Notes on The Pseudonymous Economy – Balaji Srinivasan

In a presentation first given in 2019, Balaji described the potential for a pseudonymous economy – populated by persistent, non-real names that can accrue reputation, or as he terms it, “social wealth.” Fundamentally, he argues that pseudonymity will give individuals the ability to protect their social wealth, which is today vulnerable to canceling... See more

Using pseudonyms online, in social media, and crypto transactions. If the governments’ databases get hacked, all our private online information could be made public. It will become less common to have your real name publicly online. You can still build up a reputation with a pseudonym. But your physical person can’t be canceled or damaged

As pseudonyms become more verifiable, they become more valuable. Increasingly, pseudonyms in web3 can verify inventory (money, digital goods) and history (proof of attendance, transactions, content creation). As we do work for organizations and communities under our pseudonyms, they become more valuable.

How do you build a pseudonymous reputation that is not tied to any particular platform and portable across platforms? The only satisfactory answer today is building a reputation based on your on-chain history.

I think we’re actually about to enter a Pseudonymous Economy where it won’t even be possible to discriminate against or cancel someone — because they’ll have AI-generated faces, video, audio, accents, and even language.