Author Topic: 2020: A Call For DApps & DAO's  (Read 6496 times)

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Offline santaclause102

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Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

To prevent hijacking this thread, directing discussion with regards to Future Tech Farm DAC proposal here:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=8997.msg116623#msg116623

Thanks to Tom for starting this call for DACs!


Offline arhag

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My intention is not at all to diminish what you are doing. It sounds really cool. But I am interested to see what your thoughts are on something like Soylent? I mean in some sense it is a very depressing way forward for humanity. People enjoy eating fresh natural food. But there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by taking advantage of economies of scale to farm nutrients and then convert the nutrition into a form that can travel really well over long distances without spoiling. And I don't even think it would need to travel that far. Someday in the future, it could be possible to grow the nutrients in well-controlled, large bio-factories powered by nuclear power located not too far away from major population centers.
This is a bit off topic and has nothing to do with Gingerbread's DAC proposal.
It is a myth that food can be enhanced by braking it down into its "essential" parts where after only the valuable parts are taken and put into a product (powder or liquid).
A few things to mention are:
If we take away some parts, what are the parts we don't need? Mostly fibers and water are left out which are crucial too. There is nothing not crucial in natural foods. There is just imbalances. But you can not make a product out of that...
Second: There are many new discoveries made about substances science did not see any value in or did not know before. It is hybris to believe we have come to an end (or even have gotten far) in this process of understanding nature.
Third: Our bodies (incl. digesting organs) have adapted over a long time to the types of foods we consume (not a proof but an indicator that condensing them could be not suited to our bodies).
Who profits from such believes that foods can be condensed is the supplement industry.

The parts we don't need are the excess that the body must dispose of either through urine or feces or sweat. Some amount of fiber is also necessary it seems. There is also the worry of building up the excess in the body (hypertoxicity). The idea is to get the balance right (at least good enough) for each human to minimize the waste and negative consequences, and to do this at a low cost.

I am not claiming we know everything about nutrition. My only claim is that we cannot learn more without scientific experimentation. To the extent people are voluntarily willing to try these sorts of diets that have very precise measurements of the nutrients contained within, we can learn a lot about what we still do not know about the human body's needs. That is after all how we learned about so many vitamins (people suffered from malnutrition because their diet wasn't giving them the essential vitamins they needed, and it was only after investigating the reason behind their suffering that we were able to learn that fact and improve our understanding of the biology).

You are right that this is getting off topic. So, perhaps we should carry this conversation into the random discussion sub-forum if people are still interested to continue.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 12:14:30 am by arhag »

Offline santaclause102

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My intention is not at all to diminish what you are doing. It sounds really cool. But I am interested to see what your thoughts are on something like Soylent? I mean in some sense it is a very depressing way forward for humanity. People enjoy eating fresh natural food. But there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by taking advantage of economies of scale to farm nutrients and then convert the nutrition into a form that can travel really well over long distances without spoiling. And I don't even think it would need to travel that far. Someday in the future, it could be possible to grow the nutrients in well-controlled, large bio-factories powered by nuclear power located not too far away from major population centers.
This is a bit off topic and has nothing to do with Gingerbread's DAC proposal.
It is a myth that food can be enhanced by braking it down into its "essential" parts where after only the valuable parts are taken and put into a product (powder or liquid).
A few things to mention are:
If we take away some parts, what are the parts we don't need? Mostly fibers and water are left out which are crucial too. There is nothing not crucial in natural foods. There is just imbalances. But you can not make a product out of that...
Second: There are many new discoveries made about substances science did not see any value in or did not know before. It is hybris to believe we have come to an end (or even have gotten far) in this process of understanding nature.
Third: Our bodies (incl. digesting organs) have adapted over a long time to the types of foods we consume (not a proof but an indicator that condensing them could be not suited to our bodies).
Who profits from such believes that foods can be condensed is the supplement industry.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2014, 11:38:26 pm by delulo »

Offline arhag

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... still big farms have a WAY higher *efficiency* .. just consider the big machines they can use .. and efficiency is an important issue when it comes to energy supply and the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. global warming)

Good point Xeroc - I agree energy supply is an important factor, but I don't believe its isolated on just the farms.  In the U.S. food is shipped, on average, about 1900 miles from the source of production. 

Going off on a tangent here, but there are also a lot of REALLY big issues I have with the sheer volume of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides being dumped over the plants that are inevitably accelerating climate change and damaging ecosystems.  I don't have issues with GMO's (again, technologically objective perspective); what I do have an issue with is why GMO's are developed, enabling monopolies to force the ever increasing usage of harmful chemicals.

I also believe this goes beyond efficiencies.  I was catching drinks with my boss last night and he brought up a really good point; do we really know what we're putting into our bodies?  Like really??  I would love to know 100% exactly what inorganic materials and what ratios of those materials make up the plant matter I'm ingesting.  I would also like to have the assurance that I'm not ingesting chemicals "known to the state of California" to cause cancer.  And I'd like fresh strawberries when there's a foot of snow outside.  Or heirloom tomatoes.  Or arugula where the flavor profile is dialed in just right.

This is just the tip of the ice berg with what's possible and I say we bring back the flavor first and foremost. :-D

My intention is not at all to diminish what you are doing. It sounds really cool. But I am interested to see what your thoughts are on something like Soylent? I mean in some sense it is a very depressing way forward for humanity. People enjoy eating fresh natural food. But there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by taking advantage of economies of scale to farm nutrients and then convert the nutrition into a form that can travel really well over long distances without spoiling. And I don't even think it would need to travel that far. Someday in the future, it could be possible to grow the nutrients in well-controlled, large bio-factories powered by nuclear power located not too far away from major population centers.

And I am confident there will always be ample demand for fresh, natural foods for the purpose of luxury and pleasure. But if that becomes something more like a twice a week thing, people could afford to pay higher prices for the better-quality (compared to what most people eat today that is) natural foods. And it is still not clear to me why the economies of scale provided by centralization wouldn't make the high quality foods cheaper than the decentralized alternative. Or is the case that the decentralization is worth the cost for the security it provides families, since food is essential to living? But then you also need to decentralize the other dependencies necessary to grow the food and keep people alive and satisfied: power, water, waste management, mesh networks. Otherwise, not being dependent on centralized institutions for food is kind of meaningless when you are still dependent on them for your electricity/gas and water supply.

« Last Edit: September 16, 2014, 05:49:23 pm by arhag »

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n


we went WAY off-topic here

Yes!  [/soapbox rant]

Looking forward to hearing about more DACs!


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Offline xeroc

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Good point Xeroc - I agree energy supply is an important factor, but I don't believe its isolated on just the farms.  In the U.S. food is shipped, on average, about 1900 miles from the source of production. 

Going off on a tangent here, but there are also a lot of REALLY big issues I have with the sheer volume of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides being dumped over the plants that are inevitably accelerating climate change and damaging ecosystems.  I don't have issues with GMO's (again, technologically objective perspective); what I do have an issue with is why GMO's are developed, enabling monopolies to force the ever increasing usage of harmful chemicals.

I also believe this goes beyond efficiencies.  I was catching drinks with my boss last night and he brought up a really good point; do we really know what we're putting into our bodies?  Like really??  I would love to know 100% exactly what inorganic materials and what ratios of those materials make up the plant matter I'm ingesting.  I would also like to have the assurance that I'm not ingesting chemicals "known to the state of California" to cause cancer.  And I'd like fresh strawberries when there's a foot of snow outside.  Or heirloom tomatoes.  Or arugula where the flavor profile is dialed in just right.

This is just the tip of the ice berg with what's possible and I say we bring back the flavor first and foremost. :-D
This is a VERY FAR reaching discussion and I can feel your concerns .. but .. we went WAY off-topic here  :-\

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

Not everyone will agree with me but I believe farming to be one of the most broken industries in existence today.  The vast majority of food isn't being grown for taste or nutrition anymore - it's being grown to travel (at the unnecessary expense of precious resources).   

You are reading my mind it seems. Could not agree more.
Actually millions of people in arguably  the richest country in the world, have never actually tasted tomatoes. And consider the red tasteless s**t in their local store to be indeed what the label says. It should be renamed to - 'produced for transportation purposes red thing'.  The list just starts and does not end with the tomatoes of course.

+5%

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

... still big farms have a WAY higher *efficiency* .. just consider the big machines they can use .. and efficiency is an important issue when it comes to energy supply and the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. global warming)

Good point Xeroc - I agree energy supply is an important factor, but I don't believe its isolated on just the farms.  In the U.S. food is shipped, on average, about 1900 miles from the source of production. 

Going off on a tangent here, but there are also a lot of REALLY big issues I have with the sheer volume of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides being dumped over the plants that are inevitably accelerating climate change and damaging ecosystems.  I don't have issues with GMO's (again, technologically objective perspective); what I do have an issue with is why GMO's are developed, enabling monopolies to force the ever increasing usage of harmful chemicals.

I also believe this goes beyond efficiencies.  I was catching drinks with my boss last night and he brought up a really good point; do we really know what we're putting into our bodies?  Like really??  I would love to know 100% exactly what inorganic materials and what ratios of those materials make up the plant matter I'm ingesting.  I would also like to have the assurance that I'm not ingesting chemicals "known to the state of California" to cause cancer.  And I'd like fresh strawberries when there's a foot of snow outside.  Or heirloom tomatoes.  Or arugula where the flavor profile is dialed in just right.

This is just the tip of the ice berg with what's possible and I say we bring back the flavor first and foremost. :-D

Offline xeroc

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... still big farms have a WAY higher *efficiency* .. just consider the big machines they can use .. and efficiency is an important issue when it comes to energy supply and the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. global warming)

Offline tonyk

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Not everyone will agree with me but I believe farming to be one of the most broken industries in existence today.  The vast majority of food isn't being grown for taste or nutrition anymore - it's being grown to travel (at the unnecessary expense of precious resources).   

You are reading my mind it seems. Could not agree more.
Actually millions of people in arguably  the richest country in the world, have never actually tasted tomatoes. And consider the red tasteless s**t in their local store to be indeed what the label says. It should be renamed to - 'produced for transportation purposes red thing'.  The list just starts and does not end with the tomatoes of course.
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline robrigo

-------------------------------

2020: A Call For DApps & DAO's

http://koinify.com/blog/2020-a-call-for-dapps-and-daos/

--------------------------------

Hey guys,

We're writing to share with you our vision of how we see the future, and where we see this decentralized application industry taking us. With the 2020: A Call For DApps & DAO's - we lay out where we see these companies going, and what we believe will foster development, growth, and adoption of this technology as a whole.

--------------------------------


Hey Tom!  Welcome to the BitShares community  :)

I'll take this opportunity to share my vision of a DAC I've been working on.

My name is Brian Falther and I believe from now through the next couple of decades, we're going to see the emergence of DACs for the production of physical items.  I think one way to think about it could be "the internet of things 2.0" or what I've been referring to in conversations with close friends as "the blockchain of things" movement (...there's already evidence that others are thinking about this too - IBM's proposed Adept platform).  I'm super excited to see the 'physical infrastructure' section on your blog post!

The DAC we're working on is a decentralized autonomous food production platform called Future Tech Farm.  This analogy is still fresh, so let me know if it makes sense: it's like Uber, but for farming.  We want to build a platform where anyone can be a farmer without any geographic, or knowledge-based prerequisites.  Our goal is to enable anyone to grow food for themselves, their family, and properly incentivize them to grow for others too.  Imagine hyper-local produce delivered via drones to your doorstep for less than what you'd pay at Walmart with higher quality than what you'd find at Whole Foods.  We believe this is the point in history where farming will follow what the computer industry did in the 50's & 60's; from large mainframes with umbilical-corded terminals to PCs... same analogy for farming.  This is the first time in history its becoming technologically and economically feasible.

The concept is based upon this fact I believe to be true:  If food production existed solely on technology (which is developing at an exponential rate and eliminates all uncontrolled variables, like weather); the cost of growing food will be that of electricity.  If anyone else is a Singularitist like myself, you'd agree with the hypothesis of the law of accelerating returns which will enable the cost of electricity to continually approach zero until it's too cheap to meter. 

Here's the end game: What would the world be like if food were essentially free and required no human labor inputs?  My hypothesis is there will be a massive amount of cognitive surplus to work on developing creativity-based solutions (something computer don't quite do well yet...).  People would have the opportunity to work on what they want to do, not work a job they don't like because they HAVE to, in order to put food on the table...     

Not everyone will agree with me but I believe farming to be one of the most broken industries in existence today.  The vast majority of food isn't being grown for taste or nutrition anymore - it's being grown to travel (at the unnecessary expense of precious resources).   

I'd be happy to go into further detail about the platform may potentially operate, but the basics are as follows:
  • People will autonomously grow their own fresh produce in a home grow system (size will range from 'desktop' to scalable, modular & expandable systems the size of large rooms or a basement)
  • Each personal home grow system will be outfitted with a sensory system collecting data from every variable needed to grow
  • Every node will be connected to each other and each node on the network will be constantly striving to be as efficient as the most efficient node in the network (a machine learning neural network with a positive feedback loop)
  • Monetization, incentives, & tracking/security of the food produced will be logged with blockchains

The UX would be something like an Amazon Fresh front end and food would be delivered to (or harvested directly at) your living space, exactly when you need it.

After searching for over 2 years on how this system may be able to monitor and track the network at scale, AND has the ability to monetize & incentivize the bootstrapping of the network; I landed on bitcoin and blockchain technology. ...As a technologically objective engineer - I quickly found my way to the BitShares community and the rest - is history [in the making]  ;D.  Much like BitShares, we're looking to create an industry that solves problems for billions of people.  Over the next 3-5 years, we'll be engineering the initial hardware development for the grow systems and bootstrap the development of the network to bring it online.  I imagine many many opportunities for embedded systems startups to work in the space. 

My background is Mechanical Engineering, my co-founder is also a mechanical engineer currently working on his Master's in Robotics at Northwestern.  We're in the active mode of putting together a world-class team to begin operating in stealth.  There isn't a doubt in my mind that BitShares (both the technology and the community) will play a very large role in realizing this vision.  If you'd like to learn more about myself, my co-founder and our progress over the past few years, check out: http://www.futuretechfarm.com/about/#founders.  There are a couple of videos of public pitches we've made, along with some of the details from our early investors & pre-seed funding.  We're working on building out the roadmap for our seed round of funding now.  I would love to initiate conversation about working with the BitShares community, and core dev team, to do so through the BitShares ecosystem within the next year.  Any questions - feel free to send me a PM, e-mail (contact info on website), or shoot a tweet to @brianfalther or @futuretechfarm. I'd also be more than happy to chat on Google Hangout, Skype, or the BitShares mumble server.

To give you an idea with where we're at now, the most recent development for FTF is with regards to continuing the next phase build out of our team.  I'm a big fan of Peter Diamandis and the work he has done.  Peter has developed a mastermind group of entrepreneurs and exponential thinkers from all over the world who meet each year in January to discuss emerging technologies and philosophies that will change the world as we know it.  The name of this group is called Abundance 360 (here's the website: http://abundance360summit.com/ - Apply! I'm sure many of you would also be a great fit).  I sent in my application a few weeks back, went through an interview last week, and was accepted.  I don't personally have the money to pay for the membership and make the trip, but will be crowdfunding my way there (keep an eye out in the near future... I'll be looking for sponsors!)  I know if I can get in front of Peter and his network of insane connections; we'll be able to put together the dream team needed to make this a reality.  There's also the added benefit of this year's summit having a module & discussion based entirely on bitcoin and blockchain tech - I'm SURE I can get in front of a crowd and speak about BitShares.

Peter was kind enough to make a personalized response to me too!
https://vimeo.com/106199286


If this resonates with anyone and you're interested in working with us - let me know!  My co-founder and I would love to have a conversation with you (we meet online weekly on Tuesdays at 8pm eastern - we'd be happy for you to jump into our hangout and chat about ideas and progress; BYOB)

Tom - if you'd be willing to cover what we're working on through Koinify, give me a shout! 

-Brian

TLDR; Robots, autonomously growing food for the whole world, based on blockchain tech.

Brian- I cannot wait to see this vision come to life. You guys have been working hard on Future Tech Farm for years now and it is great to see the tools needed to develop the "technical backbone" for such an autonomous food production system starting to come into existence with the rapid and continuing innovations happening in the blockchain space. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Adept platform looks like and how it simplifies distributed IoT systems.

And man, talk about "big fish"! I will definitely support your crowd funding for the mastermind group, not only because introducing a bunch of forward thinking entrepreneurs to the DAC metaphor is never a bad thing; but also because I think both of these systems is a HUGE step towards equalization of standards of living across the globe. Let's change the world!

Offline arhag

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  • Service Listings/Ratings DAC: Think Yelp killer but it could also be used to replace App Stores.
How would that profit from a decentralized ledger?

I don't really want to get into all the nitty gritty details (especially since it is not a fully developed idea yet). But I was thinking that service providers would publicly pay particular search providers on the blockchain (and the DAC would take a cut) for promotion in their listings. These funds would allow the search providers to actually hold and make available the listing contents and review posts (metadata like hashes would be stored in the blockchain to prevent censorship) and also index the content to allow users to search through the available listings. The search providers would also rank the services in different categories on many criteria useful to users but also based on how much each service provider paid them. However the user's client would ultimately have control over what the user saw so it would reshuffle the order based on how much each service provider was funding the particular search providers that the user likes to use (which the client would automatically communicate to the service providers through metadata attached to their transactions when they pay for the services, sort of like a referral).

The goal of all this is to attempt to align incentives so that users get a no-cost ad-free experience provided by the search providers and funded by the service providers with appropriate checks and balances so that the users retain some control of what they ultimately see (and to communicate the effectiveness of a service providers payments to a search provider through an appropriate feedback loop via the automatic referral system). It may be fair to think of the DAC doing a job similar to AdWords, although the comparison isn't perfect.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2014, 11:48:30 pm by arhag »

Offline santaclause102

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How would that profit from a decentralized ledger?

Offline arhag

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A few DAC ideas floating around in my head:
  • Dominant Assurance Contract DAC (hey that's a DAC DAC!): Basically a better Kickstarter. I would also want it to allow funds to be held in reserve so that they can be released as the funders vote if certain milestones have been achieved.
  • Service Listings/Ratings DAC: Think Yelp killer but it could also be used to replace App Stores.
  • Property Rights DAC: Basically BitShares Me where the user-issued assets are a tuple of (ID of real property in the world, enforcer public key), and with a BitShares DNS-like auction mechanism that can be used to find the market price of property and make the owner pay a property tax on it to fund the enforcement of their property rights (or else they lose the property rights contract to the highest bidder). Note: enforcement can be as simple as paying for private detectives and legal defense (meaning fully compliant with local laws).