The Interchain Federalist Papers
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST PRELUDE- To the people of the Interchain
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST ONE- General Introduction
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST TWO- Concerning the effect of factions in disunion
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST THREE- Concerning the majority posing danger to the minority in Union
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST FOUR- Concerning the bargaining power of the Interchain with external business, government, and zones
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST FIVE- Concerning the zones’ internal preservation of peace and freedom from tyranny brought by bribes and voter fraud
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST SIX- Concerning mechanical security of the Interchain to protect zones from foreign and internal influence
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST SEVEN- Concerning the longevity of the Interchain Economy
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST EIGHT- Concerning the sources of revenue for Interchain infrastructure upkeep
- INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST NINE- Is it worth it?
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST PRELUDE
To the people of the Interchain,
I am not highly educated nor incredibly gifted. I am ignorant of a great many things. When reading these papers, you may notice this with displeasure. I’d like to provide some perspective on my lack of knowledge not by excuse but by explanation. I wasn’t taught cryptography from a prestigious school and my formal education isn’t the greatest, but I consider myself privileged to attend the University of Oregon. I have learned what I could through self-education, reading, listening, and rounding out my own basis of knowledge by sheer curiosity and persistence.
Then why should you consider what I say in the ensuing papers or accept my perspective? It is true that I am no expert, but everything I have learned has come to me through personal struggle. It is that struggle that I believe earns merit. Whether your decision is to read or not, I do ask, would you rather read from an individual who is possibly writing these papers for personal aggrandizement or an individual who genuinely loves the Interchain and, as such, writes from that passion?
To preface,
- I advocate for forming a permissioned loose union between zones that is agnostic to the underlying members’ governance mechanisms and can not breach their sovereignty.
- To participate in the Union, a zone must have a market capitalization and a set of representatives.
- The United Interchain will not be a blockchain or have a native currency. Instead, a replicated record will live in each union member’s zone.
- While today the Interchain community is tight-knit, these papers seek to explore the future in which many zones exist and dilute the current value system.
Definition: The Interchain describes a global network of blockchains affording a variety of information and communication to pass through an interconnected network of standardized communication protocols.
The Interchain Federalist papers do not seek to be alarmist but rather to depict accurately the current state of affairs and how history influenced countries that share a similar topology to the Interchain. My goals here are only to have a few kind souls read what I wrote and think thoughtfully about the liminal state between Union or Disunion the Interchain finds itself in. To put something out that is contrarian to the general ideology is vulnerable, but I’ll not let my desire for acceptance make me invisible to this world. In these papers, I risk being seen as someone crazy or nutty. I am willing to take that risk, and I trust you, the reader, to determine my intent. I would rather know the answers to my questions are no than not know the answer at all.
The United Interchain is the only long-term sustainable way to Grow The Pie.
Thanks frens, Robert → twitter
These papers are finalized draft versions, There are 20 other papers in rough draft on the way. All intend to be published through University of Oregon and are licensed under CC BY 3.0.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST ONE
General Introduction
To the People of the Interchain,
Today, we are at a pertinent moment in the time to deliberate over the state of our Union, rather, the state of our Disunion. We find no other topic of more importance or exigency than the preservation of the Interchain and, thus, the continuance of freedom from central tyranny. The consequences of our decisions today will last for generations tomorrow.
It is ingrained in the functioning of popular government that the people should decide the fate of the social contract they willingly entered. Upon further exploration into the history of popular systems, we find that the onerous responsibility of Disunion or Union has been presented before the public many times. It is our hope that whether we favor United Interchain or disunited Interchain, we come to the conclusion that upholds the common good of the Interchain, intentionally and consciously aware of the requisite information in an unbiased voluntary manner.
There is no greater value to the world than the individuals that propel it to freedom. As such, the people are constantly at the forefront when pondering unification. It would be careless not to mention that there will be violent protesters to the very notion of Union. Be wary of factions that try to persuade us one way or another by utilizing loud actions and bitter criticism to coax us into the justness of their agendas. What these motives of zones, firms, or individuals are shouldn’t trouble us; the matter that should bewilder our very being is that they affront themselves in our pursuit of a more effectual and efficiently operated Interchain.
Our passion for a body of authority that will sustain a fair and thereby free Interchain for all will be denounced by zones, firms, or individuals that, by their mere conviction, whether out of despotism, fear, misguidance, ignorance, or gross negligence, all the same, endorse a system of Disunion that is hostile to the principles of natural law.
Undoubtedly there will be objections to the very thought of a body of authority administering the Interchain; perhaps we recoil from the idea that the very foundation of blockchain is constructed on the removal of central authority. We all admit to the seriousness and significance of the former idea. In the present state of international affairs, we might be able to name handfuls of authoritarian governments that commit despotism against their populous. More so, in the past, we may name hundreds of injustices committed on the people by the very central magistracy that swore to preserve their liberty. The protests made here about central authority are only worth substantial consideration to the extent they have been contemplated before. Are these objects not the same protests that were made at the formalizing of the American Constitution? The states of the time were terrified of the monarchical authority of England that committed far too many horrors and atrocities on the citizenry. Are we not terrified of the monarchical authority of Central Banks that keep us from attaining liberty?
The current situation is as dire as the one presented to America when their time came to answer Union or disunion, disintegrate the Articles of Confederation, ratify the constitution, and when their time came to decide between liberty or tyranny.
If Union is not chosen, we, like the states before the Constitution, will be left in a miserable shape of disrepair. If we are unwilling to trust the authorities, that will raise the interchain high, we’ll deteriorate into the depths. We must have the courage and optimism to build a new system.
The primary fallacious argument deployed against United Interchain construction is that it poses threat to individual zone sovereignty and, by which, tyranny over the population. It is possible that any intellectual individual of the interchain may have these anxieties, which we hope to uproot.
Atop the upheaval of unease, the United Interchain will be formed. One that is made by the people and represented by the zones and their constituents. The United Interchain government’s objectives will be to uphold individual liberty and the effectual efficient functioning of the Interchain economy. To some, it may be lost that we have the gift of deciding what we’d like this system to be. We ask why, if it were the majority of the Interchains resolution to form a Union, would we implement a system that allows tyranny?
The option of Union or disunion presented is one that requires quiet contemplation on either side. If we decide on the latter, chaos and anarchy will ensue, as will be explained further in later papers. All we hold dear to our hearts and all we dream for the Interchain will be just that: a dream.
We’re not going to promise the United Interchain will be different, and we’re certain that many have made that promise before. Instead, we will allow you to formulate your own judgment in accordance with the common good. It is our understanding that a United Interchain will uphold liberty and happiness for all, and we hope to have your attention to explain so.
In the following papers, we will discuss why we should form Union, while later papers will contemplate why zones will want to enroll and how we will form the United Interchain.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST TWO
Concerning the effect of factions in disunion
To the People of the Interchain,
We share an incredible opportunity today to shape and mold our environment into something entirely new, experimental, and positive for the people of tomorrow. Let us waste no more time and explore these old ideas that take renewed forms.
To construct the Union we propose, we must first understand the foundation it is constructed upon, namely, a sturdy base of state machines. In their fundamental form, state machines have a state and a set of rules to transition states. The machine takes inputs and converts them to outputs. The metamorphic process these machines undergo is governed by laws (code) emplaced at genesis by a community of individuals. The objective of the state machine or community computer is to achieve the interests of the body it represents. While every state machine has stakeholders, the machine can simultaneously be a stakeholder inside a larger machine. For instance, a corporation is a state machine that holds a stake in the larger economy, or a province is a state machine that holds a stake in the larger governance process.
Enterprise, university, the city by which enterprise and university are located, the county or shire the cities nest themselves in, the states or provinces that counties form in, and the country that states or provinces have stake in are all state machines.
A blockchain can be defined as a state machine. In that regard, a ledger is similar to enterprise, university, city, state, and country. While these machines may function under different rules implemented by their stakeholders, in their most reduced form, they take inputs and return outputs after the state has changed. In liberal market economies, corporations are required to maximize shareholder value. There is no such requirement on blockchains, as such zones do not exclusively serve one type of stakeholder. Since no command is given for zones to represent single stakeholders, they can provide for different communal interests, such as the common good.
Zones are more akin to states or provinces rather than corporate state machines because they utilize popular systems that aim to give citizens direct access to power and can represent multiple stakeholders versus the single-stakeholder autocratic corporate structure. Why explain all of this?
If we suppose that chains are synonymous with states, it is not unreasonable to presume that the United Interchain is to zones what America is to state, Greece is to polis, or Rome is to provinca. This relationship is paramount to understanding the situation we sit in presently. Popular systems such as the Roman Republic or Athenian Democracy were built on the concept that if large communities of citizens were represented in government, a representative fraction of the body would permeate the general will on the whole. It is this same premise that we desire to form an Interchain Union.
In the previous essay, we commented on the United Interchain posing risk to individual zone sovereignty and, thus, tyranny over the population. We’ll explore the question of whether Union threatens zone sovereignty or, in similar words, whether a zone threatens individual citizen sovereignty?
The short answer is only to the extent that tyranny of the majority poses a threat to the minority of individuals. To a degree, danger to individual freedom is inversely proportional to the number of entities ruling the system of governance. Evident by the Norman conquest, where the power of Britain’s monarchy was unlimited, and standing militaries in times of peace were used to pressure the populace to behave. The theoretical opposite would then be tyranny is cured as the number of influential voices increases. In practice, large numbers of participants submit themselves to demagogues that inspire authoritarian actions. Landemore displays such risks of direct self-selected democracy where in Athens, “open meetings in the People’s Assembly proved vulnerable to demagogues and gifted orators seeking to subvert democracy, leading to the oligarchic coups of 411 and 404, both legitimated by a vote of the assembly” (Landemore 101). Between both polarities, direct democracy and monarchy, a balanced middle that is decentralized but not exorbitantly so evades the cabal of a few and confusion of multitude.
In such a median system, we still require caution due to the very human tendency to form factions. To paraphrase Alexander Hamilton in Federalist six, human nature tends towards jealousy, ambition, retribution, and grandiosity. These jealousy and personal vices cause rulers to destroy the country they swore to protect. Contemplate an Interchain disunited, with such differentiated citizenry and the multiplicity of blockchain designs comprising every zone, the friction between factions will stoke fire. It would be naive or even ignorant to argue against the presence of factions in our ranks, at the same time– some zones choose open source others closed source, some proof-of-liquidity or proof-of-stake or proof-of-authority others proof-of-work, many smart contract enabled others not, many focus on decentralized finance others regenerative finance, many operate representative governance others authoritarian, many subscribe to generalized standards others form their own, many venture-funded others organically, many are virtuous others mercenary, and many collaborate others isolate. With numerous diverse characteristics and objectives, human nature is to form factions around those that are similar.
Where disunification is present, it is optimistic to claim that each faction will cooperate towards the common good of the whole nation. Evidently, with no powerful intermediary, the entire body becomes decrepit; for example, look no further than the distinctive aspirations of Pennsylvania and Connecticut that advanced them into three wars in the late 18th century. Additionally, the funding problems the Continental Army encountered, where many states refused to pay their quotas in the American Revolutionary War, left the Continental Army abandoned and delapatated. Both the Pennamite Wars and the Continental Army were the subject of the colonies self intersted apathy towards cooperating. The line of logic presented above applies to the Interchain. If disunited, we assume that each faction will cooperate towards promoting improvement of the whole. We presume that all zones will work together to come forward with money to support Interchain infrastructure. We take for granted that zones will not embargo other zones. The assumption is fallacious and has been repeatedly proven time and again, as soon we shall. At the very least, it is optimistic or even the most unrealistic to claim that each faction will fraternize barring a system that licenses them to do so. In combining factions to form a whole, they become stratified, and one faction is less likely to pervade the general will. In this way, the tendency of the collective will supersede the warring between factions. Diversity is only a strength when multiple groups work towards a common collective.
The visible proof of the former logic is autocracies. Monarchies are more likely to bring the nation into war than republics or democracies. A primary cause of the increased probability of war – observed in monarchies – is the lack of checks on the leader’s disposition to human nature. Without pitting the mutual vexes of factions against one another in a controlled body, a single leader is more likely to pursue personal quarrels with other nations over vengeance, jealousy, retribution, and ambition. In 1688, a revolution occurred and elevated William of Orange to the throne of Great Britain. As a condition for allowing William to take the throne, he was required to accede to a bill of rights, which, among other things, abolished the king’s authority over national defense. The bill of rights included that in order to raise an army in peacetime, parliament, consisting of around 500 members, must consent (Tony, pg. 89).
The point is, so long as parliament or government is composed of multiple factions it will be able to codetermine and come to intentional deliberate outcomes. All in all, power in the hands of a few doesn’t create calm intentional self-preserving government. It forms a volatile self-destructive government. Zones are not isolated from this rationale. We decentralize these machines to ensure they are fault-tolerant to byzantine actors. Inherently, zones operate with the assumption that the more decentralization, the less risk of failure.
We trust the zones that are the most decentralized, secure, and as a result, byzantine tolerant. Then, in the zones we currently use across the interchain, do we not trust that most nodes are honest and represent the communal good we joined the social contract for? We trust the nodes of our zones and, therefore, the machine’s state. The trust assumption we make is our responsibility and ours alone. The assumption made here is no different than that made for the United Interchain. We assume that a majority of our zones will secure our property, uphold our liberty, and be in line with the general will. The United Interchain “will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it” or, in other words, will pose less risk to individual chain sovereignty than zones pose to the individuals they directly govern over (Madison Federalist No. 10).
The United Interchain will be a state machine with nested state machines. One zone will represent all of its subsequent representatives and their delegators. We must trust that most zones have the union’s best interest in mind. The United Interchain is extremely decentralized, as every zone and its underlying community of validators and individuals vote on United Interchain proposals and laws. Today, the zones we subject ourselves to pose more of a threat to individual sovereignty than the body of authority that will coordinate Union between the zones.
Is the popular system we are trying to implement different from our local ledgers or state machines? Are we asking you to trust something so entirely dissimilar from the very systems you already trust to uphold your freedoms?
If we are ever to achieve the dream that the interchain provides us, namely separation from central banks and their dominion over the populous, then we need to join in Union to receive all its benefits of decentralization, faction stratification, and collective codetermination.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST THREE
Concerning the majority posing danger to the minority in Union
To the People of the Interchain,
To further reinforce that the United Interchain will give rise to a new era of Interchain cooperation and dispel the notion that the governing body will pose a risk to zone sovereignty, we turn back towards factions.
Madison, in Federalist 10, acknowledges the complaint of popular government that public good is forgotten in conflicts of rival parties and policy is too often decided not based on communal good but by the superior force of the majority at the cost of the minority. How do we alleviate or diminish the influence and pressure of factions prevalent within a United Interchain?
The two prompts are the challenges that efface themselves before an efficient and effectual Interchain economy and union. For the Interchain Union to exist in the future, it must ensure that the majority doesn’t pillage the minority. Infrastructure maintenance and inter-zone commerce will function smoothly when the weight of factitious majorities is dampened. With no Union, opposing characteristics of zones will invigorate and enlarge mutual animosities to an unregulable proportion. The only way to regulate factions is to form Union and mitigate the faction’s effects.
As previously discussed, the diminution in factitious power is affected by stratifying government to counterbalance groups of opinions. The subsequent question is: what government permits the greatest diversity with the least collective action issues?
- A direct democracy is a popular system of governance where all laws and policies are determined directly by the people. In doing so, the system, as exhibited previously by Athens coups, is unguarded against factions. More so, the architecture must be small to operate adequately because, in their enlargement, direct democracy crumbles due to geographic constraints and collective action issues.
- A republic is a popular system of governance where an elected body called representatives determines the laws and policies. A republic eliminates the size constraint on direct democracy while increasing political participation. Madison favors this system because it decreases the probability of factitious domination by striking a balanced middle that is decentralized but not outrageously so.
With the invention of the Internet, the typical descent against direct democracy being geographically constrained, suffering from complacency, and sprouting collective action problems is only partly correct. The objection to expansion is removed by the reality that government over the internet entitles everyone to be equal distance from the capital to influence policy and propose law. In the deletion of one objection to direct democracy, two objections remain. Liquid democracy, where participants delegate their vote to representatives and simultaneously remain able to vote themselves, is the key to counter complacency and a confusion of multitude. The basic functions of liquid democracy are twofold: if a member of the zone chooses not to participate they forfeit their vote to their representative. Opposingly, when a zone member participates, they overvote their representative.
The benefits continue when observing how a liquid democracy affects factions. In a liquid democracy where the representative set is only the top 150, by delegators redelegating their power away from a representative that betrayed the public interest, they cause the betrayer to be immediately expunged from government– falling out of the active set (>150). As such, representatives are at the mercy of their constituency’s gaze, making factions hard to create due to the people’s ability to replace representatives and or overvote their decisions. All the while removing factitious majorities, we still eliminate the collective action problem and gain the benefit of meritocracy through allowing representatives. While the United Interchain is governance agnostic of the underlying zone, we believe on a local zone level, a liquid democracy is a perfect compromise between republic and direct democracy.
Now that we’ve established that liquid democracy with an active set of representatives sanctions diversity while forgoing collective action challenges, how do we ensure on an Interchain level that the majority doesn’t terrorize the minority and vice versa?
Systems that weigh the number of representatives based on a census of the populous will overweigh the majority in decision-making, leaving the minority beholden to their will. Whereas, structures that apportion a vote equally to all members of the Union will underweight those members that hold the majority population, granting it bound to the minority. The combination of the latter and former architecture in governance authorizes the majority to exercise its will whilst the minority maintains a voice in the outcome. Essentially such a bifurcated architecture stops mob rule from distorting the two mandates of government to protect natural rights and the equal rule of law.
The United Interchain will have two chambers, one in which the power endowed to the chains within the Union Assembly is directly proportional to their relative percentage of economic stake, meaning market capitalization, to the aggregate value of the Union—the other, where power is equally distributed by giving one chain one vote. A zone will participate in both legislators and as a result, the United Interchain will achieve holistic compromises. The United Interchain will produce fair outcomes by pitting the numerical minority that has huge economic power versus the numerical majority that does not. The consequence of such a system will be that the aristocracy and the mob need to work across the aisle to pass a bill incorporating all viewpoints.
Together, the bi-cameral architecture of the United Interchain will attenuate the extent to which tyranny of the economic majority poses a threat to the economic minority of zones, and the numeric lower-producing majority poses a threat to the numeric higher-producing minority of zones. We can confidently put to rest that the United Interchain is a risk to zone sovereignty and continue to understand why only together will the Interchain prosper and reach the heights it strives for.
Disclaimer: To those whom it may concern, claiming that the bicameral system is unfair because it weighs the economic aggregate when it should weigh the aggregate of the populous is fair. The current challenge is that no common, battle-tested, and proven decentralized identifier exists today. If we chose the latter architecture, the United Interchain, and all her zones will expose themselves to sybil attacks. In the future, if DIDs are reliable, then the general assembly should consider switching to population weight. Be aware this would remove the governance agnosticism of the United Interchain.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST FOUR
Concerning the bargaining power of the Interchain with external business, government, and zones
To the People of the Interchain,
The objective of the Interchain is multithreaded with numerous members constructing revolutionary technology across sectors of the world economy. An interwoven string that touches all facets of the Interchain economy is finance. Propelling and invigorating the Interchain market will require a robust financial system. Suppose, momentarily, that the Interchain succeeds in its dream to renovate the broken structures that operate our world. The ambitious spirit of Interchain enterprise will pose destruction to legacy institutions’ dominion. So much so as to catalyze insecurity in them, bringing about an anaphylactic shock where their vested interests will be to sow and foster division to spite our success.
Our markets presently facilitate capital flows and value generation that rival those of cities. In the near future, they will rival those of nations. When this eventuality arrives, the question is whether united zones or separate zones hand the Interchain the most advantageous position to negotiate?
Assume we blindly charge down the current path, one of divided and disassociated zones; It is fair to say that some zones may attain greater leverage in negotiating with entities external to the Interchain, while others not. Those zones that operate a flourishing enterprise will arrange favorable agreements with firms and governments extrinsic to the Interchain. In theory, the image presented above is flowery. In practice, just as pre-constitution foreign policy dictated by American states disheveled the nation, so too will a broken-up Interchain. Zones would all have differing external foreign policies, spawning confusion for entities that wished to trade with the Interchain. To increase the complexity further, for firms that would like to create a new zone, there is not one authority or ambassador that can guide and onboard them but many splintered ones. By forgoing a united front, we will further intensify the asynchrony of pluralistic systems and advance the Interchain towards becoming a liability that can not nor ever will operate effectively.
John Jay in Federalist 4, determines that Britain would not be nearly as powerful if the English militia obeyed England, the Scottish militia obeyed Scotland, and the Welsh Militia obeyed Wales. Would a divided army be more powerful than a unified one? Will unified zones be more powerful to negotiate diplomacy than divided ones?
As a collective, the Interchain will be capable of excluding great powers from her connections,
“what would be the probable operation of this step upon her politics? Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind… so favorable would enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges. A price would be set not only upon our friendship, but upon our neutrality” (Hamilton Federalist No.11).
It is axiomatic that a unitary body will provide more bargaining power than fractured institutions. With such grand power, we’d be able to resist regulations from external governments that, out of ignorance or disdain for blockchain, do not accurately portray our values.
However, to attain this level of influence, the Interchain must first get there. In our journey, will united Interchain or disunited interchain provide domestic diplomacy so that the Interchain economy may function more energetically and effectively?
We’ve extensively elaborated on the unique objectives of zones and their citizenry fueling faction and engendering friction for Interchain markets, but have yet to define how zones may coerce others or be coerced. Influence can be perpetuated on zones from three vectors: the first is trade, the second is political, and the third is physical.
The tertiary vector is not a viable method of influence as it would necessitate that most nodes within the network be physically taken over. The probability of this is low and considering this vector a viable option is wasteful. The Secondary course of action, political power, is when the authority vested in the people of the zone is coerced or dominated by an external entity. The primary intimidation medium could be when a zone is embargoed, tariffed, or dutied by counterparties.
To understand the effect of the primary method of coercion, we’ll begin by traversing the historical context of Germany’s clogged economic arteries. In the 800th century, the Franks, ruled by Charlemagne, conquered all of Germany, and upon the usurpation of feudal lords came the amputation of the whole into several sovereign empires that drove Germany into anarchy by denigrating imperial authority (Federalist No. 19). The greed of each arm, that once attached to the leagued German nation, vied for power over the channels commerce streamed through. In their boundless gluttony, the sovereign empires enacted duties on merchandise that passed through their territory, rendering their rivers useless (Encyclopedia, article "Empire’'). In turn, domestic relations devolved into zero-sum games of internecine economic hostilities.
Furthermore, for more evidence of nations clogging the economic arteries they share, the Danube River before the European Commission of the Danube in 1856, which revived river commerce, kindly presents a similar discovery.
As history evidently conveys, shared infrastructure is fettered and interrupted by the coercive trade of multiple factions. Partitioned zones that comprise the Interchain are not alleviated from this conclusion and will fall victim to some of the oldest tails. The market will devolve into a Hobbesian state, one where unfair practices are compounded by insatiable self-interest. The mutual jealousies and contrasting objectives of zones will result in Interchain anarchism that will never maintain, develop, and or operate the Interchain in an effective cohesive manner. Instead, they will coagulate the veins by which commerce travels through and halt the heart that dreams of renovating the broken structures that operate our world.
We require a United Interchain to coordinate consensus and domestic diplomacy for Interchain upkeep, improvement, consumer protection, and inter-zone commerce. Only when this requirement has been fulfilled will the Interchain function for generations and centuries to come.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST FIVE
Concerning the zones’ internal preservation of peace and freedom from tyranny brought by bribes and voter fraud
To the People of the Interchain,
Having addressed the primary vector of influencing zones, we continue towards the secondary political method. Once democracy is corrupted, it dissolves. Therefore, it is paramount to halt the exercising of political dominion or coercion that sways the internal right of each zone to self-sovereignty. As a result, we tighten our scope to explore whether a united or disunited social consensus layer of the Interchain will preserve peace and freedom from internal and external influence.
Our sovereignty is under constant risk of being subverted by bribes, an indirect method to undermine or incentivize legislative outcomes, and voter fraud, defined in terms of blockchain as directly purchasing unjust influence. For those blissfully unaware of the corruption that penetrates blockchain governance systems, picture a zone, firm, faction, or individual who’d like to torpedo legislation in a counterparties zone’s voting period. Without fear of punishment, they would be allowed to incentivize balloters to submit a decision in lieu of reward or purchase temporary power of the balloter’s vote to exercise their will. Examples of such cases are the bribe that incentivized the failure of proposal 69 on the Cosmos Hub and Ethereum bribe markets that allow citizens to sell their vote to counterparties. These activities are despicable and directly spit in the face of civic virtue and democratic ideals. Concretely, liberal republican ideology “primarily concerned with protecting the inalienable rights of individuals against the encroachment of governments… [and] the ideal [that] non-domination of the individual trumps the ideal of popular rule” is undermined by permitting the possibility that the majority tyrannize the minority (Landemore p.g. 4).
The systems of bribery and voter fraud enable factitious minorities to bring about mob rule by leveraging more weight in the whole governance system– but only to a limit. These effects of external meddling in internal affairs indeed pose a danger to the sanctity and safety of representative democratic blockchain governance systems, yet we’d be remiss not to mention the innate defense of blockchain, specifically, the cypherpunk ideology of decentralization. In the event that a faction unjustly purchased or acquired majority influence over a zone’s governance the zone is no longer secure and the value of the whole blockchain diminishes. As such, unjustly receiving majority, exactly majority, or a large portion of power over a blockchain is not in the self-interest of the perpetrator; in turn, to gain a controlling stake in a zone will mean destroying the value of the zone itself or a fork.
To reinforce our point, the DAO hack in 2016, where $60 million, representing roughly 3.5 million Ether or 5% of the total supply, was stolen by hackers. The Ethereum community had a choice to either hold up the values of decentralization by recovering those funds back to the rightful owners or not. Ultimately, they chose the former, taking action later that same year to fork the zone. John Locke maintains the thought that “upon the forfeiture [of power], or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme and continue the legislative in themselves; or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good” (John Locke, The Second Treatise on Civil Government 1689). Essentially, revolution is a safeguard against tyranny but should be considered a last resort. Connecting back to Interchain zones, any intrusive or unwarranted interruption of the zone’s right to self-rule will be promptly met by a fork.
Although a fork, like a revolution, is a decisive and effective method for defending a zone’s sovereignty, it is a nuclear last-choice option divisive to the underlying constituency. Then how do we block any level of bribery, dishonesty, or deception to representative democracy? Will a United Interchain or separate zones afford the Interchain the greatest security from bribes and voter fraud?
In the present disunion of the Interchain, some may vouch for zones to stamp out coercion individually. Envisioning an Interchain where this is the case brings inefficiency and fruitless conclusions. Imagine that a zone was to influence a competitor’s ballot for a favorable outcome. That competitor will likely take economic or political action back. The Interchain operates a capitalistic economy where it sometimes may be in the economic interest of a zone to illicitly lobby a competitor’s policy for favorable profitable results.
Extrapolating this amongst the many zones that make up the Interchain clearly indicates that the tendency for greed triumphs over the communal interest to maintain fair trade practices. Additionally, the many zones that would not like their sovereignty tampered with will create an exponential implosion of bills by each having to agree separately in their respective legislatures to form a trade pact. Under disunion, there is no sustainable architecture to cease politically exploitive activities, such that peace and freedom will be put in endangerment. Conversely, if a union is formed between like-minded zones, a collective agreement will effectively streamline Interchain outcomes while removing collective action problems with one proposal prompting change across all members.
As a Union no zone, firm, faction, or individual will be able to institute tyranny because of the vast number of members and their citizens. To afford protection from bribery and voter fraud, the United Interchain has to emplace digital borders. These borders will be constructed by blocklisting zones with which United Interchain members can’t trade. The entirety of the Interchain Union will determine this ability to block and allow. The United Interchain will uphold the peace and freedom of members by constructing digital barriers to ostracize foreign bribe markets and zones that seek to subvert the Union’s representative democratic ideals and liberal republican rights. Once accomplished, the United Interchain economy will function smoothly, successfully isolating itself from extrinsic lawlessness and achieving internal alignment between union members.
As a United Interchain, we will match those who wish to corrupt our governance processes with equal strength or more and block their admission to connect with our Union. United, we will endorse a system that sanctions, uplifts, and sustains the principles of natural law and fair trade.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST SIX
Concerning mechanical security of the Interchain to protect zones from foreign and internal influence
To the People of the Interchain,
We have discussed how social coordination amongst United Interchain members is the only guarantee to sustain internal Interchain peace. For a zone, there are two methods of self-determination: social and mechanical. Union improves the Interchain’s ability to provide increased tranquility to all zones by coordinating social consensus. Of what guarantees on the protocol/mechanical level can the Union offer?
Networks take the form of four main topologies—centralized, hierarchical, emergent coordination, and coordination by consensus. Starting chronologically, centralized coordination mechanisms are found in governance, e.g. monarchies. Hierarchical coordination is found in distributed database systems and some forms of governments, e.g. the United States or Canada. Emergent coordination is mainly observed in cytology and the internet. Lastly, coordination by consensus is exhibited in our blockchain consensus mechanisms today, e.g. Tendermint architecture.
Concerning blockchains, the security of coordination by consensus network topologies is directly proportional to their decentralization, or in other words, the number of nodes and distribution of power across those nodes securing the network. How does coordination by consensus improve or deteriorate over the Interchain?
On local levels, coordination by consensus works incredibly well. We encounter issues when expanding to an Interchain level. The network topology fails due to the coordination system requirement that every node communicates with every other node, known as N^2 communication. If we proposed the aforesaid topology for the Interchain, we would observe a combinatorial explosion and, as a result, the failure of the system we’re building. General message-passing platforms and bridges allow each blockchain to function locally as a coordinated consensus mechanism while providing an emergent coordination structure for individual blockchains to reach asynchronous agreement on messages passed. By isolating their internal mechanisms, we permit blockchains to interoperate with packet switch networks and bridges. The genius is that general message passing, and bridges allow networks with N^2 communication methods to transmit and receive from other coordination by consensus mechanisms in an efficient way.
As of now, we have multiple blockchains communicating with other blockchains, and the sender and receiver chains are responsible for determining the other blockchains’ intent. It is an honest assumption with social trust. While general message-passing or bridging platforms are trustless – communication through them is trustful.
We initiate trades today with a high assumption of trust in the counterparty’s protocol security. The economy of the Interchain and world are built on these trust assumptions. The critical difference is the world fuses the assumptions with mutual security guarantees, whereas the Interchain decouples the two. We look towards NATO, arguably the largest form of the combination we speak of. As a precursor, we must pursue why NATO was formed and how it applies to the Interchain?
NATO was formerly named the Western Union and was brought on in 1948 by a desire to be confident in European security with the objective of encouraging military collaboration. The Union sought expansion from central Europe to the broader European continent and felt that a transatlantic security agreement was essential to deter Soviet aggression. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949. The treaty implemented Article 5, giving the pact a security umbrella. The Western Union, later becoming the Western European Union in 1954, began goals of propagating military cooperation and collective defense. In time, the Soviet threat deteriorated, but the alliance upheld two mandates: to deter the rise of militant nationalism and provide security catalyzing Europe’s democratization. Despite their competition, these dissimilar nations entered into a mutual guarantee because they all share vested security and economic interests.
Two Nations that are economically dependent on each other want to protect their interests by creating security and political guarantees for the counterparty. It is the nation’s self-interest to protect those partners they trade with. NATO is a network of sovereign nations that have mutual defense relationships with their own internal policies. NATO is a loose union where the central coordinating body has very little power over its constituent entities, yet in part, Article Five (an attack on one is an attack on all) has kept Europe in peace. Just as “Many of these newly liberated countries – or partners, as they were soon called – saw a relationship with NATO as fundamental to their own aspirations for stability, democracy, and European integration; ” we, the people of the Interchain, will find that in order to maintain stability, democracy, and progress in a competitive environment, a NATO-like structure is fundamental to our aspirations (A Short History of NATO).
In contrast to NATO’s loose Union, we consider the United States, with its Centralized Coordination mechanism, a strict union where the central authority has power over auxiliaries. The Interchain and the zones that comprise it value their sovereignty above all else. We don’t believe proposing a strict union would be proper for our values. Instead, a loose union with mechanical security, economic, and political guarantees should be formed.
Cross-zone security agreements let the Interchain form a NATO-like entity. Think of this as Canada’s federal government operating in parallel with NATO. Canada is part of a network of cross-nation security agreements but also fully secures its own sub-states. The end game of the Interchain will be much like the topology of the world– Consensus Coordination nested in Hierarchical Coordination nested in Emergent Coordination.
We digress, if NATO never formed because nationalism had been the principal ideology of Europe, would it be as safe and secure as today? If a United Interchain never coalesces because nationalism is the dominant belief of the Interchain, will it be safe? Will the Interchain be provided greater security with isolated self-secured chains or mutual cross-zone security agreements?
An argument that served to show the disadvantages of disunion used previously in these papers was “that Britain would not be nearly as powerful if the English militia obeyed England, the Scottish militia obeyed Scotland, and the Welsh Militia obeyed Wales” (Interchain Federalist 4). Will the Interchain be more secure if each zone contracted security solely from itself or if each zone formed a covenant of cross-zone security with myriads of other zones? We allude to the fact that cross-zone security agreements over the Interchain will increase security since a single chain of nodes is not the sole security provider of a blockchain; instead, multiple blockchains of nodes are. As we have displayed, the combined English militant presence and the cross-national security agreements set by NATO afforded massive security guarantees and power in competitive environments. Then, it can confidently be said the disunion that manifests itself in today’s Interchain will fail partly due to the lack of cross-zone mutual defense agreements that assure the safety of zones. Assuming we choose the hazardous route, our foes will feed themselves off our lack of homogeneity.
A United Interchain gives the members of Union higher trust assumptions because of cross-zone security agreements that stratify and diversify a zone’s security. Under this system of mutual defense, to corrupt one zone, an attacker must also manipulate many other zones; therefore, like Article Five, an attack on one member is an attack on all. Cross-zone security agreements that represent the Interchain Union’s mechanical layer paired with social agreements that make up the social layer are needed as they preserve peace and freedom from internal and external influence. To provide for the safety of the Interchain, we must form a Union of social and mechanical coordination.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST SEVEN
Concerning the longevity of the Interchain Economy
To the People of the Interchain,
Equally imperative to the safety of zones is the longevity of the Interchain economy. We venture to find whether disunion or Union will be able to raise and or distribute resources for the proper operation of the Interchain.
Roads and waterways are necessities economies can not live without, hence why they are public goods. In the same vane, Interchain connections that commerce travels through are requisite for trade so they must also be public goods. Liken to interstate roads and waterways in the United States, no one can own the connections themself, and interconnections need continuous maintenance, funding, and improvement. We’ve extensively labored over how inter-zone connections get clogged. Instead, we cast our gaze towards a different objective: the internal longevity of Interchain infrastructure defined as relayers, oracles, audits, channels, connections, or standards.
The present management of the Interchain is the responsibility of self-selected zones, non-profit firms, and for-profit firms with no formalized coordination between them. Whether many or one firm/s or zone/s steward Interchain infrastructure is no matter. The question that does take precedence is whether these private institutions or zones accurately portray and mirror Interchain desires?
For firms, the answer is clear: by the very nature of them being privatized institutions, they are not accountable to the people and, as such, neither the interchains general will. These firms (Interchain Foundation, Wormhole, LayerZero, etc.) can not and will never accurately portray Interchain intent due to their inexistent interface with the public. Their deficit of democratic representation is undeniably elitist and exclusionary to the public of the Interchain. Some may rightfully point out that zones in the Interchain also contribute to maintaining, funding, and improving Interchain Infrastructure. Like private enterprises, they have not been appointed by the Interchain’s general will and do not represent it. Both private institutions’ and zones’ self-selection without representation further compound the issue that their effects on the Interchain do not express a “mirror image of the people it represents, [more so] self-selected representation typically leads to demographically skewed groups of repreresentatives” (Landemore p.g 80). Then we rule out that private corporations and lone zones will correctly reflect the general will of the Interchain, and subsequently affirm that they enforce their own.
In their inevitable misrepresentation of Interchain wants, private firms and lone zones that maintain, fund, and improve the Interchain stamp their self-interested ink on the infrastructure. Their factitious preferences are not tamed by the stratification of representative democracy, leaving the Interchain open and exposed to personal vices and biases. Picture zones or private companies all with dissimilar paths to achieve different objectives, vouching that they have the aggregate values of the Interchain in mind. In executing their imposing will upon our infrastructure, they all may create different Interchain standards, audit committees, or innovations that, while beneficial to their enterprise, will fracture the Interchain into opposing siloed factions. By permitting parties that represent factions, defined by Madison himself as a group of citizens whose “passion [is] adverse to the rights of citizens or aggregate interest of the community and instead self interest,” to insert themselves in the care of our Interchain infrastructure we submit the entirety of the Interchain to their disconnected domination (Madison Federalist No. 10).
Who is to blame them for using the opportunity that a disunited Interchain bestows to forward themselves. Without a social layer to foster Interchain cooperation and determine Interchain wants, these factions will pervert the Interchain for their own gain. We give them the benefit of the doubt as it is not their fault that the system of disunited Interchain is hostile to the principles of democratic representation. The broken system makes this the most optimal way to play. Without a community to speak for Interchain interests and upkeep, we will decay into “a many-headed monster — a heterogenious mass — that never will or can steer to the same point” (To Fielding Lewis, July 6, 1780 George Washington). With no quality infrastructure, there is no healthy economy. With no mechanism to come to consensus on the future direction of Interchain infrastructure, many derivations will be pursued, and the Interchain will fall victim to its uncoordinated pluralistic state of nature.
Conversely, as a United Interchain, the union will turn the liability of multiple differing opinions and wills into an advantage, using the collective intelligence and cognitive diversity of the whole to form one will – an Interchain will. Instead of different standards for interoperability and objectives for the Interchain, we distinguish ourselves from the afflictions of self-selected representation by permitting an Interchain will that is reflective of the whole. In forming together, we create a collective identity where all of the Interchain population will be stewards of the Interchain’s future. If there is a United Interchain, the threat of privatized and misrepresented maintenance, funding, and improvement to Interchain infrastructure will be subdued.
The primary financial risk the Interchain inherited by submitting and outsourcing infrastructure upkeep to lone zones or private institutions will be demolished by Union. The value of a United Interchain will cradle the Interchain to a sustainably funded future that self-supports its public infrastructure. It remains evident that the Interchain can not supplicate a few zones or factions to its needs. We need to turn the Interchain’s liability of pluralism into an advantage; therefore, we must unite the Interchain to become a federated system where the Union funds development, maintenance, and operations. The time is now to form the Interchain’s social consensus layer, manifest the first federated nation over the Internet, to attempt the impossible.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST EIGHT
Concerning the sources of revenue for Interchain infrastructure upkeep
To the People of the Interchain,
If money is accountable, it is to government what blood is to body, if not, money is to government what oil is to water. It clots together and stretches like cloud cover on a stormy day, casting shadows and plunging the life below into darkness. The objective of well-formed government is to accountably provision the use of money to provide for the well-being of the entire nation. If the resources of government are put to work ineffectively or in such a way that it aggrandizes self-interest over the people’s will, then the government will fail. In its collapse, the economy would be left in a destitute state.
We have clarified that the internal longevity from an Infrastructure perspective is greater under Union. Still, for the Interchain to continue long into the future, it must raise or purchase funds to be self-reliant and provide for its growing economic needs. Will a union or disunion provide for satisfactory collecting and provisioning of resources?
By driving boldly into where the known path of disunion hits a dead end, we will not have the capability to efficiently or effectively raise capital for Interchain successes. In its current format, the Interchain is at the mercy of self-selected zones’ or private firms’ whims, whines, and wants. To raise funds for interchain activities zones must either offer grants from their reserve pools, directly dip into their community pools or, for both zones and private institutions, raise funds through transactions with venture capital firms. The Interchain is subjected to the zone’s wants in the first and second methods. In the third, the Interchain is under the zone’s, private institution’s, and venture capital’s heel. These procedures for funding Interchain programs bring about risk of default defunct entities through centralizing power in the hands of a minority of the Interchain. Additionally, the smaller the number of authorities overseeing Interchain resources, the more susceptible it is to corruption. What will happen if those building Interchain infrastructure and innovations fail? Will a United Interchain be perverse to those failures and thus a less volatile way to fund the Interchain? Will the private firms or zones be able to distribute and use capital to provide for the entirety of the Interchain’s needs or just a subset?
These entities can only provide for a small cross-section of the Interchain’s needs because they, one, do not have a vested interest in raising the large sum needed for the Interchain as it expands, and, two, will not have enough influence to do so. More so, as spoken earlier, they do not accurately represent interchain intent and will distribute funds incorrectly. Under their provisioning, the Interchain could not capture or accomplish even a small portion of its potential. Then by no means will a minority of the Interchain community “provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the reputation of the commonwealth” over the long term (Hamilton fed 30). We’d be clipping her wings before ever leaving the nest.
A United interchain is less volatile and able to source capital from various sectors and communities. In doing so, it will diversify funding avenues, decentralize the authority managing Interchain resources, and provide for the longevity of the Interchain.
The United Interchain will have the capability to fund the Interchain with many sources: selling treasuries, purchasing loans, quotas, crowdfunding, tolls, and tariffs. Only if it were the Interchain’s collective wish, would we lend out portions of the diversified Interchain treasury to raise funds or receive interest, with the Interchain treasury as collateral purchase loans for the union, source quotas from chains, institute tolls along our inter-union connections, and impose tariffs on commerce going out or into the union. All the potential energy of the interchain will be pooled together to generate resources for the community, which will be brought into activity to benefit the whole.
United, the Interchain treasury will be diversified across sectors and enterprises; United we will be able to afford favorable guarantee or guarantor terms; United we will secure the opportunity to provide for the financial longevity of the Interchain and thereby uplift communal wants and needs; United the Interchain will have the vigor and energy to support an ambitious economy and dream – to reach the Interchains prosperity in full.
Together, the people of the Interchain will oversee and provision the use of money to provide for the nation’s well-being. The antecedent of taking into account all Interchain goals, objectives, and zones is a new era of Interchain development. Relayer cost, market volatility, software development kits, smart contract kits, and public goods infrastructure will benefit all zones equally. We could even contract or grant firms a source of income to build products or manage the Interchain. The statement is that by disposing of the problems facing disunification with a Union, the whole body will have a voice in the funding of the Interchain. Our collective power will make Interchain development, improvement, and maintenance non-beholden to the market because of the multiple steady streams of revenues the United Interchain is capable of.
The United Interchain will be a strong mighty self-reliant power that could internally provide for the prosperity of the Interchain and Union. Self-reliance permits us to do what we want– it gives us sovereignty over our nation, zones, and self. It is obvious that Union will effectively and efficiently raise and/or distribute resources for the proper operation of the Interchain.
Disclaimer: To those whom it may concern, unlike the enforcement mechanisms of the United States where states are required to provide quotas for the federal government, the Interchain is a loose union that does not breach the sovereignty of the underlying zones because the zones maintain the choice to join the union or secede. The other reason the United Interchain is a loose Union is that it decreases the attack surfaces and doesn’t compromise the internal security of the union-zones. The United Interchain is gapped from the underlying semantics of the zone and will not be a threat.
INTERCHAIN FEDERALIST NINE
Is it worth it?
To the People of the Interchain,
There are multiple instances of taking advantage of asynchronous networks and implementing cooperation over them, like computer components, central processing units, states, provinces, and teams. In the isolation we all live in, it is in the very nature of what it means to be human to share and cooperate with others. A terrible world would befall us if we were jailed to function alone. Alone, we will face an impossible task to reform the broken systems that make up our world and fail.
Isolated, the Interchain will be cursed to look up at the heights it could have reached. Disunited, factions will permeate the Interchain stoking strife. Disunified, zones will be susceptible to bribery and voter fraud. Fractured, the peoples’ and zones’ natural rights will devolve. Separate, the Interchain’s shared infrastructure will clog. Disconnected, nationalism will poison zonal safety. Divorced, private institutions will inject their will as our own. Distinct, Interchain infrastructure will degrade. Divided, a small portion of the Interchain will be financially supported. Unrelated, zones will be exposed to corruption and tyranny.
It is for all those reasons and more that we will choose Union. Unified, the local ideology will go from nationalism at the individual protocol level to the collective Interchain level. People will become entities of the Interchain versus single zones. With this decomposition in ideological borders fueled by Union, the Interchain will function as a cooperative with a collective identity.
Only together, will we face a seemingly insurmountable task to reform the broken systems that make up our world and win. And win……
With kindness,
Robert.
Post script: The coming papers will seek to explore further why a zone would want to join the union and how we create a system of union (constitution).
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