TL;DR

• People often take part to revolutions just for the vibes or to find purpose;
• Very few people know what is actually happening;
• Those who know often are not the ones that you think.

The idea of Crypto and DAOs as a potentially revolutionary force is a popular one among Cryptoentusiasts, directly or indirectly justifying postures such as the destruction of traditional finance for the benefit of the masses and the importance of collective efforts in making Crypto accessible to everyone.

Of course, people that are used to reason about things know that the situation is way more complex than it looks like, and that the lore behind many Cryptocommunities is a strong libertarian one that may eventually result in way more inequality than the one we have now in traditional systems. Yet, Crypto remains very strongly ideologically appealing to many, if only for the idea of being part of a revolutionary force. Why?

My belief is that many people live in a world that is - or at least feels - totally devoid of purpose. We work, we have our lives, our families, but many of us lack that “why?” in their ordinary lives that propels them to literally wake up everyday and do what they do. This feeling (that constitutes the very essence of living in a decadent society) can strike everyone, from the poorest to the wealthiest, and is traditionally a great catalyst for either personal depression or political involvement of any sort, or both. We are all desperately looking to matter, in a way or another, because mattering and purpose are very scarce resources that our current societal asset doesn’t seem to guarantee. This is, in my opinion, for two main reasons:

• 1 - Socially, we seem to value material things a lot. In a society where media constantly recirculates the idea that “money and property are the only thing that really matters” it feels almost oxymoronic to follow ideologies or to pursue spirituality.
• 2 - In the last decade, with the advent of social media platforms, mattering seems to be perceived as more and more connected with following and recognition. Does it really matter what you do and think if you don’t have a bunch of followers acknowledging it?

Yet, the idea that what one does contributes to a greater cause that is going to make humanity better in the long run is a fundamental need for the majority of us humans. The end result is a fetishization of purpose, where people ascribe ideologies of various sorts as defining parts of their essence, even if, thinking about it a bit harder, in reality they probably would not feel too attached to them. I guess this is true for a huge chunk of Cryptodegens, vax deniers, Jordan Peterson fans, pronoun warriors, followers of the cult of KeK, and so on and so forth, you name it. In any of these “ideological” movements there is a tiny core of people that really believes in what they are doing, and a majority of others that jump on the revolution bandwagon just to have a reason to keep living (“we are leading a revolutioooon!”). The funny thing is that, obviously, everyone feels part of the core, and no one can - by definition - acknowledge to be an other.

So what?

All of this is absolutely fine, and what I wrote above about others should not be considered offensive: in the end, it’s just a matter of people finding purpose, that per se is a noble endeavor. Moreover, almost every revolution has been led by a tiny bunch of people followed by a huge swarm of unawares that didn’t know precisely why they were taking part to the community effort, or why it really mattered, but kept being part of it - and often fought for it - basically for its vibe.

In Crypto, this is for sure the feeling. There are a bunch of words thrown up in the air all the time - decentralization, DAO, trustless, governance - and very very few people that really have a the global vision to put all them in place. The majority of Cryptoentusiasts possesses only a vague feeling that “something cool is happening”, and tries to uniform to the social rituals of their environment to belong - think about gm, pepe gifs, and all the memetics surrounding Crypto Twitter, for instance.

But then who’s leading the decentralized Crypto revolution?

In Crypto, everything seems to be happening at the same time, and the “epicenter of total coolness” is often perceived to be far from the social circle you are in. Moreover, very few people can look at themselves in the mirror and truly acknowledge that they are leading the Crypto revolution. I am actually sure that this holds true also for many Cryptoinfluencers, that may as well be considered prophets by their followers but, deep down, are tortured by that very same feeling of not knowing precisely what is going on that everyone, in a way or another, feels. Not to mention that rare human breed of idiots that put stuff like “Forbes 30 under 30” in their bios.

The necessity of protagonism driven by point 2 above often makes us conflate mattering and public recognition and, as result, we tend to imagine that visible people are the ones leading the community effort. When we realize that these people often do not have much more clue of what is going on than the layperson, then the natural question to ask is: who is leading the Crypto revolution?

To answer, let’s look at the main types of actor in the Crypto ecosystem right now.

The bystanders

The bystander, is, by definition, one that “stands by”, that is, one that is just there, with no particular will of gaining any recognition. Our social media-focused society has basically taught us to either directly or indirectly pity these people for their unforgivable lack of public visibility. But take a look at all the paintings above: In all of them, some “main subjects” are surrounded by a mass of bystanders. If you were to remove them, the main subjects would look like powerless, deranged individuals.

Indeed the bystander is the very core of any collective effort, and has been historically the most important actor in a revolution, even if we have never been taught to appreciate it. This is because the real force of a revolution lies in its numbers, and bystanders make up the vast majority of the people taking part in any collective effort. They are there, they just vibe, sometimes they do not speak publicly but prefer to listen. In the case of Crypto, this is the submerged part of the Twitter iceberg, that enormous mass of people that rarely tweet, and often read. They use dapps, they talk about web3 with their friends, and lead adoption by adopting. If you are part of this crowd, you should be aware that you are part of this revolution as much as your favourite Cryptoinfluencer is. As the title says, you don’t need to lead the revolution to be the revolution. But let’s keep going.

The influencers

By influencer here I mean whoever has a direct influence on the masses, which includes but it is not limited to people shilling coins on Twitter. These are the people constantly - and often erroneously - being identified as thought leaders. The whole point here is that being able to build a huge fanbase and having the necessary intellectual toolkit to see, understand and influence the zeitgeist are different skillsets. Indeed, many Cryptoinfluencers are too busy tending to their fanbases to really pause for a second and understand what is going on. This contributes to the overwhelming feeling that “everything moves out of its own accord, as if it were part of a collective will, and I’m often far away from the epicenter of coolness”. If we imagine society as a graph where actors represent the vertexes and social relationships represent the edges, then we may say that Crypto at the moment looks somewhat like this:

As we can see, everything looks fairly decentralized: There are four main “aggregation clouds” of bystanders each one gravitating around its own influencer, respectively named A, B, C, D. As one can see, many people belonging to one of these social circles have also ties with people that tend to gravitate around other social circles. So even if there are four “thought leaders” all in all they do not seem to exert an insane amount of influence. This really is a decentralized revolution!

Unless… Here come the Rasputins

I use the word Rasputin to represent people that do not necessarily have a huge public following, but are very influential among influencers. They are relatively unknown to the public and basically work in the shadows. Let’s take the figure above again into consideration, but let’s add something:

In the figure above, X is the Rasputin. X has close ties with the main influencers of the four aggregation clouds, but with no one else. As such, X is virtually unknown to the public (this network has 25 actors and 20 of them are unaware of who X is), but can influence people that influence, relay ideas between them, and basically reach the whole network much faster and much more efficiently than any other actor. Even more interestingly, X will rarely take the blame or merit for what is happening, a task that, usually, will fall upon A,B,C,D.

The essence of being a Rasputin is having a lot of power without being necessarily publicly accountable for it. The Rasputins are the true ones often leading a revolution. This has been like this in many important times in history, and it will keep being this way. For sure, this is also the case in Crypto.

So what can I do?

First of all, be aware that this is the reality of things.

Second of all, do not fret about lack of public visibility. Being influential is not what matters to be really influential.

Third, understand that being here just for the vibes is absolutely ok, and you can claim to be a core component of this revolution as much as your favourite Cryptoinfluencer can.

But what if you want to really matter more? In that case understand who the Rasputins are. Identify where it is that power is really created, relayed and exercised. Connect with those circles instead of trying to build a stupid following. More importantly, keep in mind that the bread and butter to really influence the state of things is having ideas: we are in desperate needs of those and I can guarantee you that many of the people having really powerful ideas in Crypto right now may not necessarily be on your side. If we really want to turn Crypto in a comedy of the commons where the result is a net positive not just for the Cryptocommunity, but for the whole of humanity, we will need way more Rasputins with way more powerful and community-oriented ideas than we have now.

My own feeling is that there is still time to save Crypto from the Szabo-ultralibertarian dystopia it is slowly turning into, but this window of opportunity is closing. So please, be clever about how you will spend your next months/year in this ecosystem. It will most likely be determinant.