We recently announced the formation of the Common Knowledge Base Association, or CKBA.
Naturally, there are questions.
Why are we doing this? What are our plans? What does this mean for CKB?
Weâll answer all of these in time. But before we do, itâs worth clarifying something important:
These questions are loaded with assumptions about CKB and our relationship to it.
The confusion is understandable. Somewhere along the way, the industry became comfortable treating blockchains like productsâoperated by companies.
CKB is not that.
CKB is public infrastructureâmaintained and advanced by people who share a common set of ideas.
Like Bitcoin, it is not dependent on, owned by, or controlled by any one entity.
And that includes us.
Weâre old school; to us, a blockchain that can be halted, reorged, restarted, or have its assets seized by a controlling entity is not a blockchain.
It may be marketed as one, it may be treated as one, the market may even believe it is one.
But not us.
To us, decentralization, security, immutability, and permissionlessness are non-negotiable.
They are what make blockchains blockchains; everything else is a glorified database.
So when we say that âCKBA is the new coordination layer for the CKB ecosystem,â we mean something that may surprise many people.
Heavily inspired by Bitcoin, CKB is based on Nakamoto consensus.
And, in Nakamoto consensus-based systems, thereâs no (need for) coordination.
They still produce order, but that order emerges from the behavior of independent and free entities that pursue their own incentives by following an optimal strategy introduced by the systemâs constraints.
In simple terms, CKB doesnât need CKBA.
The system works because everyone minds their own business, and everyone minds their own business because the system works.
We have no control over that.
CKBA operates somewhere else entirely: at the social layer.
Our role is not to govern CKB; itâs to support the diverse and decentralized ecosystem of contributors around it.
To coordinate resources, improve communication, support contributors, and help aligned people find each other.
Weâre a group of cypherpunks and misfits defined, perhaps most of all, by low time preference.
This has its downsidesâand itâs unfortunate that this has become a contrarian positionâbut for better or worse, we canât help ourselves.
Weâre painfully aware that weâre building public infrastructure that should outlive us.
And weâre not the only ones building.
We have our vision and all, but weâre not calling the shots.
If you donât like our vision, impose your own.
Build on CKB.
Whoâs stopping you?
CKB will keep ticking, block by block, from one state transition to another, whether weâre here or not. Whether we, or you, approve of it or not.
And if you are aligned with our vision, join us đ
ckba.build/