Blockchains are an alternative system for promise enforcement, fundamentally different from any system human history has seen before. Promises in blockchain systems are enforced by miners, who — in reasonably competitive mining markets — have limited ability, and weak incentives, to do anything other than execute others' promises roughly according ... See more

In order to build efficient, combustion-based generators, we needed to build them at economies of scale and extensive transmission and distribution networks to transport power along with them. Those wires are vulnerable to being knocked out by storms (or even squirrels), leading to blackouts, or supply shortages leading to cascading failure. That w... See more

Electric lighting, for example, did not simply replace candles and oil lamps on a 1-to-1 basis, but instead opened up entirely new residential, commercial, industrial, artistic, and scientific applications. Refrigeration did not just replace ice boxes on a 1-to-1 basis, but instead found new applications ranging from air conditioning and dehumidifi... See more

Slide decks hide can shallow thinking. Narratively structured memos are harder to write because they require better thinking. It’s worth it.

On the upside, regulatory steps are already being taken to reform how DERs are integrated as a grid resource – though seeing the process through won’t be easy. In 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission introduced FERC Order No. 2222. This order requires grid operators across the U.S. to develop plans to provide DERs access to wholesale ener... See more

Crypto-economic protocols allow for people to coordinate their economic activities without a centralized, rent-extracting party, and will help move these industries from corporate feudalism to meritocratic capitalism and freer markets.

It's unfair to judge Ethereum (which launched 7 years ago) or Solana (which launched 2 years ago), both of which do claim to enable "use cases", by Bitcoin's 13-year history. Smart contract platforms are a different technology than blockchains, even if they are colloquially used interchangeably. Many major projects on Ethereum, have only a few year... See more