Emergent behavior, can it be found in crypto?
To me, emergent behavior is one of the more fascinating things I have come across. I first heard about it while watching a gaming lecture several years back. And I have been fascinated by it ever since. And I hope that, if you do not know about it, you will find it fascinating as well.
What is emergent behavior?
If I use some of my google-fu, I am given this explanation for emergent behavior. "An emergent behavior is something that is a nonobvious side effect of bringing together a new combination of capabilities". And that sure is a mouthful. Let us see if we can not explain it in a way that is easier to understand.
When I first learned about it the example given to me was from the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu. In this game where the players come across a lot of horrors. Sanity is a very precious resource. And one that you are almost constantly trying to preserve to any extent.
Source Call of Cthulhu RPG 1st ed 1981
One of the things that the game designers started to notice was that game groups all over the world, independent of each other, started to do the same thing. And that was burning books. The players quickly came to the consensus that books were bad, and from reading them only bad things could come. So they all came to the same conclusion independent of each other. And that was they were better off just burning the books they come across.
And this book burning was not in the rules of the game, and it was something that took the game designers by complete surprise. Let us look at it and see what part of it make it an emergent behavior.
There are rules for the game, dictated by the gamebook and the game master. These are the same as the "bringing together a new combination of capabilities". When designing a game you can influence a player's behavior to a fairly large extent. And this is by either telling them something is not allowed or giving them rewards for doing certain things.
With that in mind, some things the player will do can be fairly easy to predict. But regarding the book burning, nothing in the ruleset hinted or encouraged the player to do that. It was the combinations of rules and setting for this particular role-playing game that made that behavior come to life if you will.
That gives us the "An emergent behavior is something that is a nonobvious side effect" part of the explanation. Now let us surmise it. Emergent behavior is an unpredictable response to a certain set of circumstances or rules.
Real-life examples of emergent behavior
As you might have guessed this does not occur only in games. But it is a very much real thing that can and does occur. And I thought we should take a look at some examples of this to hopefully get a better understanding of what it is and where it can occur.
During the civil protests in Hong Kong in 2019, you could come across a pretty strange scene. At least compared to protests that had taken place before.
Source the BBC
A scene like this was very common. Protestors carrying traffic cones. They could also be seen carrying umbrellas and oven mitts. And this was in response to the police's heavy use of teargas to try and break up the protestors.
They would use oven mitts to be able to grab the hot tear gas canisters, and either throw them away or bring them to someone with a traffic cone. That person would then put the traffic cone on top of the tear gas canister. And in a similar way, the umbrellas were being used as shields against the gas. This is a perfect example of emergent behavior.
There are other examples as well. In the US Charter Schools are privately run, but funded by public means. And they are prohibited from taking any profit. And as a way to "combat" this, a new type of company has started to crop up. These are management firms. And what they do, is manage the school for the school. The school then pays all its money to this company. And that company runs the school, just like the school would. But with the caveat that they in turn can take a profit.
And there are countless other examples out there. But these highlights that emergent behavior is not good nor bad. And it is not limited to one certain part of our lives or one type of sector. It can be found in most places where rules or restrictions can be found.
Emergent behavior in crypto
There are a few cases of what I would argue is emergent behavior that can be found in crypto. Or at least things that are bordering on it. Let us look at some of them.
F2Pool recently confessed to executing uncle maker attacks on the Ethereum blockchain. This was done by taking advantage of the given rules. Alowing them to switch the time of their blocks. But as it is, so far, only one mining pool that has confessed to doing this. I would not call it true emergent behavior. For that to be, most companies need to undertake this behavior. And that means we can at best call it an unconfirmed emergent behavior.
Unsustainable returns and vampire attacks. I am going to lump these two together as they can to some degree overlap. If the luna ~20% APY thought us something it was that when you offer an unsustainable return, it will all come crashing down eventually. And most people when asked about it was well aware of the fact that the close to 20% offered by Anchor Protocol was unsustainable. But they would gladly partake anyway.
The USDD logo, source https://usdd.io/
But now we have USDD who initially offered close to 40% APY, dubble the unsustainability. And They are far from the only player who promises incredible returns. And I would argue that it has become a hallmark of new projects. Even if they do not promise the crazy returns forever, most of them use them initially.
And I would say this is because of the crazy growth the crypto space has undergone over the last few years. This means that people are looking down and returns that are single digits. They can make that kind of money in one single trade. So a project almost needs to promise these crazy returns to get any traction.
And vampire attacks, are basically the distilled version of this. Where someone makes a copy pasta project but offers slightly better returns than the initial project. Meaning it will cause people to switch to the new project from the old.
I would also argue that the amount of scams and scam projects is emergent behavior. It is not that it is unique to the crypto space. But rather that the current ruleset allows it to flourish.
Sadly I was unable to find the lecture where I first learned about it. But I have provided links down below to the two cases of emergent behavior I talked about initially. If you want to learn more about them.
Do you know of any emergent behavior in crypto, if so please share it with me as I would love to know more about them. Also, I hope that you have found this post to be of interest to you. Whether that was because you like me find this a fascinating topic or you just learned about it. And hopefully now find it just as fascinating as I.
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See you on the interwebs!
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