MAP Realization on Holochain
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The previous section outlined the foundational concepts of the MAP in a relatively technology independent way. This section explores how these concepts can be pragmatically and effectively realized by leveraging the holochain platform.
Holochain is an "end-to-end open source P2P (peer-to-peer) app framework" that delivers self-owned data integrity without the need for centralized authorities. Holochain leverages many of the same cryptographic techniques as blockchain, but within the radically different context of an agent-centric vs. data-centric architecture.
Despite the proliferation and diversity of blockchain implementations, all are grounded in the same basic goal of maintaining a single global data state that is agreed upon by all (full) nodes and a single global ordering of state changes, likewise agreed upon by all (full) nodes. Essentially, each blockchain is a single global database, replicated on large numbers of geographically dispersed computing nodes, that stores a single log of transactions grouped together in blocks. The need to maintain a single universal ordering of transactions across all nodes demands some sort of consensus mechanism. Some of these consensus mechanisms, such as Bitcoin's and Ethereum's Proof of Work algorithms are alarmingly energy-intensive. Others, like Proof of Stake, are more energy-efficient, but the achilles heel of all blockchain consensus mechanisms is scalability. The computational efficiency of blockchains gets worse as the number of nodes and/or volume of transactions grows and transaction throughput is capped at a level that is orders of magnitude lower than, say, the Visa network's 56,000 transactions per second. Furthermore, as popularity grows, space on the blockchain becomes a scarce resource, driving higher and higher transaction fees as blockchain users compete to get their transaction written to the blockchain.
By contrast, the holochain team asserts that global state is an illusion, not supported by the laws of physics. All state is local. Furthermore, universal time is an illusion, all state changes are local. Eliminating the requirement to maintain a single version of global state eliminates the need for consensus mechanisms. Holochain requires no consensus (and, therefore no mining or staking). It is not vulnerable to majority attacks. Each nodes acts independently, or in tight coordination with counterparties, and then shares independently evolving data realities that come to agreement over time. You only have to trust the code on your own node and can validate counterparty’s history directly. But perhaps holochain's most significant advantage over blockchain is in scalability. Adding holochain compute nodes actually reduces time complexity because the load is distributed. This means that as application adoption goes up, the transaction load per node gets lighter! Throughput is expected to be orders of magnitude higher than any of the blockchain implementations.
Holochain is based on proven technical components, but their novel combination is so unlike other architectures, it can be hard for people to get their head around holochain at first. Additional aspects of holochain are described below to illustrate how it fits and is leveraged by the MAP architecture, but it is beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed understanding of holochain. For more information about holochain and how it compares to blockchain, refer to the growing body of information on the internet (including, of course, holochain's own website and green paper).
Why Holochain?
vision-aligned
agent-centric
provides palette of cryptographic tools that can be composed in a variety of ways
open source
passionate community
resists enclosure
emerging portfolio of capabilities add power to the holochain ecosystem (ad4m, neighborhoods, juntu, holo-REA)
Overview of Holochain's Capabilities
Cryptographic Techniques
Tools in the toolbox:
Digest
Digital Signature
Encryption
Merkle Trees
Distributed Hash Table
MAP Spaces
MAP Spaces are where stuff happens. It is where new memes get defined, discovered, applied, assessed, and evolved. Spaces are where agents are registered, agent holarchies composed and where services are offered, accepted and invoked. Spaces are where the flow of resources are tracked. In effect, spaces are the manifestation of both the MAP itself and the applications built on top of the MAP.
Spaces are open-ended. This is a critical aspect of the MAP's theory of change. Like the living systems it is patterned after, the Memetic Activation Platform is open-ended, self-organizing and infinitely unfolding. Unlike traditional enterprise systems that typically have a fixed data schema where the designers of the application determine, a priori, what information will be managed by the application and what services will be offered, the MAP seeks to encourage the emergence and interplay of new types of memes, agents, services, and resources not anticipated by the MAP designers. We need all the innovation we can muster, in a de-centralized world, to discover and test the mettle of the new models, to redefine the structures and processes of culture and civilization in ways that works for all life.
The current MAP architecture has identified five open-ended, co-creative spaces.
Each MAP Space is realized as a Holochain Application (hApp)
Meme-Spaces are where memes are defined, discovered and where meme-relationships are stored. The definition of a Meme-Space specifies what information can be stored about each meme in that space and what relationships it may participate in. This definition is referred to as the memetic ontology for that Meme-Space. The initial version of the MAP will include a single Meme-Space (i.e., a single ontology), but agents can define additional Meme-Spaces, if desired.
Agent Spaces
R-Spaces (a.k.a., Resource Spaces)
Meta-Spaces lie at the deepest
V-Spaces (a.k.a., Visualization Spaces)
Outline / Sketch
Motivate the concept of spaces from the self-organizing principle, extensibility, new entities not anticipated by the designers of the MAP.
; yet doing so in a way that still allows recognition and interoperability between and among of these novel forms
Spaces Governance
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