PROOF OF STAKE

A wonky excursion into the world of cryptocurrency and computer-generated governance.

Bitcoin uses an elaborate set of algorithms to provide “proof of work,” showing that a computer has been active in its role of “mining” digital coinage. Ethereum, founded by Buterin (b. 1994), aims for “proof of stake”—i.e., that participants in its digital realm demonstrate their legitimacy by virtue of their holdings alone, buying and selling them ethically without trying to game the system. In this collection of writings, mostly blog posts and talks, the famed billionaire who sleeps on other people’s couches takes on heady matters: the nature of the blockchain mechanism that safeguards crypto transactions and that may have broader uses as furthering a “way to pool together our money and support public projects that help create the society we want to see”; the seigniorage aspect of cryptocurrency; the extensibility of crypto techniques to develop decentralized business agreements and contracts. Blockchains, the be-all and end-all in some cryptolibertarian systems, are in Buterin’s eyes merely convenient means to ends, “simply marginally better than the next available tool for the job.” Nevertheless, they have allowed the author to reimagine Ethereum as not just a marketplace, but a platform for social change: more equitable justice provided by a kind of open-source judiciary, a means of decentralizing power to put it into the hands (and keyboards) of ordinary people, not governments or corporations. Buterin is an earnest and decidedly technical writer; it helps to know mathematics, economics, and computer science to follow some of his denser arguments. Yet he has a playful side, too, as when he unveils a game called 1.58-dimensional chess,” so named “because the twenty-seven open squares are chosen according to a pattern based in the Sierpinski triangle.”

Numerate computer whizzes are the key audience, but there’s something for lesser mortals on most pages.