Telestai — The foundations for a new online ecosystem
“I suppose the makers of the laws are the weaker sort of men, and the more numerous. So it is with a view to themselves and their own interest that they make their laws and distribute their praises and censures; and to terrorize the stronger sort of folk who are able to get an advantage, and to prevent them from getting one over them… when some man arises with a nature of sufficient force, he shakes off all that we have taught him, bursts his bonds, and breaks free; he tramples underfoot our codes and juggleries, our charms and “laws,” which are all against nature; our slave rises in revolt and shows himself our master, and there dawns the full light of natural justice.”
~ Plato — Republic
ABSTRACT
The changing worldview held by many in Western Culture presents philosophical challenges for the world. Platforms allowing creative expression use their position to censure and shape what is consumed by the public. This has narrowed the presented viewpoints significantly; compromising both the ability for readers and observers to be challenged on their intellectual positions and enlarging the political divide within society. Cryptocurrency — a force that has financially liberated — has the capacity to perform the same function for media if harnessed in the correct way. A path toward an ecosystem that supports freedom whilst remaining within the bounds of socially accepted behaviour is required to be paved.
1. INTRODUCTION
Humanities enmeshment with the internet has transformed the world. It has changed the way we communicate, conduct business and validate facts — which in turn shapes our concept of truth. Where town squares historically formed the centre of cultural engagement, cyberspace now occupies the primary role in framing the way the world conceives of itself.
The consequences of a humanity enmeshed with the internet is larger forces seek to manipulate the ecosystem for their own aim. Social media platforms are guided by their internal political perspectives; it influences what behaviours are deemed fair and what are to be purged. Large conglomerations farm the data harvested from peoples use of the internet to benefit their marketing and sales. Corporate decisions determine which artists and creators are elevated into public spotlight; all others are discarded, robbing them of opportunities to earn income as their means of commercialising their gifts are hampered irrespective of their talent.
Just as Bitcoin has liberated financial sovereignty for millions around the world, Telestai holds a vision for liberating the internet through services designed to keep them immutably independent.
2. IS COMPLETE DECENTRALISATION IDEAL?
“Freedom in a framework, that is part of the essence of building a clock.”
~ Jim Collins, The Map
The philosophy undergirding Satoshi Nakamoto’s now-famous white paper was a decentralised financial system that existed outside the regulatory grasp of government institutions. By building a system that facilitated ‘any two willing parties to transact direct with each other without the need for a trusted third party’,¹ Nakamoto philosophically declared that human autonomy had been compromised in one of its most core needs; the ability to trade and conduct the transfer of wealth as two people saw fit. Bitcoin was their solution to this problem.
The consequence of Nakamoto’s creation was the conceptual elevation of decentralisation at all costs; this became imbued within the blockchain industry and adopted as the ideal philosophical paradigm by supporters.
Unfortunately, the community’s persistent striving for full decentralisation ignores key elements to human social needs; primarily, that the absence of all oversight is not the utopian ideal it is made out to be. Rather, human social needs require and operate on accepted guidelines, which in essence is a form of communal oversight that creates the platform for civilised engagement.
I propose that the mores of society identify that full decentralisation — that is, the belief that no oversight over an individual should exist by any external party — is neither achievable in the means the blockchain community insists nor reflective of how human civilisation has operated for millennia. Rather, humans interact within a framework of acceptable behaviours, conventions and habits as conceived of by the community they exist in. These communities work together to create, set, evolve and enforce these values that people are held to.
In layman's, communities self regulate based on the worldview they hold to, which is ever changing and evolving according to the people that live within and interact with it. The social contract that exists in society — that people consent to surrender some of their freedoms for the protection of an overarching authority and their promise to uphold as well as maintain the existing social order — actively supports these mores and worldview. It is supposed to intercede as an impartial and neutral arbiter for the people.
The reason for explaining this in such detail is that full decentralisation allows for the possibility of grievous breach of these mores without recourse to shut them down. A live and ongoing example of this is seen in Mastadon; the fully decentralised social media platform that is battling child sexual assault material and far-right extremists (Nazi’s) users who migrated from other platforms.² A mechanism to protect against this type of content — which breaches the widespread accepted views of all societies — should be available but the completely decentralised construction of the technology prevents it. This is evidence that full decentralisation is not the ideal reality to be achieved because the boundaries of decent society must be clearly articulated and guarded against such breaches.
And yet, a realignment toward decentralisation for the sake of freedom of speech as well as the discussion and debate of important issues or ideas that are unpopular or contrary to the will of those who rule the halls of power is necessary. Our existing infrastructure has become a mess of corporate greed, political overreach and cultural atrophy. This has rendered a shameful dismantling of the progress of civilisation.
Complimenting this is the need for creators and artists to house and publish their material as well as pursue profitable self promotion according to the principles of a free market. In particular, the fostering of new stories is a must — we learn, grow and live by the publication and recording of literature for the benefit of future generations. Just as our parents and grandparents have handed down the lessons and tales of our forefathers for our benefit, so too do we need to do the same. A platform fostering independent creation without succumbing to the influence of existing institutions and corporations — as well as allowing the creator to appropriately profit in a commercial sense — is necessary for society to continue flourishing intellectually.
This realignment is borne from the friction within today’s society — particularly in a Western context — and the belief that corporations and governments have betrayed the established social contracts; seeking instead to undermine, influence and change the standards and worldview in subtle, devious and ever-increasingly obvious ways.
Such sentiment explains the distrust of some within society of authority figures and organisations as well as deep suspicion of corporations with vested interests in the political status quo.
Just as the Global Financial Crisis was considered a catalyst of Nakamoto’s development of Bitcoin, the disarray and untrustworthiness of information producers coupled with the misuse and monopolisation of critical media platforms that are necessary for a healthy and functional society is the ground from which Telestai springs.
3. A DIGITAL IDENTITY
“Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future, and it will exist primarily online.”
~Eric Schmidt, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
To facilitate this new ecosystem, a reimagining of someones Digital Identity must be conceived of. Where it was believed the metaverse would form a new way for people to interact and engage online, I propose that the metaverse already exists albeit in a fractured state.
To recap, the vision of Mark Zuckerberg et al regarding the appearance of the metaverse was that people would enter a new virtual reality space and interact digitally. Their thesis imagined a situation somewhat like ‘Ready Player ONE’; the reshaping and blurring of boundaries between real life experience and cyber experience. As such, most metaverse experiences have failed to include the existing persona’s and experiences that people have already adopted when navigating the cyber world. This is where they fall down.
In reality, most people already exist across multiple social media platforms and gaming environments and they’re not interested in somehow creating an additional identity in a new virtual environment. Rather, most would rather corale their existing identity that presents consistently in all areas. For example, aperson currently playing Fortnite who regularly checks and updates their TikTok, X and Instagram accounts has already built an internet identity. This identity exists across these platforms and functions as independent metaverses already; the person has crafted for themselves a persona and reputation to interact with the communities they’re engaged with on those platforms. Their persona might shift according to their context or setting but they are fractionalised representations of a metaverse personality.
This means people have been creating a digital identity for their own disparate metaverses since platforms to interact with were created; in truth, the work that needs to be done is in drawing all the interactions a person has across these innumerate platforms back to a centralised persona that collects and reflects the full digital footprint of the user. This makes them self-sovereign over their own identity and data.
Drawing all elements of ones digital footprint back to a single source is intended to place both the responsibility and power back into the hands of the individual. It also creates the bedrock by which the ecosystem can be created. The digital persona is the citizenship of the user to the ecosystem they participate in.
Reframing our understanding of a persons digital identity presents additional opportunities that will be expanded upon in future writings, but it is important to understand what we are trying to achieve. While metadata that companies farm via social media platforms and alike in the open cyberspace is immeasurably valuable, the user never receives the financial benefit for it. Instead, they become a targeted entity for exploitation; financially, politically, socially.
This model needs to be flipped. Individuals must be placed in control of their information. They must also be granted the opportunity to determine whether they wish for their data to be sold to advertisers and make gain where historically they have been preyed on. This shifts the power dynamic back into the hands of the individual and requires business to both earn and pay for the right to a persons data. Content consumers make a living from electing to sell their data to corporations.
4. AN ECOSYSTEM OF PROTECTED FREE OPPORTUNITY
“Man’s mind and spirit grow with the space in which they are allowed to operate.”
~ Krafft Arnold Ehricke
In light of what is written, the ecosystem must have a home base of software solutions that grant the user preferential rights for adoption and protects their Digital Identity. It will include but is not limited to:
- A digital persona app facilitating Web3Auth login to all participating web services; this would hold both private vault and public information (with facility for the individual to pass information between the two statuses) so it can adequately house a persons details
- A bespoke and inbuilt AI bot that acts as a personal assistant; it will be inbuilt to the Digital Identity app with machine learning to refine its purpose each individuals needs
- A decentralised, secure and privacy focussed web browser with native digital persona plugin; this captures all metadata for the user to decide to do with as they wish and is not harvested by Telestai
- New platforms that authors and creators can produce written, audio and visual content; all content created would be tagged back to their Digital Identity with copyright ownership and ability to commercialise what they’ve produced
- A social network infrastructure the user is able to explore and interact with others through various spaces that conform to relevant contextual social mores; an abiding respect for context will remain
To achieve these aims, Telestai’s blockchain will tokenise, host via decentralised means and create sufficient infrastructure to achieve these aims. It will be the engine room that drives development ; the overarching administration the wider community entrusts to preserve the social mores of the projects vision and retain a balanced and neutral view.
5. A DOCUMENT OF AGREEMENT
“No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
~ Magna Carta Liberatum
Telestai’s vision necessitates a document that citizens of its ecosystem can look to for what is considered acceptable and unacceptable conduct. This document will be released shortly and is intended to be the guidelines that citizens of the ecosystem will abide by.
These guidelines will have two tiers; ‘open hand’ and ‘closed hand’. The former represents contextually different worldviews which dictate the etiquette people abide by and the moral compass people are guided by. To give an example — what is considered punctual arrival to a business meeting is different between Western culture and Pacific Islands culture. The formers concept of time demands contrition should a party be late by more than fifteen minutes; the latter’s concept of time demands contrition should a party be late by more than two to three hours. Thus, a person navigating either Western or Pacific Islands contexts needs to be sensitive to each cultures concept of time if it wishes to positively interact with a member of that culture.
These are open handed issues, since there is no real moral imperative to obey but those within these cultures will judge others as ‘right or wrong’ depending on their adherence to the social standards. Our ecosystem must be sensitive to, but not dictated by, these mores.
Closed hand issues, by contrast, are the boundaries by which civilised society must hold itself to. An example is the child sexual assault material that certain federated instances perpetuate on Mastadon; these are the boundaries our ecosystem must guard against. There is a moral imperative — as members of a civilised society striving to build a digital ecosystem based on civilised fundamentals — to ensure there are guardrails and mechanisms that take action against this type of behaviour.
The document — published in due course — will make clear what is considered a closed hand issue whilst defining examples of what open hand issues are in a general sense. Ensuring compliance to these guidelines will be the basis for how the ecosystem exists; it must be an environment where people can debate issues without consequence, whilst knowing they remain in a space protected from morally abhorrent behaviour and themselves abiding by the guidelines.
6. COIN INFORMATION
Algorithm: Meraki
Total Supply: 1,969,194,240
Block Reward: 468 coins
Block time: 1 minute
Halving: Every four years
For the purpose of funding the Telestai project, the development team will hold back 117 coins per block. These coins will be utilised for running costs.
Critical to all new ventures is a community that wishes to adopt, engage and participate. Telestai will remain proof-of-work with a focus on GPU mining to grant all people the chance to engage with this new ecosystem and earn reward for securing it.
7. CONCLUSION
The internet has long been an environment of liberation for humanity. Although politics and big business have infiltrated the space for their own purposes, blockchain provides the ability to liberate it once more to ensure the freedom it has always promised remains so. Additionally, the nefarious fringe that utilise it for ugly purposes can be kept at bay and away from those wishing to exist in a cyber ecosystem that holds itself to civilised standards.
Further discussion on our roadmap and the platforms we’re going to implement will come in due course.
While Telestai as a project aims are to birth this ecosystem, it is the community that will breath life into the bold vision. The digital foundations of the future are now laid.
[1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
[2] Numerous articles cover this problem — see below. It is also pertinent to identify that Mastadon’s creator — Eugen Rochko — vehemently rejects their use of the software for these purposes.