Simplicity

I have prepared a technical article with a mapping of all the current problems in the crypto ecosystem, And what it will take to push the whole ecosystem forward, In it, I refer to technical things that are difficult to understand and explain.

but I could not finish it nor did I feel that I would want to publish it…

My heart didn’t let me and as you know the heart feels things that the mind and mouth are not yet able to express…

I started thinking about why I do not want to publish it… Then It hit me

It’s just too long and complex

There is a famous saying

“being simple is not simple”

And this is much more noticeable in the crypto world where even really smart people can feel they are getting lost in complexity & things are getting senseless.

Why are crypto projects so complex to explain?

The answer lies in the main problem that Bitcoin has tried to solve and in the broad surface for solving the problem.

Usually, a project tries to solve a specific problem with the help of technological innovation

“our innovation will save you time or money”

Then things make sense and are relatively simple

There is a problem within a specific domain and there is a solution within that domain
using some innovation.

But in crypto, it’s not like that

There is a problem in the world of economy / society / software / internet / distributed computing infrastructure / privacy / government / information security

And there is some crypto project trying to solve it

with some innovation in these fields…

• software
• Encryption
• Mathematics
• economy
• game theory
• philosophy
• Computing infrastructure
• A new method of government
• & more…

Crypto has a wider surface of problems and a wider surface for problem-solving which in turn introduces new problems

And as a result, one can get lost

You’re having a conversation with someone in the field and the conversation can move without noticing From Computer Infrastructure to Economics to Philosophy to Game Theory to Computer Science Back to Philosophy….

There is an internal joke that many developers in the field will identify with

Crypto will solve the world’s problems, yeah right

On the one hand, the technology and the ideas it presents have tremendous potential and anyone can feel it.

On the other hand, the technology introduces so many new complexities that it can barely solve its own problems,
recently we started hearing people talk about Centralized decentralized Finance CeDefi

How can it be both decentralized and centralized? And what is the value of cryptocurrencies if they are managed on a private system?!

In short, it is a mess,
and I know some of you would have arguments for this approach (which is kind of opposite to the initial Bitcoin white paper)

but in my opinion, this is a big signal from the ecosystem that we are trying to work around the complexity we just have schlep blindness to it.

The hidden and most important feature in any system and in any organization is simplicity

Why simplicity because simplicity pays off

Simplicity for users to interact with, simplicity for developers to develop, simplicity for marketers to explain, and sales to sell.
Simplicity helps unite everyone around the same idea,

a few years ago I had the privilege of working with a senior software consultant on an interesting project in AdTech that included working on server infrastructure and also some client-side

we worked on all sorts of things around the stability of our servers because they were supposed to withstand large volumes of traffic, and we launched fast not really ready for the load this was before DevOps was a real buzzword, and my manager asked me to take advantage of the hours with the consultant to push some new features in “by the way” …
when I tried to do that

the consultant Stood up and said

“the only new feature that will get in this system is stability!”

This is exactly how I feel about the world of crypto at the moment

I really want to offer another solution to another problem

But I just feel that the thing the crypto community needs most right now is simplicity

“The only new invovation that will get in this eco-system is simplicity”

Just to talk at eye level and present a problem & solution in a simple way.

in crypto, simplicity is even more important because complexity has the tendency to centralize power in the hands of the specialized few, and that creates a lack of transparency which is exactly what caused the 2008 crisis where only a few specialized Finacial experts knew what was going on for better or for worst,
this very crisis is what decentralized currency systems aim to solve but can we solve complexity by replacing it with a different type of complexity?

So how do we make things a little simpler?

To be continued…