The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy (Vitalik 2021)

  • Legitimacy by brute force: someone convinces everyone that they are powerful enough to impose their will and resisting them will be very hard. This drives most people to submit because each person expects that everyone else will be too scared to resist as well.

  • Legitimacy by continuity: if something was legitimate at time T, it is by default legitimate at time T+1.

  • Legitimacy by fairness: something can become legitimate because it satisfies an intuitive notion of fairness. See also: my post on credible neutrality, though note that this is not the only kind of fairness.

  • Legitimacy by process: if a process is legitimate, the outputs of that process gain legitimacy (eg. laws passed by democracies are sometimes described in this way).

  • Legitimacy by performance: if the outputs of a process lead to results that satisfy people, then that process can gain legitimacy (eg. successful dictatorships are sometimes described in this way).

  • Legitimacy by participation: if people participate in choosing an outcome, they are more likely to consider it legitimate. This is similar to fairness, but not quite: it rests on a psychological desire to be consistent with your previous actions.

  • [Legitimacy by force: Someone convinces everyone that he or she has the power to impose his or her will and that it will be very difficult to resist. This causes most people to submit, because each person expects that others will be too scared to resist as well.
  • Legitimacy by continuity: If something was legal at T, it is still legal by default at T+1.
  • Legitimacy through fairness: something can be legitimized by satisfying an intuitive notion of fairness. See also my post on credible neutrality.
  • Legitimacy by process: If a process is legitimate, the output of that process acquires legitimacy (for example, laws passed by a democracy may be described in this way).
    • Legitimacy through performance: If the output of a process leads to an outcome that satisfies people, the process can gain legitimacy (for example, a successful dictatorship can be described this way).
  • Legitimacy through participation: If people participate in the choice of outcomes, they are more likely to consider them legitimate. This is similar to fairness, but slightly different. It is based on the psychological desire to be consistent with one’s own previous actions.

Summary (DeepL)

  • The notion of legitimacy (higher order acceptance) is very powerful. Legitimacy appears in every context where cooperation exists, and especially on the Internet, cooperation is everywhere.

  • There are many ways in which legitimacy can be created. [Force, continuity, fairness, process, performance, and participation are among the most important.

  • Cryptocurrencies are powerful because they can invoke large capital pools through collective economic will. Rather, these capital pools are directly controlled by the concept of legitimacy.

  • It is too risky to start funding public goods by printing tokens at the base layer. Fortunately, however, Ethereum has a very rich application layer ecosystem, where it can be more flexible. This is because there are opportunities not only to influence existing projects, but also to shape new projects that will be born in the future.

  • Application layer projects that support public goods in the community should have the support of the community, which is significant; the DAI example shows that this support is really important!

  • The Ethereum Ecosystem takes into account innovation in mechanism design and social layers. The ethereum ecosystem’s own public goods financing challenge is an excellent starting point!

  • But this does not stop with ethereum itself; NFT is an example of a large pool of capital that relies on the concept of legitimacy; the NFT industry could be a boon to artists, charities, and other public goods providers far beyond our virtual corner of the world, but this outcome is not predetermined, but depends on active coordination and support.

  • legitimacy

  • Rare resources

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