MIT Computational Law Report Column : Tour d'Horizon

May 2021, Berlin
Hello to all human and non-human readers of this research datastream
sometimes referred to as a journal. I'm Wassim Alsindi and am happy to
be here as Technology Editor at the MIT
Computational Law Report. It's a pleasure to climb aboard this fine,
seaworthy vessel - staffed by seasoned navigators - as we roam uncharted
interdisciplinary waters.

Let us now leave the lawtical metaphor behind, as we will need to
think bigger. This is the first instalment of my column and in it we
will embark upon on a tour d'horizon voyage: far beyond today's outer
edges of the law as we chart possible future trajectories for the
synthesis of silico and legis. More to come on that front.

To set the scene let's try to explain - or indeed post-hoc
rationalise - what someone like me with absolutely no formal
background, qualifications or expertise in law is even doing here. To do
this, we're going to borrow a concept from a future column, namely
epistemic
trespassing.
In this age of hybrid disciplines where technology is rapidly
reconfiguring all aspects of human existence, we must move beyond the
knowledge traditions and perceived wisdom of individual domains. To do
this requires intellectual bravery, but also self-awareness and
humility. We are all epistemic trespassers now, so let's be the good
kind.

"Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of
expertise. We should doubt that trespassers are reliable judges in
fields where they are outsiders."

Nathan Ballantyne, Mind
(2019)

It's such an exciting time to be alive! We are watching "law"
transmogrify before our very eyes from an anachronistic, scriptural
walled garden into a holistic practice pervasively embedded in
everything around us, and the old ways of thinking and doing are no
longer fit for purpose. Let's be sure to trespass respectfully,
together.

In recent times much of my work has been around interdisciplinary
approaches to what one might call "cryptoeconomics". By day this
involves conceptual design and philosophy of cryptoeconomic systems,
such as token economies and cryptocurrencies
at BlockScience. I find myself at the
intersection of systems engineering, data governance, economic
incentives and anticipatory regulation. Bleeding edge computational
law-related stuff.

Previously, I was co-founder and Managing Editor
of MIT's Cryptoeconomic
Systems journal and chair
of the associated conference series which are both based at the Media
Lab alongside the Computational Law Report. We undertook a massive
interdisciplinary effort to coalesce world-class members of the
research, industrial and policy spheres to transcend disciplinary and
institutional siloes in order to collectively mint a new scholarly field
and launch the publication. Despite my physics background, I found
myself getting on best with legal and regulatory minds.

Between 2016 and 2019 I was an independent
researcher developing novel
conceptual lenses and tools for the analysis of cryptographic tokens and
networks. The most notable output from this period was the regulatory
epistemology project TokenSpace which we'll focus on in an upcoming
column, as recent major happenings in the world of cryptocurrency law
enforcement prompt a revisit. In a nutshell, TokenSpace provides a
conceptual framework for constructing customisable taxonomies for legacy
and digital assets, converting semi-empirical discrete and continuous
variables into vector space representations. This cryptoeconomic
analysis toolkit has been presented to regulators, central bankers and
policy professionals from multiple jurisdictions. Take a 5 minute trip
to TokenSpace here.

What is cryptoeconomics anyway? As lawyers, computer scientists,
theorists and designers you are doubtless aware of some implications of
cryptoeconomics. One doesn't need to traverse the web much before an
encounter with legal frictions involving
Bitcoin,
DeFi
or
NFTs.
Even more striking are the now-regular stories of pariah states and
their citizens adopting 'alegal' technologies to evade laws of yore -
North
Korea,
Iran
and
Venezuela
provide salient examples. Just as we are all epistemic trespassers now,
one might even go as far as to say we are all on the way to becoming
cryptoeconomists too.

If you'd like to go deeper, it just so happens that I was recently
invited by some colleagues to co-write the 'Cryptoeconomics' entry in
their newly launched Glossary of Distributed
Technologies which
was published in the Internet Policy Review. Below is the 'soundbite'
definition that we settled upon. We'll have a chance to dig deeper into
this - and many other things - as my partner in epistemic crime Jaya
Klara Brekke will make an appearance on these pages in due course.

Cryptoeconomics describes an interdisciplinary, emergent and
experimental field that draws on ideas and concepts from economics,
game theory and related disciplines in the design of peer-to-peer
cryptographic systems. Cryptoeconomic systems try to guarantee certain
kinds of information security properties using incentives and/or
penalties to regulate the distribution of efforts, goods and services
in new digital economies.

Cryptoeconomics is an embryonic field at present and can be taken to
include several areas of focus: information security engineering,
mechanism design, token engineering and market design. This
portmanteau of cryptography and economics raises questions regarding
the epistemic novelty of cryptoeconomics, as distinct from its
constituent components.

So far we've covered the most obviously law-connected stuff, but I
regret to inform you that there's quite a lot more! As this column will
be circling back in upcoming weeks, let's be brief and provide only
succinct teasers here.

My evenings and weekends are spent sweeping metaphorical floors at a
para-institutional research collective we call the 0x Salon, which I
founded just over a year
ago in those carefree
pre-pandemic times. Our post-disciplinary community of theorists,
practitioners and activists holds regular offline and online
discussion sessions on unusual topics with quixotic titles such as
'Algorithmic Realism', 'The Indifference Engine' and the
aforementioned 'Epistemic Trespassing'. Visit the 0x Salon's PubPub
site to read salon reports, poetics and see upcoming open event
calls.

The 0x Salon is based at the wonderful Trust workspace for utopian conspiracy in Berlin, at which we engage in interesting projects, experiments and working groups. A future column will discuss an ongoing project 'Black
Swan' which
utilises contemporary technologies such as Quadratic
Voting in small group
contexts as catalysts for creative collaboration. There was no small
amount of 'governance intrigue' when we came to vote on project
proposals, which to me were awfully reminiscent of happenings in
prototype Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). Black Swan was
presented at the Moneylab Berlin conference in late March, at which I
participated in a discussion on 'Socialising
Tokens' - more on that soon.

Hope you found that convincing enough. If not, I'll try again next time
with a mix of latest goings-on and project deep dives. Signing off with
a few recommended materials for your perusal. Tweet me
@wassimalsindi if you want to
discuss any of the above!

Editor's Picks

Articles:
An Introduction to Extitutional Theory - Schingler & de Filippi
https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/an-introduction-to-extitutional-theory-e74b5a49ea53

Actually existing platformization: Embedding platforms in urban spaces
through partnerships - van Doorn, Mos & Bosma
https://platformlabor.net/output/criticizing-disruption-platformization-discontent

Organic Lubricant - Algorithmic Governance Offline & Online - 0x
Salon
https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/debcz7vi

Attacking DeFi with Flash Loans for Fun and Profit - Qin, Zhou,
Livshits & Gervais
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03810