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“That idea of permissionless is the center of what we’re building here in crypto.”

— Sreeram Kannan, EigenLayer

Permissionless preview: Why crypto?

Part of being permissionless is that no one needs permission to do some really silly things in crypto, like assigning an $80 billion market cap to a coin conceived as a joke, paying millions of collars for jpegs held on AWS servers, and giving Sam Bankman-Fried custody of most of our coins. 

Unfortunately, the silliest things in crypto (as elsewhere) are a black hole of attention.

For all of the hundreds of substantive events held at Token2049, for example, the two that most broke through on social media were the incredible lines to get into an event for a blockchain that doesn’t yet exist and a party promoting an ass-themed memecoin.

I want you to know that this is not why most people attend crypto conferences. 

Nor is it to suss out the next 100x coin (there’s surprisingly little price talk at these things). 

Instead, people flock to crypto conferences in surprising numbers because they think crypto can make a real difference in the world. 

Somewhat confusingly, what makes crypto seem frivolous is also what makes it important.

The permissionless freedom to experiment, even with seemingly absurd ideas, is a necessary part of fostering innovation — just as it was with the early internet.

“The reason why the internet was so special and so important,” according to Ben Horowitz, is that it enabled “permissionless innovation.”

“The community ran the network,” he reminds us. “Anybody could put up nodes. And as a result of that anybody could build a business and anybody could be creative on it without paying a massive tax to some corporation.”

Unfortunately, the internet “went from permissionless to permissioned,”  as Chris Dixon explains in Read Write Own, when it became intermediated by Big Tech.

“In business,” Dixon warns, “permission becomes a pretense for tyranny. Dominant tech businesses leverage the power of permission to thwart competition, desolate markets, and extract rents.”

Today’s internet, by his telling, is a dystopian version of the permissionless original.

But not all is lost!

Dixon offers reason for hope that best read in the style of a Star Wars movie voice-over: “Just as the internet seems to be consolidating beyond repair, a new software movement emerges that can reimagine the internet.” 

That new software movement is crypto — “a new class of computer” that has the potential to “bring back the spirit of the early internet, secure property rights for creators, reclaim user ownership and control, and break the stranglehold Big Tech has on our lives.”

What makes this new class of computer different is that it’s permissionless — but not just because that means anyone can do anything.

Instead, it’s because “Blockchains are computers that can, for the first time ever, establish inviolable rules for software,” Dixon writes. ”This allows blockchains to make strong, software-enforced commitments to users.”

These commitments are central to crypto’s origin story — it’s what prompted Vitalik to invent Ethereum after the makers of World of Warcraft nerfed his favorite character’s Siphon Life spell: "On that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring."

But what the decentralized services of crypto might enable is bigger than securing your in-game items (as vitally important as that of course is).

Much bigger.

EigenLayer CEO (and Permissionless speaker) Sreeram Kannan believes that “Crypto is the biggest upgrade to civilization since the US Constitution.”

In the same way that the Bill of Rights introduces commitments that the US government makes to its citizens, enforced by constitutional law, crypto introduces a “coordination mechanism into the internet,” enforced by smart contract.

“All digital platforms are much better run on a crypto substrate,” he believes, “because of the set of things that can be built once you have robust coordination mechanisms.”

Crypto conferences are the only place where no one will roll their eyes at such an ambitious mission statement and that alone is reason to attend them.

They are also the best place to get an idea for what “set of things” might be coming our way.

— Byron Gilliam

P.S. You can still grab a ticket to Permissionless. Don’t miss out!

P.P.S. We’ll be publishing the Daily in the AM this week due to Permissionless travel, time zones, panels and festivities.

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MANTRA is a purpose-built RWA layer-1 blockchain capable of adherence and enforcement of real world regulatory requirements. As a permissionless chain, MANTRA empowers developers and institutions to seamlessly participate in the evolving RWA tokenization space by offering advanced tech modules, compliance mechanisms, and cross-chain interoperability.

Key Features:

• Built using Cosmos SDK, IBC compatible, with CosmWasm supported

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• Improved User Experience to onboard non-native users and institutions to Web3

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5. Institutions could be Solana’s edge against Ethereum

Permissionless live streams

You should come to Permissionless in Salt Lake City this week for the networking, the merch, and the vibes — and stay for the gaming lounge, rock climbing, axe throwing, pickleball, and Karate Combat.

Crypto is a work-from-home industry, so these opportunities to see people in real life have real value.

But if you can’t make it in person, here is some appointment viewing for the live streams:

Wednesday:

• 9:20 am: Building The Future of The Internet — If listening to Chris Dixon open the Permissionless proceedings doesn’t re-energize you about crypto, you don’t have to listen to any of the other panels. (It will, though.) 

• 3:20 pm: The Dawn of the Restaking Revolution — Restaking is pretty deep in the crypto weeds, but Sreeram Kannan is one of the industry’s very best at articulating the case for “why crypto,” so this should be a great panel. 

• 3:50 pm: World Shaping DePin on Solana — The DePin founders speaking on this panel are already realizing Dixon and Kannan’s vision of permissionless innovation — honestly, there’s some exciting stuff happening. 

Thursday:

• 1:30 pm — 4:40 pm: The entire AI x Crypto track — Yes, the current reality of crypto’s involvement in AI is overhyped — but the future reality of crypto’s involvement in AI may well be underhyped. Ben Horowitz believes that crypto can make the “source of truth” for AI a “community-run utility.” For this reason alone he says crypto is “probably the most important technology that we [at a16z] deal with.”

• 1:30 pm: Pushing the Frontier of ZK — ZK proofs are on the verge of bringing both scaling and privacy to blockchains — this really could change everything.

Friday:

• 9 am: Utah: The Frontier of Digital Asset Innovation — Utah’s Mike Lee will make history by becoming the first Senator to speak at a crypto conference. Lee is pro-crypto simply because he’s pro-innovation and that is an important message to get out. 

• 1:30 pm: The ZK Proof Endgame — See above re: ZK changing everything.

• 5 pm: Karate Combat — This may seem like a gimmick to you, but in what other industry are two of its most prominent participants (David Hoffman and Kain Warwick) willing to get punched in the face to bring attention to the cause. There’s nothing silly about getting punched in the face — even when it’s for crypto.

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