Good Morning Everyone,
In a fascinating conversation with Anthony Pompliano that i highly recommend you listen to, Jason Lowery, a member of the US Space Force discusses some of the ways that he is thinking about the Bitcoin network and dives in to some wildly powerful comparisons between the role of a military in maintaining the social contract in a society, and that of Bitcoin’s mining security model in maintaining and securing the network from any kind of attack.
To quote Jason:
“All civilizations - All living creatures, obey the social consensus protocol that those who project the most kinetic power in the most clever way, earn the right to set the state and chain of custody of limited resources”
As Jason highlights, this social consensus protocol, which can be thought of as the way in which we establish the pecking order among any animal, including humans, for who controls this state and chain of custody over all property is a completely permissionless system. No one grants anyone else permission as to whether or not they can do this, it’s simply down to who can project the most kinetic joules, or energy over the other.
As Jason states:
“What’s really really fascinating about bitcoin specifically is that it takes this exact same power projection game, but instead of kinetically derived joules, it’s electrically derived joules and that is really really interesting. It works effectively the same exact way as militaries do.”
“What’s the role of the military? The role of the Military is to project so much kinetic power that it’s too expensive not to cooperate with whoever owns that military.”
This is blowing my mind at the time of writing this and it’s likely going to take me some time to fully digest how powerful a concept this is and really just triggers me to pause and marvel at the design and engineering masterpiece that is Bitcoin.
Basically in the very same way as a physical military, Bitcoins military, the miners, project so much electrical power, via Proof-Of-Work, that by doing so make it so expensive to try and attack the network, that it is essentially a fools game to try.
There is also a fundamental asymmetry built into the Bitcoin militaries security model, where by the cost to attack the network is increasing with every single block that is mined, day after day, week after week.
To attack the system you have to go back and re-do every piece of work by deploying the financial and electrical resources to do so and be able to provide proof that it has been done and achieve consensus among the network participants - meanwhile the cost to mine bitcoin and secure the network, does the opposite, and continues to get cheaper and cheaper over time thus making any attack exponentially less feasible and also adding to the former issue for any attacker with every passing block.
This is obviously quite a complex and nuanced perspective but it provides a very useful framework, to better understand how robust the security model of the network actually is. It’s also worth acknowledging that this is not a new development this month or this year where the network has been upgraded. This has been baked into the system from the very beginning when the genesis block was mined back in January 2009. Pretty incredible.
Furthermore when thinking about the network security through the lens of power projection, dominance and war, you notice the system is intentionally designed in such a way to funnel any attacks into a specific known point where it is strongest to again create an asymmetrical dynamic that means the odds are strongly opposed to anyone with an intention of attacking the network, and it continues to get more difficult over time, while being easier and less difficult to support and secure this attack vector - the chain tip.
Kody Low explained this really well in an incredible twitter thread which i encourage you to check out.
To quote Kody:
OK. So lets say we understand that we would be basically wasting our time, money and resources to try and attack the network - what then is the best way to deal with the situation anyone outside of the network finds themselves in, be it an individual or a nation state?
It’s funny because it basically comes down to the simple and age old adage - “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Pretty much the simplest most efficient and effective thing anyone can do, is to join the network, support the network to the mutual benefit of all parties, as early as possible, front running the maximum number of people possible, and accumulate as much bitcoin as possible.
Super powerful stuff, and difficult to not simply be in awe of the fact that we’re living through the initial phase shift of what is likely to be one of the most significant transitions among humans and the ways in which power is projected in order to achieve a social consensus.
Wishing you well this Christmas eve, and hope you all have a safe and happy holiday period with friends, families and loved ones.
Thanks so much for listening or reading, and i hope I can create huge value through this platform for you and many others into 2022 and appreciate you being along for the ride.
Appreciate you supporting this work by sharing it around.
All the best, and i’ll chat to you next week.
AK
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