Ethereum Papers: Why the Blockchain Matters

Money is a story we all have to agree on. And we have a new machine that lets us agree on new stories.

Ethereum is all about decentralization and decentralization is about power: making power slippery to hold and spreading it out as far and as wide as possible. It is a cultural aspiration closely linked to neutrality, fairness, and accessibility. The function of decentralization is to maximize participation and minimize privilege. Ethereum is simple. It is a way to agree. Agree on the state of reality. Agree to use the same rules. Anyone with the proper motivation should be able to follow, in as deep or as shallow a level as they want, the chain of logic, from beginning to end, to verify how a point of truth was reached. The best way we've discovered so far, for how to create an objective reality out of the chaos that is the internet, is to have many people contributing to the truth and no one capable of dictating it, which results in a more legitimate strain of what is real.