Using the latest artificial intelligence, genetic breakthroughs, and blockchain technology, we will create a new healthcare system. Pretty simple, right? Instead of the 600+ health insurance companies that manage our claims and bloat up the industry, Citizen Health will be comprised of one large DAO with many smaller ones ...

    From their Plan:

    "The best way to predict our healthcare future is to create it"

    The plan is pretty straightforward and also very ambitious. We are going to shift the $1 Trillion we as Americans pay for health insurance premiums each year and direct them to Citizen Health, which will be owned & operated by the people who pay monthly premiums. From there, we will use that $1 Trillion to provide the very best healthcare that intelligent technology can provide to our members. We will work directly with healthcare providers to get you the best possible care available for a much lower cost. Using the latest artificial intelligence, genetic breakthroughs, and blockchain technology, we will create a new healthcare system. Pretty simple, right?

    Instead of the 600+ health insurance companies that manage our claims and bloat up the industry, Citizen Health will be comprised of one large DAO with many smaller ones established within it. Instead of bureaucrats, pharma execs, and insurance companies controlling the industry, the actual patients & doctors will control it. Think about it.. The money comes out of patient's pockets and goes directly to the doctor's pockets. There isn't numerous middlemen in line to take their cut and convolute the process.

    What we aim to do is to give the only people that should be involved in healthcare the power to control the entire healthcare industry. The American People as a collective make up the strongest single payer in our country. We have all the money, we have all the medical data, and we have all the people that can turn this broken industry around. Blockchain technology will allow us to democratize healthcare in way that wasn't possible in the past.

    Remember this: The power of the people is greater than the people in power.

    ...

    Phase 3:

    Launch Citizen Health for every person in America. Redirect the $1 Trillion we as US citizens pay out of pocket each year to insurance companies into the new Citizen Health Fund, which is owned & operated by the citizens and healthcare providers. Cut out the need for health insurance companies.

    Now that we just shifted $1 Trillion dollars into a new healthcare ecosystem, we develop personalized health plans for all involved. We make people healthier and save them money in the process.


    https://citizenhealth.io/the-plan/
    § 10-- Bigger Picture and Concluding comments

    I've already mentioned DAOs above -- Decentralized Autonomous organizations. I'm not sure if being busy with PA gov or the "dangerous" aspect of my mentioning to Paul earlier about "unkillable activist organizations" or democratically-run "benevolent zombie" organizations are, without me recommending them, just pointing out that civil disobedience could be done if state/federal wanted to shut down (just to use a random example) a healthcare cooperative it if were put on blockchain with smart contracts -- then no matter how many activists you arrest, leaders etc, the globally distributed set of computers keep running the software including taking memberships, collecting fees, paying salaries, running votes, reimbursing medical staff, etc, would be on auto-pilot (while a human can intervene and take parts off auto-pilot so long as withing the DNA or a kind of analogy to the U.S. Constitution -- for that blockchain based DAO)

    More broadly still (I'm happy to reply to questions or add more or add nuance but this is a first start at an organized outline) but the limits are your imagination:

    ** Wikipedia reports that its competitor Everipedia (started by disillusioned wikipedia co-founder) "On December 6, 2017, the company announced plans to convert to using EOS blockchain technology, and work on a cryptocurrency token called IQ to encourage generating information" and that "One of the goals of the company is to stop [any country] from blocking the content, by the integration of the blockchain model. Once Everipedia is decentralized and hosted on the EOS platform, countries.. will no longer be able to block it" it asserts. (Link to Everipedia.org but as of early June 2018, "Registration is currently invite only")
    ** Decentralized alternative to Gmail -- because we'll have Storage decentralized with privacy guaranteed not by corporations or governments but by algorithms --

    ** And alternative to Google  Search (one cryptocurrency, Nebulas, has already a first try at being the "search engine" for blockchain)

    ** And for a city you can have not just a few public owned towers for peer-to-peer communication, but blockchain lets people who lend their storage space (with privacy /encryption) and their CPU, can be micro-paid helping the network GROW ...so one day you'd not have to pay AT ALL for even Internet service provider except marginally at-cost, to pay for the costs of the peer to peer network.


    New (Aug 2019) Using Blockchain (or actually DAG -- Directed Acyclic Graphs, a sibling structure to blockchain) to protect the commons; to protect public-critical data; to "protect the Amazon" or specifically, to protect from fake carbon credits, etc, interesting, see this very short addendum to this Crash Course.


    From this already vast overview, then let your imagination run wild in other directions -- if you can have voting-based and other democratic structures, with computing storage and computer processing all decentralized, and privacy, and   combined with money -- the two huge starting pieces for a post-capitalist democratic economy. (One of my dreams is that the "on" switch for a global Universal Basic Income could be democratically done by people -- not governments or corporations -- more on that dream another time) Add your own ideas. As Mark Twain said, we live in a crazy dream, and need to "dream different dreams -- and better ones" Need I say more?  -Harel



    Smart-contracts on e.g. blockchain could "put on steroids" Harel B's turn of the century White Paper proposal — dubbed ThresholdWare a few years later by Dan Bashaw. HB's white paper preceded by about a half decade (link to history of Thresholdware page here) the very similar applications that arose (IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, etc) for the financial half of Thresholdware; then there's the "direct-action activism" side.

    Recap of earlier warning:

    Don't Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater
    Given our current economic system, anything positive that can be done with Blockchain/other DLT, will be used also by amoral, only semi-enlightened, and even some malevolent actors...that's NOT a reason to not use it, any more than the existence of telemarketers scams or email spam are reasons to not use a phone or email! Use existing projects that you think are ok for now, or push them to improve in metrics such as those in Chapter 0 -- or create your own that are good by our/your own political values/metrics

    But let's NOT use the fact that some projects (especially the Finance/Economics section here and the Healthcare section below) -- are people selling shares to support the project (but maybe also to become rich) while in parallel using the powerful DLT to possibly (only partially!) liberate users -- let's not use that as excuse to stay out of this sector, telling ourselves we've seen this is "no good" and throwing the baby out

    It's like a 1990s activist deciding not to use email because some folks just wanna get people online to sell them stuff -- no, use the projects that are sufficiently liberating (until later there's a more free/democratic/decentralized version) ; modify/fix/pressure/contribute to change, the second group that's not there but could be improved to be there; and replace the third type of project, build a better/good one if it's too corrupt to be redeemable. But we should not ignore the power of blockchain/DLT. That's like boycotting all use of technology X because X can be used for ill. This "X" (blockchain/DLT) is powerful.

    Take it from me, the activist who in the early 1990s pushed others and organizations to get online, was there early enough to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time so with a lot of work and help from others we reached the "internet per-capita" equivalent of an 8 figure audience today. Don't click that yet, though. Much as it's important internet activism history, read the rest of this page first, then come back later to read about my "glory days" before becoming an activist has-been who does more modest-scale things today (but still have very big ambitious plans to change the world ;-).


    Disclaimer since "If you believe in it, how dare you NOT own" versus "if you own, how dare you write anything positive about it??" Catch-22.. but here goes: author (HB) at time of writing owned approximately equal --and tiny -- slivers of almost all of the top 20 cryptocurrencies to diversify, having bought by selling BTC/ETH/LTC, plus small bits of non-top-20 Zcash (supporting its privacy), Nano (decentralizing DAG tech) and Rchain (member owned coop non-profit angle is fascinating, though not a member at this time). At time of writing non-small holdings only in Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin. Most of these are not directly "cryptocurrencies" but general ways to use blockchain for social change, in any case -- tools for social change. But out of "an abundance of caution" am including this Disclaimer/Disclosure; and, don't invest in cryptocurrencies unless you do your own research and if you invest at all, invest only what you can afford to lose!)



    Contact: econdemocracy [sic, "econ" not "economic"] on the gmail.com domain. 

    look into https://www.real.video/
     

    ** Later possibly add: https://m.techxplore.com/news/2019-12-randpay-technology-blockchain-micropayments-requires.html (Dec 2019)

** https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-ceo-armstrong-wins-patent-for-tech-allowing-users-to-email-bitcoin
   Coinbase CEO Armstrong Wins Patent for Tech Allowing Users to Email  Bitcoin (Dec 19, 2019)

  https://cointelegraph.com/news/one-million-south-koreans-now-have-blockchain-drivers-licenses
  Aug 13, 2020: " One Million South Koreans Now Have Blockchain
  Drivers Licenses.  The program was only launched in May but already
  one million South Koreans have opted for a blockchain based
  license. ....In late 2018, Australia's 
NSW government announced the trial of Ethereum-based digital licenses which can replace physical ones"



  1. DeFi:
    The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Decentralized Finance Oct
    2020 (added this link here,  a week or so  after the Oct 1st
  posting) by Decrypt.co [sic].