Most businesses today have a mission statement. This mission is intended to align the organization. We aren’t a hivemind species. Without artifacts like religion and myth at the societal level, or mission statements at the business level, individual conceptions and actions will conflict and descend into chaos.
What is BSV’s mission statement? What is the highest purpose behind what we are all doing? Much of the tension within the BSV world comes from a conflict of missions. Controversy around VC, 0-Sat transactions, and even token solutions often traces back to divergent hierarchies of value. What can seem like a technical problem is often a disagreement on “What is BSV’s ultimate purpose?”. It’s easy to see this comparing BSV to BTC, but more difficult to examine when looking “within the community”.
Two mission statements which may or may not align well are as follows: 1) Cut the knees out from under the state by moving the world onto a viable replacement for fiat currencies 2) Move the internet from an ad-based economy to a micropayment-based economy. Anyone in BSV will intuit at least some amount of synergy between these missions. And, that synergy has brought many BSVers together. In fact, I’d argue that many businesses in BSV operate with this dual mandate. The question becomes, are these two sides of the same coin, or a damned attempt at serving two masters.
For better or worse, I have personally put on the blinders. Consumer adoption of my business’s applications is my master. Is my mission ethical? Will it make the world a better place? I hope so, but I don’t claim to know so. What I do know is that it provides me and my organization clarity. Unshackled from the burden of toppling institutions, we can focus on the simple things in life, like CAC, ARPU, FTUX, and the like.
This ruthlessness of focus can place the ideologue into uncomfortable situations. What if BSV as a currency is a barrier to consumer adoption of NFTY Jigs and Duro Dogs. Could Duro Dogs drive more adoption through a BSV-based stablecoin, or worse, through tokenizing more popular assets such as BTC or Dogecoin? I don’t know the answer, but I am confident that answers to questions like these are coming.
Undoubtedly these answers will create further division, and I think that is good. BSV has tied us together, but BSV is not a God, nor is it a mission. Where missions align, alliances form and collaboration becomes easy and productive. Where there is not alignment, then hopefully the fact that these disparate groups are even using the same technology becomes a distant memory. I hope that day comes quickly.