For the last 10,000 years or so, government has served a purpose. But it’s no longer needed. Now is the era of blockchain governance.

I’ve been pushing for blockchain and cryptoasset based alternatives to much of what government does, for quite some time. I already think that we can implement a basic income approach using blockchain. We can fund a lot of other social safety net programs as well. But I would like to expand even more on how blockchain can replace and improve upon what people think that government can do well. First, I’ll go over some of the more technical ideas. Then I’ll cover some of the more philosophical points of how blockchain can improve our lives.

General Requirements

• An overarching main chain and currency that acts sort of as a “national” level system of governance.
• Separate subchains, which are almost free from control by the main chain, but which adds computational power to the main chain and is protected by it: the main chain can help prevent things like 51% attacks that smaller subchains could face. Essentially, the blockchain system should have built in merged mining.
• Perhaps a built in exchange to make it easier to move from one subchain to another similar to immigration policy.

Merged Mining and Unions

Mining is a primary way that new cryptoassets are created on the blockchain. Usually mining is done by individuals to produce currency for one chain only. But there are cases where mining is done in joint operations. This process is called merged mining.The primary benefit of this process, in most implementations, is to the smaller chain. There’s added security. But there’s an expense to the larger chain, because it adds bloat.

There are a number of questions that need to be addressed with merge mining. Two primary issues include finding a way for the main chain to benefit from the merged mining and how to add new chains to the net. Likely some kind of voting would have to be involved. Simply allowing any chain to join, without ensuring that it is secure, could destroy the blockchain’s security.

There should probably be some kind of consensus, in a similar way to a state entering a union. There should also be a way for the “state” to leave the “union” in an orderly fashion. But a subchain should always have a reasonable option to leave. With traditional unions, like the United States, the European Union, et al., attempts to leave have always been chaotic and violent. The goal of this network is to maintain a voluntary system.

To deal with the first issue, maybe all mining will be done as merged mining and there wouldn’t be any direct mining. I’m not sure I like that idea. However, if over time so many “states” sign on to the merged mining process, eventually the state level mining, in aggregate, will be so large as to make the direct federal mining component trivial. In this situation, most real world contracts will be managed at the “state” level rather than the federal level, which would more involve contracts between “states.”

Contracts and Consensus

Contracts should be written in a human readable format. One option is to use something like SoaML. In order to automate a lot of the contracts on the platform, the system will need to be able to draw from data on various real world events. A lot of this information can be produced through a consensus model, similar to how Augur uses its REP token to vote on the outcome of real world events. But instead of the consensus just being used to determine payouts, it can be used to actually drive the outcome of smart contracts.

Contract authors would have the ability to create or use existing consensus questions. The contract would rely on the consensus data to execute in a specific way. Obviously this kind of idea wouldn’t work for every situation, because it may not be possible to have enough people to produce consensus. But there are many times where contracts use data that would be commonly made available and checked.

Using Blockchain to Create New Rights

Rights are not privileges. I define rights in a very specific way. The definition requires that a right must be something which we can voluntarily enjoy in the absence of others. It cannot be something that requires the use and maintenance of force. That’s why taxation is a violation of rights and it’s why many privileges that we hold within society are violations of rights.

Healthcare, universal basic income, society security, and other luxuries of modern society are in no way rights, because they require forcing others to act. They are not voluntary systems. Taxation is maintained by the threat of imprisonment or death, if we resist.

But since rights are a product of our environment, it is sometimes possible to change our environment in such a way as to turn something into a right. Indeed, we do so all the time. We don’t have a right to food. But we have a right to ask someone to make us food. And if they give it to us, either for free or because we paid, then our environment changes and we now have a right to use that food how we see fit.

So if we want to ensure universal basic income and other privileges are turned into rights, we just need to change our environment. And in many cases, blockchain can do just that. I already suggested a way to implement universal basic income in such a way. And I think that if UBI is going to succeed, it must be done through blockchain.

So long as the blockchain exists and functions in a healthy way, its services that are automatically provided become something which is enjoyable without the use of force. It becomes a right. So through blockchain, we can produce rights that do not exist, and yet are very important for our future development as a species and a society.

Real Estate

Property rights are normally very limited. When a person rents out a home to someone else, that other person then begins to enjoy that use. It is now that person’s right to continue enjoying the use of the home. Changing the locks, and other active methods to try to get a person out of the home, while effective, defy rights. Trying to force a person out would be a violation of their rights.

There are numerous discussions on how blockchain can be used to help streamline the transfer of property, either temporarily or permanently, as well as title searches, and disputes. Consider a option where locks are installed that are controlled by a blockchain system that tracks the title of the property so that a person has rightful control of that title.

Yes, locks can be forcibly changed, but damaging the lock would result in that information appearing on the blockchain, and it’s possible to deal with the change accordingly. That’s one reason why there would still need to be some kind of “lawyer” or arbiter system in place.

Originally published at the Politicoid Blog on Medium

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