With the collapse of a cryptocurrency, further questions are emerging:
Such as, how does SolarPunk – which is all about tech solutions outside the current framework – fit into all of this?
Firstly, there are currently discussions about cryptocurrencies in a ‘post-scarcity’ world:
Instead of artificial scarcity, we should embrace ideals of post-scarcity. That means a society based on mutual aid, and mutual respect. Not only for each other but the planet and ecosystem as well. For the vast majority of humanity’s time on this planet, we lived off those principles, and many still do today. These ideas scale from families to small towns, to cities, to regions, and whole geographical areas; ideas like, “I have food, but you can provide childcare, or have water. I hope that by providing food, you in return will help me out too.” This idea of mutual aid does not function in a coercive, “you owe me something” kind of way, but rather is based on a mutual understanding that we have everything we need, and the only way to live well is to live together. Post-scarcity means meeting everyone’s basic needs and then some and not because the receiver has to work for it, or has to have a certain amount of money, but because they are a person who deserves dignity and the chance to live a good life. Full stop.
Solarpunk & NFTs: A Social Response – Solarpunk Magazine
Secondly, there are discussions about SolarPunk as a challenge to the current regime of cryptocurrecies:
The three Ps of solarpunk Web3 (as I hope everyone will now call them) are closely related. The first, an emphasis on creating positive externalities, is based on a recognition of tech’s history of producing negative externalities, such as fake news spreading on Meta. Solarpunks are committed to conscious tech building, where you take into account the implications of your project beyond your immediate community.
The textbook definition for public goods, P number two, are goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. This means you can’t stop anyone from using them and using them does not diminish them for anyone else. In the solarpunk context, it originally meant a focus on unprofitable but necessary infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, but has since expanded to helping fund good causes beyond Web3 as well.
Finally, positive sum world-building is the guiding star for solarpunks – the effort to build a better world for tomorrow. If contemporary crypto culture is focused on financial immediacies (like rug-pulling or raising funds just to raise funds), solarpunks attempt to break the cycle by actually building public goods with positive externalities that last beyond us, at a civilizational level.
What Are Solarpunk and Lunarpunk Anyway?
Thirdly, there are discussions about the ‘darker’, or more questioning and less ‘naïve’, side, namely LunarPunk- which is critical of the push for more ‘transparency’ – with this just out today on YouTube:
Solarpunk vs Lunarpunk with Manu Alzuru & Rachel-Rose O’Leary | Green Pill #60 – YouTube
The participants have a very tech background – which points to the science & technology at the basis of these movements, as well as to the futurist and utopian notions – and here’s Wikipedia to help with ‘Etherium’, as referred to in this discussion on ‘transparency’ – which sounds pretty SolarPunk:
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-sourceblockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH;[a]sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization.[3][4]
With lots more current discussion to come back to…