Calling academic researchers, developers, and activists: Let’s get together to study different redistribution approaches and make experiments with the MEV we are exposing.
Next session: November 5, 2023
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. [1]
I am grateful for all the abundance that surrounds me. Mostly fun work, mostly fun colleagues, and plenty of resources, connections, and support to satisfy my human needs. In my context inside of a cryptocurrency bubble, from my viewpoint of a nerd of the free technologies, inhabiting a wild and beautiful land that resists, so many things are becoming clear:
- These days it is challenging to be a human and live in harmony.
- Reducing everything to monetary value disturbs the cycles of life.
- The abundance of some people is built on top of the suffering of many other humans and more than human critters.
- The balance of the dominant monetary global economy depends on its permanent state of crises.
- There is no single and easy solution to this.
- The new monetary global economy that we are creating can be completely different.
- We can stay with the trouble, slow down, learn, heal.
I think the most cryptopunk thing we can do is to share this abundance so we can welcome others. Imagine one more human with the option to break free from slavery, to no longer be in debt to an abusive banker, to not be forced to serve a soulless corporation, to no longer be bound to a warring nation.
The challenge is big, which makes the curiosity to grow even bigger. We are playing with new ideas that make it very easy to recreate the same power structures of the disappointing modern economy, resulting in an even more resilient and abusive capitalism. It is just as easy to not do it, one snap to bring us back to awareness and stop, let’s just not fall there anymore. What do, then?
First, I suggest we gather in this study club. I want to understand the economic history and science that brought us here, from as many perspectives as possible. Nothing really binds us to this dominant narrative of economic power. There are other ways, let’s observe and listen to our communities, let’s [re]connect with the spirits that surround us, and give a better grounding to the economy we are creating by also embracing these old, kind, and wise ways.
Next, I suggest we dream worlds that are solar, and punk. What if we were magic and boundless beautiful beings who can bring worlds into existence by just coding the right spells? This is us, here, now 
We have the power to design, run, and evaluate the experiments that will move us towards a more conscious relation with our shared world.
The thing is, you see, that there is a loooot of money flowing through our systems. Just a few days ago a low-carb crusader decided to keep a huge pile for themselves out of one single block, and there are millions of those blocks. MEV-boost is exposing extra value that gets generated when humans relate in an economy. At Flashbots we work to illuminate this value, democratizing the participation on the system, and now it is time to explore how are we going to distribute it. We were not seeing this value before, surely now that we see it we can use use it to build post capitalist futures, together.
We have started collecting interesting readings around these topics:
- Economic History
- Protocol design
- Critical Studies of Science
- The Global South
- Religious Ecology
- Multispecies Storytelling
What is becoming clear for you, from your context, viewpoint, and land?
What can we do with our minds together?
Call for academic researchers
There is a vast bibliography on redistribution mechanisms, taxation, monetary policy, market design, history of currencies, behavioral economics, group psychology, the science of well being, funding for the arts, blockchain protocols, transaction sequencing, governance, political science, central banking, circular economies, spiritual communities, rewilding of the land, etc. We need guidance to filter through all of this material and identify the things already written and already tried that will inform our next experiments.
We want to make connections between these areas, so if you are a disappointed central banker with an interest in Latin American policies, a protocol designer with experience in bartering in farmers markets, an anthropologist researching the effects of technology in the satisfaction of societies, an artist studying the solar punk aesthetics, a sociologist doing activist participatory research, or any other unexpected mix of concerns, come join us 
Let’s share the load, approach the problem from as many disciplines as possible, and bring up to the collective everything that resonates from every one of our perspectives.
Call for activists
Many communities are resisting and exploring new and old ways to relate. We need bridges to connect to these people who are living the economy from the ground. We have to translate the messages, experiences and ideas back and forth, and with every word we will get better at understanding each other. Let’s make visible all the opportunities to transcend capitalist modernity that appear when we align the tools with the real needs of the people we care about. Let’s meet them, put our feet on the ground and ground our research to what we feel when we are planting futures together.
Call for protocol developers
Attention! Listen. The human and more than human worlds are yelling. Ignoring them is certain destruction for humanity. Let’s question our role on the system. Wealth creation unavoidably causes inequality, it is how capitalist redistribution was designed. We need other ways, other structures, other ideas. It is a lot, it is overwhelming, so let’s play with it. Breathe, relax, and hack economies. Then let’s go out and evaluate our ideas by living them with these others that called our attention. Learn from them, and continue the dance: attention, listen, hack, experience, and again!
Call for all humans
We are the economy, let’s own it, break it and recreate it, many times, in many different ways so every being has the option to feel safe and thrive.
[Re]distribution [taco] Tuesday
Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action, however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do. [2]
So, we gather! Nothing short of every perspective works.
Let’s plant a study club that will grow in multiple directions as others join and we learn with them. We can talk in a virtual room for 1 hour once a month, to sync, focus our attention on a specific topic, and review how are we adapting to the world.
Session 0: who are we?
2023-05-16T09:00:00Z
For the bootstrapping session let’s make a circle and share who we are and what calls us to this workstream. Well get to know each other, trust each other, see all the skills, knowledge and experiences that are part of the circle and see the ones that are not in it, so we can call more friends to join and help with the gaps.
We can map our ideas to the three horizons framework: what is the dominant present, what is the emergent future, and what is the turbulent transition.
We can talk about corn and the other suggested readings. I’m awestruck by corn.
I will introduce the topic of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and we can discuss how to map it to power asymmetries in the dominant economy.
Let’s also spend some time defining a topic for Session 2.
Suggested reading:
- Corn tastes better in the honor system
- Three horizons
- Do artifacts have politics?
- Seeing Wetiko
- Frontrunning the MEV crisis
We can collaborate to prepare for this session in: [Re]distribution study circle, session 0, may 2023: who are we?
Session 1: burning money and deflationary economies
2023-06-20T09:00:00Z
For the first session I suggest we explore how deflationary economies work in theory and in practice. Let’s have a presentation about the idea of burning ether, what are the reasons and possible outcomes? And then discuss, try to map a deflationary economy to our protocols and communities, let’s imagine possible experiments.
At the start of the session we can make an introduction to Ethereum for newcomers.
We can collaborate to prepare for this session in: [Re]distribution study circle, session 1, june 2023: burning money
Session 2: ???
2023-07-18T16:00:00Z
Where to we go from here? I don’t know yet, and yet I’m sure we will get there
Queue of suggested topics for the [Re]distribution study circle [add yours].
Come, join us! Leave a reply here to be invited to the next session.
