分类：Web3 & Bitcoin

Notes on the “Network City-State”

Culture & Public Commentary2023.10.26
Notes on the “Network City-State”
During the summer break I was deeply involved in drafting the SEEDAO white paper, including several consecutive days of offline salons, as well as some online written exchanges. The concept of “digital polity” or “network polity” is SEEDAO’s signature idea, and I had many discussions about it as well. Below I have excerpted part of my written Q&A on the network polity and compiled it into this article. When I have time later, I will also write a separate piece to explore it. (By the way, I do indeed appreciate some of SEEDAO’s characteristics and ideas, but that does not mean I support all of the practices it has actually…
internet blockchain decentralization Huawendao
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2023年10月26日
“Metaverse” from the Perspective of the History of Technology — The New Environment of the Information Revolution

History of Science & Scholarship2023.08.15
“Metaverse” from the Perspective of the History of Technology — The New Environment of the Information Revolution
This article was published in Dialectics of Nature Studies, 2023, No. 7, Vol. 39; it was written last April and has only just appeared in print. Abstract: The concept of the “metaverse” contains two layers of meaning, “meta” and “verse.” The former is immersion, or rather transcendence; the latter is openness or connectivity. The metaverse has the characteristic of surpassing itself and referring back to itself, and this characteristic is embedded within the trend of the history of technology from cave paintings onward. The metaverse is not virtual reality, and one cannot confuse immersion with realism. The metaverse does not seek to approximate reality, but to transcend it. The reason…
media history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology knowledge
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2023年8月15日
Full-Sensory Games vs. Fully On-Chain Games—Two Directions for the Metaverse Revolution

Culture & Public Commentary2023.08.08
Full-Sensory Games vs. Fully On-Chain Games—Two Directions for the Metaverse Revolution
This article was originally the topic of a talk I gave when I took part in a PTADAO sharing session as a friend. After the talk, I organized the text myself, and it was almost as if I reworked the whole line of thought from scratch, forming a more complete article. After it was published on “Yuaibo Sanguan,” it was retitled On Fully On-Chain Games: Reality Is Not Unreal, Virtuality Is Not False, Greatness Does Not Rely on Planning. This article can be counted as a “small synthesis” of my recent thinking. I’m posting the original here. 1 The game of innovation: the only way to achieve great innovation is…
culture freedom media history of technology
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2023年8月8日
Philosophy of Metaverse Space (Introduction)

Philosophy & Thought2023.07.20
Philosophy of Metaverse Space (Introduction)
This is a topic I have wanted to write about for some time now, including “blockchain philosophy of time” and “metaverse philosophy of space.” These fields can bring into play my own intellectual grounding in Heidegger + McLuhan, and also form a continuous thread from classical philosophy all the way to cyberpunk. It is a very big topic, and for the moment I find it hard to produce an answer that satisfies even myself. But this year’s phenomenology and philosophy of technology conference is about to be held, and I hope to speak on it, so I have hastily put together some words to turn in as an initial stopgap….
philosophy phenomenology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology blockchain
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2023年7月20日
Why PoS Ethereum Cannot Become a Base Currency

Culture & Public Commentary2023.06.10
Why PoS Ethereum Cannot Become a Base Currency
On the struggle between PoW and PoS in cryptocurrency, I often state my views, but it seems I have never set them out fully on the blog. Yesterday, just as a netizen wrote in asking about this, I wrote a few paragraphs, and I’m posting them here as well. Asked whether Ethereum might replace Bitcoin as the value-preserving currency of future society, my view is as follows: Of course Ethereum can preserve value, but I oppose POS currencies as the standard value-preserving currency, and this is for political reasons. POS provides a mechanism for risk-free interest-bearing accumulation, so value preservers can keep earning interest continuously. Even fiat currency does not…
Bitcoin politics blockchain Huawendao
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2023年6月10日
Review of Radical Markets: Also on Why the Crypto Movement Should Be Radical

Culture & Public Commentary2023.06.10
Review of Radical Markets: Also on Why the Crypto Movement Should Be Radical
This piece, along with the earlier The Liberation of People in the Digital Age, was written as copy for PTADAO. The final text was excerpted to form A One-Page Clear White; if you’re interested, you can go take a look there. Here I’m posting the original version of the book review. Lately I’ve joined some Web3 chat groups and occasionally put out a few views. For example, a few days ago I was discussing the significance of stablecoins with someone, and I said that cryptocurrency was from the very beginning meant to upend the old system of central banks and fiat money. If the entire blockchain market turns around and…
book reading freedom Web3 Bitcoin
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2023年6月10日
Immortality: The Intrinsic Connection Between Transhumanism and Web3

Culture & Public Commentary2023.06.08
Immortality: The Intrinsic Connection Between Transhumanism and Web3
This piece was submitted to the article by the new media outlet “歪脖三观,” founded and hosted by Jiang Gungun, and I was honored that it became the inaugural founding text of that media platform. When it was published, it was shortened and polished, and the title was changed to “The Ambition of Blockchain: Anti-Keynesianism, Public Life, and Transhumanism.” Everyone is welcome to repost and follow it. I am posting here the unedited original draft: EDCON2023 in Montenegro has come to a close. In addition to the usual topics of the crypto community, this year’s grand gathering also had a substantial block of topics related to transhumanism/longevity. The earlier “A Conversation…
technology Bitcoin blockchain modernity
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2023年6月8日
On the “Pattern” of the Digital City-State

Culture & Public Commentary2023.05.12
On the “Pattern” of the Digital City-State
Today I chatted again for a while with baiyu from SeeDAO, and in the process I laid out my thoughts on building digital city-states. What I chiefly want to promote is Arendt's thought, and to rebuild the “public sphere” in the digital age. SeeDAO’s ideal is to become a “digital city-state for 1 million Web3 nomads.” My quip is: this number, one million, is too big to be big, yet too small to be small. Too big in the sense that if Web3 is truly the general trend, then in the future there cannot possibly be only 1 million “Web3 nomads”; just the Chinese-speaking population alone would have to be…
Web3 politics blockchain public sphere
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2023年5月12日
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age

Culture & Public Commentary2023.01.03
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age
This essay is a brief ideological manifesto written for a certain project. The idea was not initiated by me, but I was the main writer. It has something to do with ‘华文道’, but it is actually for another project proposal: https://prickly-ink-544.notion.site/da60bd1225aa49c2b6868d7011a617b3 In fact, the ideas of ‘华文道’ also broadly accord with this essay, so the two can be used as references for each other. As Marx said, “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Capital), every technological transformation is an opportunity to build a new social form and reshape human civilization. What we are seeing now is that a series of…
freedom Web3 blockchain public sphere
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2023年1月3日
NFT Value Viewed Through The Philosophy of Money

Philosophy & Thought2023.01.03
NFT Value Viewed Through The Philosophy of Money
This article was published in China Book Review. For reprints, please contact the magazine. Citation format as follows: Hu Yilin.The Value of NFT from the Perspective of The Philosophy of Money[J]. China Book Review, 2022(12):7-17 Introduction: Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money elaborates a relativist version of Kantian transcendental philosophy, explaining the origin of value through “distanciation” and the formation of objectivity through exchange activity. Simmel criticizes the modern monetary economy for inverting means and ends, severing property possession from the freedom of the subject. Seen from Simmel’s perspective, cryptocurrencies or NFTs, supported by blockchain, seem to contain certain opportunities to help people reshape their values, prompting them to recall the…
philosophy technology Web3 Heidegger
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2023年1月3日