Topic: [ANN] The Hoskinson Doctrine on Regulation of Crowdsales (Read 4120 times)

Well, I have to admit that I only read the abstract but it's nice to see that there are still people having their work peer reviewed.  Without hashing through the definitions and lexicon, I might point out that initial coin offerings (ICO's) are going through some tremendous evolutionary transformations currently.  I have been involved in several over the past several years and they are rapidly changing with the technology from which they are bootstrapped.  Recently, the Basic Attention Token (BAT) for the brave browser sold out within 24 seconds, congested the Ethereum network, and sparked several debates in regards to how they are structured....

Studies such as the one presented here are invaluable....ICO's are becoming increasingly more significant considering the direction the blockchain technologies are heading.

This topic seem relevant again

Here is some information on Mike Hearn's Lighthouse project (basically a peer to peer crowdfunding platform):
http://blog.vinumeris.com/2014/05/17/lighthouse/

BitPools is more crowdfunding in reverse where the problem is posed first, people pool their money together and wait for someone to propose a solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETCP8NeXasY
http://www.bitpools.com



There is the point between funding and delivery of product/service that is subjective and is difficult to be handled by technology. I believe the best way to deal with that would be some sort of escrow/arbitration services. One example of a world with no government courts was to have multiple arbitration services. Each party chooses their own arbitration service before the contract goes forward, since both parties know beforehand which services are being chosen they will have a good idea if the person they're dealing with is fair or not if they choose a service that has a track record of being fair. If there is a disagreement, each arbitration service reviews the case and reveals their conclusion. If they do not agree, a random third arbitration service is called in to resolve the conflict. The third party charges a fee to the first two for its services and it is in both parties' best interest to choose a fair service. And it is in the best interest of the arbitration company to make fair decisions.

Interesting Doctrine here. I'll have to read through it.  Just my early thoughts as traditional crowdfunding will always have its place , but I do like where this is all going in your paper.

The root of the issue is choice.  

If you believe that coercion and violence should be used to accomplish the ends you desire, then you abandon choice and you favor modern regulation and the rule of law - backed, of course, by coercion and violence.

If you believe in self-regulation and voluntaryism, then you cannot rely upon the force of law, which is indeed backed by coercion and violence.

You cannot extricate yourself from this conundrum.  You claim to desire both law and choice, and the two do not go hand in hand.  You either acknowledge that your proposal contains fundamental failures in logic or not.  That is also a choice.

You can decide that you want to incorporate law somehow into the type of implementation that your proposal could result in somewhere down the road.  But if you do that, you bind yourself to a coercive and violent system. By developing self-regulation as you describe, it would be naive at best to assume that the laws will not be directing your proposal, because they will.  If you want something that is truly new and innovative, you will need to abandon the supposedly safe haven of regulation and its interface with your proposals, which attempt to conflate voluntaryism and modern regulation.

Let us assume for a moment that I adhere to a proposal similar to that you have suggested.  In such a scenario, let us assume that a set of rules, known as x, govern how I interact with others and transact in a peer to peer system.    These rules, my 'x' so to speak, differ depending upon who you are and are the result of choices you make.  Because of the infinite range of possibility of circumstances, I'll narrow down my description of choices to some very general categories as shown below

Let us assume that I have a choice category of a, b, or c (although I arguably have a much longer and possibly infinite range of possibilities to choose from),
  and that choice 'a' represents an inclination to individually choose precisely what you want independent of any corporation-state regulation or guidance (essentially the option being exercised is one of total autonomy, while still preserving social relations and development of associations, and decision to operate within the context of what software code will allow you to do),
  choice 'b' represents an inclination to comply with whatever corporation-state regulation or guidance I come across,
and choice 'c' represents a hybrid option, in which I might wish to incline myself towards whatever I wish to do, while treating regulations and laws of any country as a market from which I can pick and choose at will, resulting in a scenario where individuals and associations of persons not bound by geography adopt their own codicile, and where across the world, multiple codiciles will arise (regardless of the origin of the rules that result in their development, whether from open source code or from the attempts of corporation-states to mandate laws), and the codiciles that are more favorable will become more dominant (or their core characteristics will become more dominant or preserved in other codiciles).  

Now it should be noted that in any option above, the individual has more of a choice as time goes on to adopt different approaches to decentralized giving, which can either be used (depending upon the choice of the user) to either disclose their given-name identity and exercise a certain enjoyment of any deductions they may be be able to claim in whatever tax framework they may wish to explore, or (again depending upon the choice of the user), that anonymity development and decentralization (or fractionation, if you wish) of identity makes possible the option to either conceal nearly all transactional behavior while users construct a decentralized social good, or concentrate the bulk of transactional processes in ways that only benefit the individual.  It is important to note that as time goes on and the various corporation-states of the world fade in influence and power, it is mathematically infeasible for society not to develop a decentralized social good that is both concealable in terms of anonymity as well as beneficial for localities and regions that contribute to it.  As these developments progress, the capabilities of individuals in the context of a massively decentralized social good will become more apparent particularly when manifested in the form of critical infrastructure, even if the transactions themselves that result in the infrastructural development are either a result of strong privacy or anonymity.  

Assume that over time the inclination will be for corporation-states to progressively make their regulations and laws stricter and more binding upon individuals, and that they behave selfishly (e.g., the corporation-states will gradually become more insular and adopt more rules and laws which will make choice 'c' less and less viable).  This is not only already happening, but it has gone on in this general direction for quite some time, as can be observed particularly in the context of the past 226 years of history.    Whereas, at the same time, the mathematical progression of the code (here I mean the code that is available to users from open source software development or its distant future equivalent) will enable greater levels of independence and autonomy for individuals and associations.  This is a mathematical certainty that is already occurring.

It is likely, therefore, that while choices of large numbers in population(s) currrently incline more towards category "b," ultimately, the reactionary behavior of struggling corporation-states, coupled with progressive technological development, will result in a growing number of users considering and exercising possibilities generally within category "a."  This is unavoidable ~ it is a natural mathematical progression that emanates in part from the reactionary behavior of struggling advocates of statism and centralization, in the context of their failure to adapt to a decentralized and trustless future.  It is also notable that in most countries, the 'shadow economy' is the real economy, clocking in at over 80 percent of all monetary flow, and that percentage is growing.  Indeed, even before the development of the internet, the 'shadow economy' (really what should be called the real economy) was collectively larger than all aspects of regulated transactions combined.  This is telling and should provide for the casual observer a general foreshadowing of a world in which regulated economic activity (and notions of regulated or classical identity) drop from the approximate 20 percent figure to something in the four to five percent range.  It is likely that you will see societies that are a direct reflection of this aforementioned reality evolve in less than 20 years' time.

In any event, mechanisms of social organization, whether they are a result of physical assemblages and direct interactions of persons without much use of technology, or social organizations that emanate more from the usage of technology, will not ultimately support those who believe that coercion, violence, jail, and war should be used to back the rule sets that they believe are necessary.  You may ask why not, since after all violence will always be present and there will always be coercive agents, and the reason is because as time goes on, individuals and associations will increasingly be empowered by a broader range of choices - and they will be able to make them independent of the corporation-states that came to prominence 226 years ago.

Thus at the root of this is choice, and technology which empowers people to make choices that can be concealed from coercive and violent actors.

You have a choice.  Those who insist on clinging to the past will have progressively fewer choices to make as time goes on, and those who cling to the past and demand that others comply with their will (and threaten us with violence or jail if we do not) will find themselves in the wastebin of history.  You can prepare by understanding that the choices you make today will be part and parcel of what we today, call "the future."

What interests me is the development of smart contract based smart standards that are written in terms of intent and can dynamically change to achieve it. It's a rather unexplored area and we should spend some time as a community on it.


I haven't taken the time to explore these projects in detail. Could you provide me some links to read up on them? I'd love to add them in the fourth iteration.


Could you be more specific. I do cover a few edge cases, but I'd love your opinion on the matter.

Thanks Elwar

Looks good, you bring up some sound ideas for building standards. But I feel that things will break down further with technology such that those standards will not fit without it being dynamic which makes things difficult for standards.

Things such as Mike Hearn's lighthouse venture (a decentralized crowdfunding technology) or BitPools where the financiers vote via the blockchain to fund various projects.

Though your standards would be useful for those projects to help to factor in cases where someone might want to scam people out of their money, it would be good to consider the many different aspects of a transaction to protect all parties involved.

Isn't that why we have bitcoin?

Money, as it is known in the modern world of today, and especially to those who have a lot of it, is a method to deprive the common people of as much of their property - especial their labor - as can be taken away from them without irritating them enough so that they do something about it, especially something like getting educated about how to stop it.

I am submitting this here for peer review. Let me know what you guys think: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xG1hkPbk0uuavjPc_gt_eWxEUbWM1SlsxNmhGdRIUtg/edit?usp=sharing

I appreciate all constructive feedback. Feel free to email me at [email protected] or by skype at Charles_Hoskinson.

Cheers