Combating the Metacrisis by Griff Green

Cool. So, welcome to the stage, Griff Green, founder of Giveth, Common Stock Stack, General Magic, DappNode and many others, for his talk on combating the meta-crisis. Thanks, Steph. And thank you, Dcentral, for being here. Another one she couldn't name.

I've simply founded too many organizations. Yes, thank you very much for coming to my lecture “Combating the Metacrisis” . I want to talk about how we deal with the biggest problems of our time. This is – and problems of our time. This is – and I think many people probably haven't heard of the meta-crisis yet.

Therefore, I will give a brief introduction. 100 years ago, there were very few things that could have wiped out humanity. You know, an asteroid impact, like what happened with the dinosaurs. But in the 1940s we found an effective method to destroy the planet with nuclear weapons . And since then, we have found more and more ways to kill ourselves.

And well, that's not good: nuclear risks, climate change, AI out of control, pandemics AI out of control, pandemics , ecological collapse, mass extinction of species. How many more paths will we come up with next? I just saw on Twitter today that a team in Japan has found a way to read images from the mind, i.e., to read thoughts and create images from them.

Every day new technologies emerge, posing ever greater existential risks. The meta-crisis is therefore the crisis of crises. It seems as if we are confronted every day with more and more crises that could destroy our civilization. When you look at all these crises, you realize that one of the biggest problems behind it all is our inability to coordinate globally . This failure of global coordination is the key to solving the meta-crisis.

We must overcome this because we are experiencing unstoppable, exponential technological growth. These two problems together create increasingly catastrophic risks, which lead to – well increasingly catastrophic risks, which lead to – well , at the moment we really only see two potential scenarios. The most obvious, of course, are catastrophic failures. So that some of these things just happen. Someone decides to play around with viral RNA in the basement, and suddenly there is a virus that wipes out half the population.

Whoops, isn't it? Well, the other scenario that could avoid these catastrophic failures is very bleak. A kind of dystopian, centralized control structure in which everyone is constantly monitored to ensure that they do not create this virus in their basement . And the most likely scenario is that we experience a few catastrophic collapses and then, out of fear, slide into some kind of dystopian, centralized control . This is the meta-crisis.

So how do we approach this? Because it's not something that can be easily solved. It 's something we need to learn how to deal with. Perhaps corporations and companies can help us. Yes, not really.

They have a lot of perverse incentives that create many of these existential risks in the first place. “Move fast and break things,” right? We can ignore the existential risks that could arise with this AI program – let's just bring it to market and satisfy our investors . Or: We could ethically address our pollution , but we have a fiduciary duty to our investors, so we pollute the river, otherwise they would sue us. It is obvious that this structure will not solve our problems .

One would think so, governments, right? Governments are uniquely positioned to deal with such problems, but ultimately there is real geopolitical competition. If the US decides to devote many resources to dealing with these crises, it gives China a geopolitical advantage. And this is exactly what we see with climate change and in dealing with this well-known problem, which governments continually fail to address. There are these intergovernmental organizations that emerged after the invention of the atomic bomb, such as the UN.

And the UN will of course solve these problems , right? Yes, not really. I mean, there's a war going on in Ukraine right now . Russia regularly bombs Ukraine , which has 14 nuclear power plants, including the largest in Europe. Does anyone see a problem here?

Or not? That is...There are a lot of problems. There are some truly great non-profit projects, but they lack funding. Extinction Rebellion, for example, is an incredible global organization that is doing everything in its power to address this mass extinction crisis.

But it is not enough. It will not be enough. Who's left then? Are we at the end? We have a choice.

We may be at the end. We can simply continue as before in Web3 simply continue as before in Web3 , work on more "pump and dump" , work on more "pump and dump" pyramid schemes and try to drive the prices up , right? Or perhaps we could actually use this technology, which allows us to coordinate globally with ease , to build the future we want to see. All these problems, aren't they? I – there is actually one that I believe we tackled using Web3 and blockchain technology .

I no longer see the global financial collapse, the one down there in the corner financial collapse, the one down there in the corner , as a real problem. Should all fiat currencies fall to zero, we have a whole network of really cool organizations that could tackle this problem. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Rai, a stablecoin—big shoutout to them, I see them operating out there—for creating a stablecoin that is not pegged to a fiat currency. We have a network of networks that can absorb the global financial collapse, should it ever occur, so that we can continue our normal way of life. And this was not created by governments.

It wasn't even really created by companies . It was—it wasn't, or, obviously, it wasn't, by non-profit organizations either. It was created by goal-oriented economies created by goal-oriented economies . There are many terms for this type of network, such as rain this type of network, such as rain economies or impact DAOs. I choose this one.

I choose goal-oriented economies. Thanks to Sherman from Token Kitchen for coining this term. All these economic systems that I had on the screen earlier follow a similar pattern when you go one level higher and look at crypto projects in general. They issue a digital token. And they use this token to reward the value creation they want to see.

And then they make sure that there is some kind of demand for the token. Well, if the project is successful, they have successfully secured some kind of demand for this token. And then they market these use cases so that there is a group of people who actually want the created token . This token is effectively a package of digital scarcity that we can use to create real wealth and free ourselves from these crises . So, if you have people who create value and receive tokens, and people who want the tokens for their own benefit, you get a market that speculators can play with.

The part involving speculators may have a bad reputation, but frankly, they are crucial to the success of the network because they can get in early and support the launch of these purpose-driven economies . And we do. We are managing the crises, one network of nested networks of economies after another. The climate crisis is therefore real, and not much is happening at the governmental level worldwide . I mean, they're trying .

They talk a lot, but does anything actually happen? Well, the crypto sector is booming. We have Regen Network, Celo and Toucan, who are building an incredible infrastructure that anyone can build on. And then there are pyramid scheme projects like KlimaDAO, which have actually sequestered, I don't know, 17 million tons of carbon , which is just incredible, starting from an Ohm-Fork Ponzi scheme, you know? But they are building it on a network that is specifically designed for that purpose.

That's great. This is the innovation that these networks make possible. And of course, Regen DAO takes the next step. Woo! Yes, Rain DAO.

Regen DAO is collaborating with Common Stack to launch micro-economies in various cities worldwide and to incubate startups in the rain sector to incubate startups in the rain sector . It's a super cool project. And yes, these nested networks exist, and there will be hundreds of projects that end up in this network of economies. These goal-oriented economies have many interesting characteristics. Firstly, they rely on supply and demand for sustainability and effortless coordination in providing societal added value.

Just like normal companies, they depend on supply and demand in the market to create added value for individuals. Purpose-driven economies can create added value for society as a whole, something that normally only governments and non-profit organizations can do. And they coordinate around it effortlessly . It's not as if Refi DAO Celo has to ask if they can build on it, is it? And this is the best, but also the most important point: there are actually entrepreneurial opportunities to make money in this field , to make money while saving the world.

And it 's super cheap to set up. And these low costs actually prevent monopolies. These networks are highly resistant to monopolies and, due to their interoperability, even antifragile. If a project fails, someone can simply start another one and fill the gap. It is very antifragile.

And these win-win opportunities create a natural collaboration in the free market. And of course, it is not dependent on governments . It cannot be stopped. They are unstoppable, limitless, decentralized systems. And in the best-case scenario, they are protocols that everyone can build upon.

Well, we're not there yet. Frankly, it is still very difficult to build in the field of purpose-driven economics , especially as a startup. First of all, impact projects are not prioritized over pump-and-dump systems. You know, with investors it's kind of like the problem of the tragedy of the commons. A free-rider problem.

The investors say: "No, but I need to make sure my wallet has more digits, you know?" Well, that doesn't matter if AI takes over the world, okay? We really need to rethink our priorities . And besides, there's money to be made in this field. So you simply have to take this risk and believe in it.

Another major problem is that it is really difficult to start one of these purpose-driven economies. Unlike business models, economic models require liquidity. You need precise pricing. And that's what the Common Stack, with its augmented bonding curve, has really focused on. The augmented bonding curve allows microeconomies to start without the support of large VCs while still maintaining liquidity and price formation.

There are, of course, a lot of problems. I can't talk about everyone. But some of the biggest concerns are that current governance systems are bad. Input from the entire spectrum of stakeholders is lacking. It simply says: "How much money do you have?

Okay, you have one vote." Not exactly the best. And besides, our electoral systems are pretty awful anyway. Who wants to spend all day reading forum posts and then clicking yes or no? That's just stupid.

We can do better than that. But I don't have time to talk about it. Lauren talks about it and shows how Giveth aims for world domination. Uh, woo. So tune in tomorrow at 10:20 am to watch this presentation and learn more about these topics.

On the Impact Stage, right next to the Giveth booth. But one of the biggest problems with playing with these purpose-driven economies is that we actually create existential risks when we experiment with new technology. This is one of the greatest lessons of the meta-crisis. Bitcoin itself creates existential risks. If we experience a global financial collapse and all this money flows into the Bitcoin network, and one Bitcoin is worth one million dollars, it means there is an incentive to spend more than 6 million dollars every 10 minutes on electricity to mine Bitcoin.

Does anyone see a problem? Even. We need to be careful how we design these systems . When you build a bridge, you don't just go to the hardware store, buy cement, and get started. You know, a civil engineer looks at these things.

Therefore, we need to build a token engineering system. Therefore, the Commons Stack supported the Token Engineering Commons at its inception , in order to build this kind of purpose-driven network around the study of token engineering . And a big thank you to the Token Engineering Academy, which trains token engineers free of charge and issues certificates. If you want to get started in this new field of study early on , this is the right place. Token Engineering Academy, check it out Engineering Academy, check it out .

But if we succeed in token engineering , we will create a safe space for building purpose-driven economies. And we 've put so much work into smart contract audits, by the way, you're welcome. Those who know, know. But let's be honest, Luna just happened, and that was a token engineering problem. They haven't built a good system.

There were no problems with the smart contracts. We need to expand this area of ​​token engineering. But if we do this, we can build global coordination networks to avoid global coordination errors. And we can continue to maintain exponential technological growth and mitigate these catastrophic risks so that we can have a functioning, technologically advanced society . If you like this work and are building projects in this area: I recently started a project called General Magic.

This is a service DAO designed to help you develop tools to address the meta-crisis. If you work in the field of public goods and impact DAOs, please get in touch with me. We can help if you need a designer, frontend developer, or something similar . And if you're interested in this topic : Kevin Owocki has done a great job of bringing people into this field. He created metacrisisdao.

com and many of the things I talk about here are based on the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger. Thank you very much. I have high hopes for us in the Web3 high hopes for us in the Web3 field, and it is such a joy to be here at ETHDenver in the mood of the builders. So thank you very much for letting me be here, and I know we can do it. Woo!