joshuamckenty
commented
1 year ago Unchaind has no stance on the ideas of new sovereignties, either for or against.
As far as covert use of blockchains - no, I don't think they're being used "secretly", but they are being introduced in all sorts of places where the end users would be surprised and potentially dismayed: identity management in international foreign aid, monitoring of environmental and social programs, legal data rooms and health care data management. Much like in food labeling (GMO, organic, etc.) the purpose of the mark is to simultaneously create awareness of these concerns, and to highlight those companies that are addressing them.
The most salient messaging from the landing page for me seems to be "... tax avoidance ...We have witnessed the destruction of sanity that arises when social agendas are tightly-coupled to virtual currency ... we acknowledge that innovations in, and democratization of, contract law require a relationship with, and recourse to, an appropriate legal jurisdiction."
To me, when reading that, I understand it as: "we're rejecting network st*tes and 'The Sovereign Individual' types of trajectories", which it seems some with power are trying to move everybody else towards (based on tax avoidance, 100% private-based marketization coupled to virtual currency, avoiding legal jurisdiction etc)
That seems like the most important aspect for me, from what I'm reading. If the anticipation is that a lot more companies/apps could move towards blockchains for these types of reasons, then the labeling in an anticipatory strategy makes more sense to me than assuaging consumer concerns today (because I don't think those concerns are really out there, for a typical person visiting a webapp?)
I just asked a non-web dev what they think about the label and the concern of applications they are interacting with using blockchains. They asked: "Is that something happening that nobody knows about?" (e.g. applications implementing blockchains covertly?)
My response is no, not really– I don't think web applications at large are implementing blockchains without people knowing about it. However, billionaires are trying to implement blockchain-centric states and systems without people generally knowing about it. And the latter is something I think people are generally much more concerned about, compared to the former (risk of an average website/app they come across using blockchain without them knowing about it.)
One other point here — if part of the Unchaind label is for web companies/applications to make a commitment to not go in the direction described in the preceeding paragraph (e.g. "Sovereign Individual", network st*tes), that also makes sense to me. But then the strategy is more focused on getting commitments from web companies/applications to not adapt this harmful practice, rather than a consumer-focused strategy of trying to provide guidance to people. I think these nuances matter and lead to different directions for such an initiative, thus the question on strategy at the top.