Metaverses and the Politics of Software Updates

Part 5 of 12 — Blockchain: Decentralization of Money, Power and the State Originally written as a History BA thesis, academic year 2021–2022. Published online August 2026. Series index → · References & bibliography →

The future of metaverses

The transition that is taking place between analog and digital reality enjoyment is viewed with concern by many experts. It is not intended here to argue that the effects will be beneficial, far from it, but that, even metaverses, as tools, can be used for good or evil. We will reflect on the revolutionary potential of a metaverse, which is a kind of virtual parallel world that hosts alter egos of flesh-and-blood people. The metaverse is nothing more than a program, and a program is nothing more than a set of lines of code executed on a machine. If the metaverse used is centralized, it means that one will inhabit a world created and maintained by a central power, to which one will have to submit as a user. Certainly one will be able to correct all that our society deems physical defects in the real world, or perhaps fly or have a large house, but always within a largely pre-determined social system with which one can only partially interact.

In centralized metaverses, tokens (an internal currency) are equivalent to decisionmaking power: those with few tokens will be mere pawns; and decision-making power will be left to those with many.

Metaverses can be centralized and with private source code, such as those now proposed by Meta/Facebook, or they can be decentralized and completely open source, programmed by people for people, with purposes and modalities that will differ from each other and whose limit is solely dictated by human creativity. It will be possible to build metaverses that give the possibility to question today's society, forming political gyms for anyone who wants to try not only to change the world, but also to test new kinds of coexistence. The metaverses will also be virtual places for the development and confrontation of revolutionary ideas: if, until before the advent of mass media, a physical place was necessary for effective confrontation, it has been seen that with the spread of video calls much time can be saved, making communication more efficient and productive in most cases. This move closer to the virtual, at the expense of the analog, has as a negative effect, not to be underestimated at all, a loss of humanity. When communicating digitally, we do not smell the other person, nor is it possible to change perspective or touch them. One wonders if these little remnants of an animal world from which much (too much?) human beings have moved away, and which does not begin with the digital, might not prove harmful. With the development of technology, it is possible that so many of these analog sensations can be transported into digital reality: the inherent risk is to get used to a completely defisicized human dimension, in which normal smells are replaced by more pleasant odors.

When thinking about technological revolutions, one should not think of them as mere immutable innovations, that is, finished at the moment of their commercialization. They are simply snapshots of processes that can last dozens and dozens of years, if not even centuries. They also do not differ much from political revolutions, in which periods of intense reflection (and research) alternate with periods of action, moving from utopia to reform.¹

The technological power achieved in the present is impressive, yet it will pale in the face of what is to come. It is important to think in advance about what will happen, to prevent and to correct, or, simply, to have a critical and informed view. Metaverses are not simply virtual places made of cartoony, artificial polygons: the concept of the metaverse can be understood as the continuation of a human work, that is, the desire to communicate our thoughts to other people, to confront them through intellectual and cultural exchange. Seeing metaverses as what they are now, in this present, can be misleading: they are mostly a centralized product, whose logics respond to the need for capitalism and the centralization of power.

Already in metaverses it is possible, by moving one's alter ego, to change perspective or touch other people. Gloves with sensors and actuators (in this case, small motors that generate vibrations) provide realistic touch feedback, enabling a digital experience that closely matches the analog experience.

We will now divide metaverses into centralized and decentralized. This division can be applied to any software, but it is good to understand how the distribution of power, or its full centralization, can radically change things.

In open source metaverses it will be possible to try out new worlds and new societies, and anyone can decide which ones to be in and how they would like those worlds to work. Indeed, one will always be able to correct the code, suggesting modifications or changing the elements from which it is composed. The process of accepting or rejecting changes is always subject to democratic judgment (or follows the decision-making procedures established by the initial smart contract) and always susceptible to forks, which is typical of open source.

If in metaverse x half of the nodes should decide that the word 'blue' is banned, and the other half of the nodes reject this change, here would be generated two metaverses, in which what is allowed in one is forbidden in the other. Switching from one metaverse to the other will not be prevented: in fact, it is possible that some people, for a wide variety of reasons, may decide to attend both. Connections between metaverses could be managed through linking hubs that create federations of metaverses, returning to a completely heterogeneous and decentralized unification at the logical and physical level of virtual worlds. The most revolutionary metaverses will be true test environments, in which smart contracts constituting economic, political and social realities can be tested on parallel realities, allowing a regime change to analog reality only once the tests have passed, as if it were a normal industrial product, in which there are quality controls. It will not be unlikely to see the next Internationals, or similar assemblies, taking place in the remotest spaces of the metaverse. Instead of ideologies, flowcharts and code could come out of them, which, once written on smart contracts, would become law: it will acquire validity and cogency the moment there is an attribution of value, i.e., buying and selling, to the tokens of that contract. It means that people will begin to attach value to it, just as people now attach value to the laws of the state in which they live.

Updates

When it comes to software, one is dealing with intellectual constructs, which can always be improved, more easily than a physical work. Updates in software are the order of the day: they may serve to introduce improvements or to correct malfunctions, or to update flaws that could compromise its security. In each of these cases what is changed is the program code. There is now a very important distinction to be made, which many may take for granted, namely, the difference between the program that collects data, processes it, and stores it and the archive itself: a scribe and a book are not the same thing, and this is also true in computing. The scribe changes day by day, learns new things, improves his handwriting, yet the book he is working on remains the same. Even if the scribe became ill and was replaced, the book would remain the same. This also happens with software: when a bank updates its software, and this can happen even several times in a day, the transaction history, customer lists, etc. remain the same. It is possible, however, that some changes will lead to an update in how the data are stored.

These updates, whether to the software code (thus to the scribe) or to the archive, are mostly invisible to users, as they are of absolutely little interest. The importance of this distinction emerges when software is not centralized. With decentralization, each node carries a vote, but it is not a majority vote so much as whether or not to participate in common rules. Each node can decide to create its own rules, but for it not to be excluded from the network, other nodes must also accept the new rules. Rules can only be such if there is someone who values them, otherwise they remain unheard like Manzoni's cries. In the case of blockchain there are basic rules, which go to constitute the consensus method.

Every transaction must be signed by the owner of the wallet. This way you are 100% sure that the transaction was not made up by someone. If Caius pays Sempronius, it is necessary to have Caius' signature. In contrast to paper signatures, cryptographic signatures require the signer to be aware of the private key of their wallet, i.e., the secret password.

Bitcoins need to have been spent only once, that is, it is necessary that the same money not be spent twice. One problem that occurs with decentralization, and the absence of hierarchy, is the difficulty of determining who has the right to certify a block of transactions. Precisely because of this peer-to-peer equality, typical of peer-to-peer systems, it took some time before the double-spending problem saw a solution. Bitcoin is the first example of this, although there had been theorizing before: if you can't trust anyone, trust everyone.²

In this context, where there is no central authority, a stratagem can be employed, namely, to draw by lot one of several nodes, assigning it the role of notary. The extracted node will have to check that the transactions contained in the block are valid and then affix its signature to it. In essence, in order to prevent there from being an authority, a temporary one is created, just as the young people did in the Decameron, who decided that every day there would be a different king and queen.

Even in ancient Greece, devices were used to draw citizens by lot in prescribed cases, but in the case of digital there are very specific problems.

Drawing lots is not easy when it comes to digital, and it is so for two reasons: the first is that machines are deterministic, and therefore chance does not exist for them; thus, every time a computer has to draw a random number it proceeds by counting the seconds that have passed from 1970 to that particular day, performs some operations, and 'draws' a number that is not completely random, but almost so. The second problem is the following: how to distribute the tickets to be drawn by lot?

A very simple way would have been to draw lots among one of the nodes, assign it the role of notary and reward it for taking responsibility for certifying the block containing the latest transactions. In computing, however, one could take a computer and create virtual machines, or virtual computers. Virtual machines are widely used because they require the hardware, i.e., physical, maintenance of one machine, and can then be leased to many different people. To give an example of the consequences that could result from the random distribution of the role of 'notary' from this 'multiplication,' it is as if a lottery were held in a city, in which each house equaled one ticket. Someone who had a very large house could divide it into several dwellings and be more likely to be drawn. Even one person could, temporarily and for those few minutes when the drawing takes place, rent an entire area of the city and thus have a very large chance of winning. The same mechanism would also happen with blockchains: if a machine, a computer, or a node (they are all synonyms), were equivalent to a lottery ticket to be drawn as a notary, a very rich and mischievous person could rent hundreds of thousands of virtual computers for those few minutes, enough to have a majority over the other nodes. For this very reason, a node is not equivalent to a 'lottery' ticket. It was therefore done in another way: each node tries to solve a very complex mathematical riddle and, when it succeeds, lets the other nodes know. This riddle requires a lot of computational resources to solve and, therefore, consumes a lot of electricity. When we say that blockchains consume a lot of power and are anti-environmental we have to keep in mind that there are different systems, some consume a lot and some do not. In the case of the system just described, which is called Proof of Work, the node that found the solution to the riddle becomes a notary, signs the blockchain and then goes back to being a normal node like everyone else. This system prevents a single person from renting virtual computers to constitute a majority. Thus we move from a physical majority of nodes to a majority made up of computing power. One computer powerful 100 is worth as much as one hundred computers powerful 1 each. This solution makes it much more difficult for a single individual to acquire such computing power to be able to endanger the security of the network. With Proof of Work systems, the calculations made by the nodes are not for scientific or medical research; they have no use other than to prevent possible malicious users from creating virtual computers and, thus, rendering the lottery useless.

One problem with this system, in addition to the pollution produced for powering energy-intensive systems, and that for producing hardware such as video cards (GPUs, Graphical Processing Unity) and processors (CPUs, Central Processing Units), is the ever-existing correlation between capital and computing power. In the early days of Bitcoin, anyone could be mined to become a notary, while this is no longer the case: mining is currently beyond the reach of ordinary people. The necessary investment has to be well priced and is cheaper in countries where the cost of electricity is low, or for large companies, which can afford to have hardware that is always up to date, so that it always has a performance/consumption ratio favorable to solving these mathematical riddles. This computational activity is called mining. Miners who succeed in solving the riddle are rewarded with bitcoins, a kind of expense reimbursement for their costs.

There may be multiple Proof of Work systems, which differ in the algorithms used and how the puzzle is solved. If Bitcoin uses Algorithm A, all nodes must use the same algorithm; however, it may be that another type of blockchain uses Algorithm B. In the specific case of Bitcoin, SHA-256 is used.

The Proof of Work system was theorized in the 1990s and used to prevent Denial of Service (DOS) attacks³ , which is an attack that seeks to exhaust the resources of a computer system. For example, if a person rented a thousand virtual computers, and had them all browse the university website at the same time, it would not hold the load and would become unavailable to students. However, if one assigned each navigator a riddle to solve, renting the same number of virtual computers would become extremely expensive and difficult. When one is browsing a site, and is asked to solve a Captcha, click on crosswalks or traffic lights, one is solving a riddle, certainly simple for a human, but consuming a lot of economic resources should one wish to tamper with a computer system.

There are other systems for drawing lots of 'notaries,' some similar to Proof of Work as a rationale, such as Proof of space, a system that makes great use of mass storage, namely hard disks. Hard disks are those devices in which data is stored, they could be compared to our memory. In this case, it is not as important to have very powerful computers that can do calculations with great speed as it is to have large hard disks that can accommodate a large amount of data.

Among the most widely used systems, besides Proof of Work (PoW), is Proof of Stake. All other systems, including Proof of Space, are still niche and used only by a small circle of blockchains.

With Proof of Stake systems, extraction is based on coins held, so one coin is equivalent to one lottery ticket. To be a node, it is therefore sufficient to have a computer with very modest performance and yet possess a defined amount of coins. The most famous cryptocurrency after Bitcoin is Ethereum: born using a Proof of Work system, it has recently migrated to a Proof of Stake system. Its value as of September 2022 is $1372 and it requires a minimum quantity of 32 Ethereums to become a validating node: to participate in the lottery and be drawn as a notary, it is necessary to have a counter value of about $40,000, a not inconsiderable investment. There are some creative variants of Proof of Stake systems, in which those who are drawn once can no longer participate in the lottery for a certain number of days and so on, this with the intention of balancing the system and preventing the same people from always validating transactions and, in a sense, 'beating the coin.' The Proof of Stake approach has raised many concerns among those who hoped for complete decentralization of the monetary system, which risks being decentralized in a physical but not logical way. If there are many nodes that guarantee the existence of a transaction history, but transactions are always handled by a few people, power, instead of being redistributed among peers, is accentuated, creating a situation of extreme control that has no counterbalance. As evidence of these concerns, since Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, 40 percent of blocks have been validated by a few platforms⁴ . A few players can thus catch up or even surpass the majority, making the much-desired decentralization unnecessary. This is also the case because of the cloud: nodes are often hosted in the datacenters of large firms, which represent centralization, thus being able to have thousands and thousands of nodes.

The Proof of Stake system is very reminiscent of the operation of a stock exchange, with stock prices and boards of directors based on the amount of shares held. Those who hold less than 32 Ethereum can pool together until they reach enough to become a validator node or they can lease their Ethereum to a validator node, which will give them a reward, a kind of dividend. This process is called stacking.

The problem on how to draw one of the notaries by lottery remains one of the most fascinating conundrums to ponder and one that would need more attention, so that other solutions of a more democratic kind could be found. In order to have truly effective decentralization, one would have to find a system where every human being could have but one lottery ticket, or, at the limit, could have no more than a certain amount. There are some very creative solutions, but these are not yet mature for a large-scale system. When looking for new systems for the lottery draw, one must also think about upcoming technological innovations and how they might force the theorized system, negating its effectiveness. As an example, one could also think of a Proof of heartbeat system, in which in order to participate in the lottery it is necessary to place a sensor on our heart. Each person has only one heart, so in theory it is difficult to circumvent. Still, those who wanted to rig the system could place many sensors on the hearts of many animals. Or he could build many artificial (or virtual!) hearts that simulate the beating of real ones. This simple and trivial example serves to show how the problem is more complex than it may possibly seem. However, the simplest solution, which is to assign a single wallet (wallet or identifier) to a single person, thus using the state document infrastructure, entails additional problems because it involves relying on a fixed authority, making decentralization futile. A decentralized blockchain system may represent an evolution for human beings as a social species; a centralized blockchain system, precisely because of the pervasiveness of information technology in our lives, could lead to such a system of control that would wither any of the dictatorships and totalitarian systems seen in the 20th century.

In centralized blockchain systems, such as those used within companies, there is no need for a mining system, as it is the central authority that validates the nodes. This type of infrastructure, while distorting the main feature of blockchain systems, ensures geographic redundancy of data and its integrity. What can be worrisome is when these systems are used in the public sector, such as the new digital currency the European Union is working on. CBDCs open the way to so many unexplored possibilities, yet maintain central and total control over the lives of its citizens.

 This direction is precisely contrary to what the cypherpunks hoped for. When thinking
 about the mass use of cryptocurrencies, one should not imagine the current world, with
 only the addition of a digital currency which, in reality, is not going to fundamentally
 change people's normal lives: people will use a card, phone or chip to pay. Instead, what
 should be frightening is the pervasiveness of what is digital and what is entering, with
 great speed, into the home. The meteoric rise of electronic locks, cameras, and sensors
 will go a long way toward changing the reality we know and the rules that govern it.

[Figure from the original thesis: Figure2: ] IoT 'Number of Connected IoT Devices Growing 18% to 14.4 Billion Globally' https://IoT- analytics.com/number-connected-IoT-devices/ [accessed February 1, 2023];

 China's technological advantage already anticipates the eventual forms of control to
 which Western democracies will evolve. Recent scandals over the use of data, starting with the exposés of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, show how Power cannot be

trusted when it comes to information. Information is the new gold, a liquidity that enables knowledge, anticipation and control. Digital has only expanded and accelerated a phenomenon that always Power has tried to implement. ⁵ Data are not only useful in the present, they outlive human beings, and to understand how important they are and can be, a historical perspective is necessary. The technological acceleration to which we are subjected makes it incapable of developing a complete picture that can help us understand whether or not what is happening is good for our species and the world. A new religion, dataism, or a form of economic and social system in which data will represent wealth and thus decision-making power, has been theorized for quite some time. They have always been the fuel for decision making, and, for the past decade in particular, they have been equivalent to the new oil.⁶

The collection of information from the most disparate corners of a state has made it increasingly possible, think of Spain where Philip II ruled, to centralize and manage power. The data that is ceded to private companies, data that is used to profile and influence us for market or political reasons, is invaluable. The data collected during the colonial period proved to be crucial in changing the world balance of power, as are the data being ceded today. An interesting newly coined term is data person, which takes up the concept of homo economicus from classical economics, paving the way for new interpretations of human actions.27

← Previous: Religions, Forks and the Digital Past · Series index · References · Next: Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Power →