Michael McSweeney

As some in the crypto world tell it, the era of decentralized governance and engineering is unprecedented, revolutionary even, in 2023.



But a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/998337">recent study</a> shows that decentralized engineering has actually been working out for a while already —&nbsp;4,000 years, to be exact.



A University College London (UCL) team suggests in new research that decentralized coordination has actually long been in humanity’s toolkit,&nbsp;especially when it comes to the development of essential infrastructure and services.



Published last month in Nature, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-023-00114-4">the research findings</a> centered on ancient drainage systems within the ruins of Pingliangtai, an ancient city located in China.&nbsp;



According to co-author Dr. Yijie Zhuang, the 4,000 year-old sewage system “would have required a significant level of community-wide planning and coordination, and it was all done communally.”



Sound familiar?



One can argue that these ancient sewage and water pipes have a parallel to crypto.&nbsp;



What reportedly took place at Pingliangtai involved cooperation at “both household and communal levels&#8221; to form what the researchers called a “cooperative social governance” approach to managing the flow of water. As the researchers noted, such cooperation was vital, given the propensity for heavy rainfall and flooding from the Yellow River.&nbsp;



If you squint, “cooperative social governance” approach could be seen as a centuries-old way to say “decentralized autonomous governance.” A real-life community joining together to control the flow of water isn’t too far off from an online community joining together to control the flow of money.



Much of today’s crypto ethos is centered around (at least aspirationally) the decentralized control of the platforms and protocols in use today. The idea is that a community of stakeholders is preferable to the kind of top-down management seen in traditional business structures. 



According to the paper, these new findings challenge earlier models about the rise of early governments in the region and theories on the management of water — “hydro-sociality,” in the context of the research.&nbsp;



Dr. Zhuang, one of the aforementioned senior authors of the paper, noted in a statement that “the discovery of this ceramic water pipe network is remarkable because the people of Pingliangtai were able to build and maintain this advanced water management system with stone age tools and without the organization of a central power structure.”



A community can be brought together by a shared incentive and the need for&nbsp;the collective management a network (pipes or blockchain) and its asset (water or tokens). If water is the lifeblood of an agricultural society, money is surely the same in a purely digital financial landscape.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-has-a-copycat-problem" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto has a copycat problem</a>



We don’t know how those ancient governance conversations played out, and while we can assume they weren’t using some ancient Discord server, group discussion and activity prioritization must have been key.&nbsp;



Historical examples like the Pingliangtai are compelling and worth investigating for possible lessons to be applied in the crypto world. It goes without saying that personal biases or agendas must have been set aside to make these ancient drainage systems work. It was literally life-or-death — get the job done, lest the floodwaters do their damage.&nbsp;



We can only speculate as to whether things got as dramatic as, say, they can in the world of DAOs.&nbsp;



DAO governance is messy. Just look at <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-walks-back-proposal">the drama around Arbitrum</a> last spring. Plus, there are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/daos-borgs-governance">fair and open questions</a> about the nature of these organizations and protocols and the degree to which they are decentralized.&nbsp;



But resolving those thorny social issues might be the make-or-break conflict that makes these models capable of survival in the long-run, just like the 4,000 year old Chinese citizens learned to band together to protect their town from floods. I’ll certainly be watching.



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<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and Blockworks. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.</div>


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DrainageDAO? What crypto can learn from a 4,000-year-old flood control system

Blockworks’ research wing has launched a new on-chain analytics platform.&nbsp;



The platform’s aim is to provide data and analysis for an increasingly complex crypto ecosystem defined by its multiple layers. These include the core, layer-1 networks, followed by the layer-2s and 3s that comprise the world of open or decentralized finance.



With that complexity comes a demand for strong data. A 2021 Fidelity Digital Assets survey <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/its-not-about-crypto-volatility-institutions-need-better-data">found</a> that widespread concerns among institutions about volatility grew, in part, from a dearth of market intelligence.



“We realized there was a missing gap of affordable crypto products that provided on-chain data, detailed financials, profitability analyses, and protocol comparisons in one solution, which led us to create Blockworks Analytics,” said Tricia Lin, vice president of research for Blockworks.&nbsp;



The platform includes support for layer-1s like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, as well as layer-2 protocols like Arbitrum. On-chain data streams include staking analytics and blockspace profitability, among others, with daily, weekly and monthly updates across an array of sources.&nbsp;



Blockworks Analytics was unveiled during the <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-2023">Permissionless</a> crypto conference today in Austin, Texas.&nbsp;



“Protocols are simply on-chain businesses,” Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz said in a statement. “As the industry has evolved, so has the need for sophisticated, trustworthy, and user-friendly data platforms that help investors make sense of these businesses. 



The analytics platform builds on the work of <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/">Blockworks Research</a>, launched last year. In May, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/govhub-tracking-governance">Blockworks Research launched GovHub</a>, a tool for tracking governance proposals across Web3 communities.



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Blockworks Research debuts analytics platform for on-chain metrics

I wish Futurama’s bitcoin mining episode was smarter.&nbsp;



As someone who watched Futurama’s debut episode when it premiered — and has remained a big fan and frequent reciter of quotes throughout the animated series’ various iterations — I was skeptical about Hulu’s latest revamp. I was even more skeptical about its promised bitcoin mining satire.



And my cynicism turned out to be right on the money.



Futurama’s crypto angle was nothing more than a series of winks rather than something smartly engaged. The “wild west” conceit is a bit played out. A bit 2015, if memory serves.&nbsp;



The show’s uneven final (until now) seasons had ended on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanwhile_(Futurama)">a pretty satisfying if not sentimental note</a>. Its first five seasons remain a masterclass in sci-fi satire and remain endlessly rewatchable. This all means that if Futurama wanted to satirize bitcoin, it had certainly proved it was capable of being funny/smart about weird tech fads.&nbsp;



But despite a promising start, Futurama’s foray into bitcoin mining loses power as the story progresses.&nbsp;



First, some spoiler-y scene-setting. The episode opens with Professor Farnsworth complaining about how he’d lost all his money investing in bitcoin. To be specific: He bought high and sold low.&nbsp;



As the professor laments the mob money he borrowed to buy bitcoin, a news broadcast reveals that the price of bitcoin is on the upswing and is driving miners out “west” in search of cheap power. The professor then proposes mining the element thallium — in the year 3023, thallium is used in bitcoin mining chips —&nbsp;and selling it to the “rubes” chasing digital gold. A classic sell-the-shovels gold-rush tale.&nbsp;



Premise in hand, the episode proceeds through what is largely a send-up Western movie with a smattering of crypto jokes sprinkled throughout. The boomtown is called Doge City. A thallium broker gets mad when a bitcoin miner produces an “Ethereum” instead of a bitcoin. Most of the goods in town are priced in “micro-bitcoin.” A third-act twist reveals that robot heads, rather than servers, are mining bitcoin.



My two cents: I chuckled here and there. The Ethereum jab was easily the funniest bit. But this isn’t the smart Futurama of old.&nbsp;



Perhaps in the chase for the gimmick, the writers missed the detail that the bulk of bitcoin mining&#8217;s reward is scheduled to end in the mid-2100s when the last of the block subsidies run dry. Okay, yeah, maybe in the centuries beforehand, bitcoin’s developers decided to upend the scarcity economics and institute a permanent block subsidy. 



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-barbie-bitcoin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">If you’re in crypto, you’re an Allan</a>



Beyond the technical inaccuracies, I found myself questioning why cryptocurrency is even a worthy subject for Futurama.&nbsp;



Sure, there’s likely a desire among Futurama’s producers to be topical. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/742117/hulu-with-live-tv-subscription-adults-usa-by-age/">Survey data</a> suggests that Hulu’s audience skews younger, a whole gaggle of adults who are probably more plugged in than most to the crypto world’s goings-on and would appreciate the dogecoin references. But is Bitcoin even “sci-fi” anymore? Maybe 10 years ago it was.&nbsp;



I thought comedian Tim Heidecker’s <a href="https://www.heinetwork.tv/episode/introducing-hei-points/">crypto satire</a> was more spot on. It skewered the subject itself as well as the narrative that surrounds it. If you’re going to make fun of Bitcoin, Tim did it right. Futurama? Not so much.



Maybe I’m still stuck on the mining timeline thing. Sure, I’m probably one in 10,000 viewers who would spot the flaw. But it stuck out to me, especially given the famed intellectual prowess of Futurama’s writers’ room. Call me disappointed.



On the flip side, does Futurama’s inclusion of Bitcoin/crypto give the subject a bit of a mainstream moment? Perhaps, but if you’re looking for crypto jokes that will make you both laugh and think, look elsewhere.&nbsp;



I think this episode will be lost in the shuffle of the endless stream of Content — just like the rest of the thus-far disappointing Futurama reboot.&nbsp;



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<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and Blockworks. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.</div>


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