Daily Balajisms – Pseudonymous Economy

Digitally-native work environment for global talent and AI

Pseudonymous economy is Balaji Srinivasan’s idea for a digitally-native form of work enabled by zero-knowledge blockchain technology and AI. 

Bitcoin is a digitally-native form of money. Protocols like Ethereum and Solana brought us programable money and a truly global commerce ruled by code. Pseudonymous economy prevents both cancelation and discrimination and creates meritocracy of global talent.

Balaji Srinivasan often says that internet increases variance. It brought us binge-watching of Netflix series for many hours and a few second clips on TikTok. People use Uber for rides that can be just hundreds of meters to go around the block, but also hundred kilometers to go between cities.

You can make a longitudinal arbitrage, and work from Nigeria for a Norwegian company, thanks to tech innovations like Starlink and cultural/moral innovations like remote work. You can be paid in cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or your stable coins of choice. Pseudonymous work is the next step.

Zero-knowledge blockchain protocols let people disclose only partial information with viewing keys, like their age or skills, while keeping their pseudonymity. Remote work as a cultural shift happened because of Covid-19 pandemics and lockdowns. Pseudonymous work can become a cultural/moral innovation because people fear both cancelation and discrimination. And AI zoom filters will soon help you to look and sound as you want.

Libertarians and conservatives fear cancelation, progressives fear discrimination. Techno-progressives fear technological stagnation. Pseudonymous work solves that. It might happen, because machines need it too.

Balaji discusses how the advancement of something like AGI will happen only when you can do a group Turing test on an economy/society of AI agents that collaborate between each other and humans. If you can’t distinguish a team of humans from a team of AI collaborators online, you have achieved another AI breakthrough. And for that you need a digitally-native work environment – a pseudonymous economy.

The US founders were pseudonymous. We are going back to the future. Balaji says that the global internet is to the US, what America was to Britain. A torch-bearer of Western ideals.

Pseudonymity is not anonymity. Anonymous identity is a disposable identity. Pseudonymous identity preserves reputation over time. And this can be transferred with innovations like z-karma enabled by zero-knowledge blockchain technology.

Internet increases variance – we got more downward deviations, like conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers, but also upward deviations, like Satoshi-anon who founded bitcoin. Internet retribalizes the world into memetic tribes fighting over noosphere. It gives us a chance to have many identities and turns individuals into Deleuzian dividuals.

Pseudonymous economy will help to create societies of AI agents and enable a true human-AI collaboration on the internet - what Alexander Bard and Daniel Schmachtenberger call symbiotic intelligence.