I have been a technologist my entire life.
As I described in a previous piece, Open Source, I got my first computer at the ripe old age of six. While that may be years late for the kids of today for a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma in the late 80s I was one of only a small handful of people I knew that had access to one.
Over the years this love (obsession?) of technology has led me to learn and explore many new things and, overall, has changed the trajectory of my life in ways I probably still can’t appreciate. One place I have been deeply interested in over the last few years is decentralized networks and blockchain (sometimes also called “crypto” or “Web3”).
Many times, I believe these technologies get attention for the wrong reasons - with the focus being put solely on price and speculation, along with failures that have occurred. One doesn’t need to look far across the dot com boom of the late 90’s and early 2000’s to see plenty of examples of failed business models, but out of that we got the titans of technology that exist today, and new approaches to leverage technology that have wholly changed our lives (mostly) for the better.
Blockchain is in a very similar place to where the early internet was a couple decades ago. It’s a fast moving space where many ideas are pushed forward each day, and many fail.
At their core, blockchains allow computers to make commitments. One of my favorite thinkers in this space is Chris Dixon from a16z. Chris wrote an article here that describes these systems in better detail than I ever could. In that article he said:
“Blockchains are computers that can make commitments. Traditional computers are ultimately controlled by people, either directly in the case of personal computers or indirectly through organizations. Blockchains invert this power relationship, putting the code in charge.”
Many of you might read this and wonder why this is important and I would encourage you to look across many of the problems in our world today and think about how some of those might be different if the rules were enforced by code and not by people in power.
That’s some heavy subject matter that I’m not going to dive into here, but I thought it would be important to start this piece off by giving some context on these systems for those of you that might not understand what all the fuss is about.
Proof of Work
The most prominent of all of these blockchains (today, at least) is Bitcoin. It was developed more than a decade ago by a pseudonymous person or persons in response to the Global Financial Crisis that happened when the housing bubble popped. Satoshi, the pseudonymous founder, felt we needed an alternative to the current monetary system and developed Bitcoin to try and be just that.
Satoshi disappeared a few years after and since then Bitcoin has 1) never been hacked, 2) never gone down, and 3) continues to run, for the most part, exactly as it was designed to. If you have ever worked around technology or centralized systems, you know that having a network that runs at the scale of Bitcoin and has these qualities is a marvel of modern engineering no matter what your stance on the use case and applicability of the technology.
At its core Bitcoin uses what is known as a proof of work (PoW) system where computers validate the transactions. The explanation on how this works (and the alternative methods for running these networks) would take way more space than we have here
For the purposes of this article the most important thing you can know is this: proof of work is all about legitimacy.
PoW proves that the network is doing its job in a way that is mathematically verifiable. It proves that the blockchain is functioning and it ensures that when you are participating in the network you have the same access and rights as anyone else. This is very different from the traditional systems where access and rights can be subjective based on the humans that make those decisions.
Legitimacy
And this is where my comparison to our organization comes into play.
A week or so ago I was at the Market in the “she shed” in a planning exercise with Stacey and a few other members of the team, along with a consultant we have been working with. This consultant has been instrumental in assessing key elements of how we run today while providing helpful guidance and recommendations for how we might improve and grow moving forward.
After finishing our meeting he had his wife and some other friends from Tehaleh stop by and, as Stacey started the tour of our little slice of heaven that she has done so many times, it struck me the numerous places that we have demonstrated our own version of what I would consider a Proof of Work.
Whether it be the bracelets that were made by a member of our staff that also double as braille messages, the fresh-grown vegetables in bins right outside the Market that community members have tended to by hand, the careful repackaging of spices and foods, the thoughtful curated meals for all ethnic groups, the special way we welcome and encourage our customers to shop freely, or the genuine nature of every single staff member and volunteer all working towards the same mission.
All of these examples (and many many more) are demonstrating our version of Proof of Work and through that effort are providing access, dignity and equity to everyone that walks through the doors and accesses the “network”.
I realized during that tour each of these seemingly small, but incredibly important, actions build the legitimacy that we have worked so hard to preserve and just couldn’t be easily replicated to all add up to the whole that is The Bonney Lake Food Bank. It is truly the network of people and their shared efforts that have created this amazing thing, and everyday I am humbled as the network churns on and grows while contributing to The Common Good.
We would love for you to be a part of this network if you haven’t joined us already. Feel free to visit our website to learn more and if you haven’t joined Team28 (our donation program that helps to sponsor at least one nutritious meal a month) then we would love to have you just click the button below to learn more.
All images in this article were generated by an artificial intelligence called Midjourney. The captions under the images are what the AI was told to create.