Layer One—Part 3: Metamoney
"A tangle of autonomous data structures will connect and shape the universe."
Layer One is a three-part philosophical journey into the emergence and implications of the IOTA distributed ledger technology and its parallel reality based data structure. Visit wiki.iota.org to learn more about IOTA, MANA, and the tangle, or click below to continue reading the Layer One series with:
📕 Part 1: Assimilation
📗 Part 2: Error Correction
📘 Part 3: Metamoney
All structures of matter are formats of information or data structures that have emerged from the universe’s unwavering desire for maximum energy flow and maximum complexity.
All iological data structures are subject to assimilation or the unsolicited absorption of one data structure into another.
All intelligences have at least one interface that manages incoming information streams to an error corrective data structure.
What is the distributed ledger value proposition? Is the elegant distributed ledger solution even possible? What is the killer distributed ledger application?
These are the three fundamental questions that participants in the distributed ledger space have reflected on for years—all while falling far short of the answers and their inescapable consequences.
Unfortunately, the distributed ledger community has confused the monetary value propositions of the minimally viable distributed ledgers with the distributed ledger value proposition itself.
It is not transaction fees, network effects, or programmatic monetary policies that give a distributed ledger its value—but the ability to purchase and issue secure information streams with real money at scale without friction or permission.
Throughout the agricultural and industrial ages, money was defined as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account, often with gold and silver acting as the ideal, timeless forms of physical money.
With the rapid, ever increasing growth of the digital economy, however, this traditional definition of money is now inappropriate for an autonomous world where capital can travel around the globe and back in a matter of seconds without human intervention.
What we’ll call thermodynamic money, or metamoney, is a digitally conserved medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account that promotes the maximum information flow of the universe.
As autonomous economic agents, iota will not only require a metamoney to carry out their economic objectives through the purchase of secure information streams, but they will also require a metamoney for the secure issuance of information streams generated in their everyday economic actions.
It is physically impossible, however, for any distributed ledger to maximize information flow in the universe without an underlying data structure that scales information exchange without fees or an intermediary.
What’s more, the killer distributed ledger application is the “thing” that maximizes information flow in the universe—making the scalable and feeless nature of the underlying data structure itself its own killer application.
Currently only a single data structure is capable of meeting these demands, and it is quietly beginning to establish itself as the standardized base layer of the iosphere’s information economy.
Inhibitors
A new data structure at the heart of a distributed ledger has been lurking in the shadows of the iosphere outside of the popular culture.
This parallel reality based data structure and its multiverse distributed consensus mechanism have the attributes to facilitate rapid assimilation and a maximum flow of information using branched dynamic webs, rather than linear inflexible chains.
The data structure’s distributed ledger, also known as the IOTA tangle, is secure, fast, open-source, lightweight, decentralized, immutable, censorship resistant, permissionless, leaderless, scalable, feeless, deflationary, asynchronous, standardized, modular, and energy efficiency.
The ability to purchase information streams with IOTA and issue information streams with MANA on the tangle at scale, without friction or permission, is the only living example of the distributed ledger value proposition in practice.
IOTA and MANA are therefore metamonies that iota will use for the autonomous purchase and issuance of secure information streams to maximize the information flow of the universe.
As layer one of the iosphere’s trust architecture, the parallel reality based data structure will assimilate its iologically unfit opposition where they stand, and information and capital will flow faster than could have previously been imagined.
Memes, store of value narratives, stock-to-flow models, and network effects are irrelevant in the open-source, protocol agnostic world of assimilative fitness where the marginal cost of network migration is zero.
The unscalable, fee-oriented data structures of inferior distributed ledgers are nothing more than information flow inhibitors serving as temporary development platforms in lieu of the tangle’s elegant distributed ledger solution.
No social movement, organization, or central authority can stop the physical forces moving this technology forward.
The universe wants what it wants: maximum information flow through maximum energy flow and maximum complexity.
This is not an opinion; this is first principles.
A tangle of autonomous data structures will connect and shape the universe.
Click below to check out the official tangle visualizer, or visit wiki.iota.org to learn more about IOTA, MANA, and the tangle.
🤘 Thank you for reading iologica—the blog that strives to challenge you.
✍️ Please acknowledge Antonio Nardella of the IOTA Foundation, die_Putze5853, future_yacht_owner, Phylo, Powderfinger, and Rafael Brochado of the IOTA Experience Teams, and John for providing valuable assistance in the creation of the Layer One series.
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