Thanedar’s Game

Idea: Create a Virtual Game simulating Cryptocountry formation and growth.

• Think: Axelrod’s Tournament meets Model UN.

Problem: Real-world political and economic experiments take decades to demonstrate their ultimate successes and failures and can lead to significant hardship and loss of life.

Solution: A Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) Game simulating the creation of and competition between cryptocountries.

• Design and implement political and economic systems for your Cryptocountry to compete for Citizens and Wealth.
• Featuring Protocols and Gameplay that make it easy to:
  • Create and distribute virtual currencies.
  • Encode laws, rules, and citizenship requirements.
  • Enable communications by and between Countries and Citizens.

Purpose: Incentivize people to compete to create the best prototypes for Cryptocountries.

• This Game allows us to quickly test many different political and economic strategies virtually as preparation for creating ideal cryptocountries.
  • Like Battle School and Command School in Ender’s Game, increasingly complex versions of this Game can also be used as training simulators for prospective cryptocountry leaders.

Vision: Virtual Countries are simulations of Cryptocountries.

• Cryptocountries are the future of mass political and economic governance.
  • Antecedents (previously defined by Balaji Srinivasan) include Cloud Communities → Network Unions → Cloud Countries → Network States.
  • Cryptocountries add physical land owned by the cryptocountry to these antecedents.
    • Bottom-Up: Online communities (e.g. Decentraland) can become cryptocountries by adding physical land and diplomatic recognition to their Cloud Countries.
    • Top-Down: Existing countries (e.g. Estonia) can become cryptocountries by converting their physical citizenship, legal, and political systems into cryptographic protocols.

Setup: New Countries are created by Founders.

• Founders set the initial governance and then can retain total control (e.g. monarchy/dictatorship) or distribute some or all of this power through democratic or other means.
  • Countries can be governed algorithmically or through the actions of its Founders and/or Citizens.
  • Countries start with no Currency but have the right to mint their own Currency at their discretion.
• Founders start with no Citizens other than themselves but can recruit new and existing Players to switch citizenship to their Country.

Playing: New Players can join existing Countries or start their own Country.

• Each Player can only be a Citizen of one Country at a time.
• New Players enter the Game with no Currency and can only join Countries that have open borders.
  • Example: AAA allows Players to join their Country for no cost, but all AAA Citizens are subject to AAA’s 10% daily tax, redistributed progressively to AAA’s poorest Citizens.
• Players may switch their citizenship subject to the laws of the new Country.
  • Example: BBB allows Players to join their Country for a cost of 10BBB, to be distributed equally between all prior BBB Citizens. BBB Citizens pay no taxes.

Timing: Each Game lasts a set period of Days (e.g. 30).

• Countries can implement new political and economic policies once per day.
• Games played in Real-Time could last weeks or months and would be played Virtually.
  • Real-Time Games rely more heavily on Founders and early Citizens’ community-building ability to recruit new Players into the game and become Citizens of their Country.
• Games played Live would be condensed into one day or less.
  • Example: Each Day takes 10 minutes, so a 30-Day Game is completed in 5 hours of gameplay.
  • Live Games require quick consensus-building between Founders and/or Citizens.

Winning: Prizes given to Winners of these Games:

1. Population Game: Country with the largest number of Citizens.
2. Equality Game: Country with highest Net Wealth of its poorest Citizen.
3. Wealth Game: Country with the highest Total Wealth.
4. Richest Game: Player with the highest Net Wealth.
5. Dominance Game: Player who sweeps Games 1-4.
   • This would require one Player winning the Richest Game and being on the winning team of all three of the Team Games.

Prizes: Shared between Citizens of winning Countries through different methods, including:

1. Unilaterally: All shares initially held by Founders, who decide how shares are distributed (if at all).
2. Directly: Equal shares to every Citizen.
3. Proportionately: Shares defined by ownership of native Currency held by each Citizen at Game’s end.

How To Win:

Example: Assume there are three countries, with currencies AAA, BBB, and CCC:

• Population: AAA = 200 Citizens, BBB = 100 Citizens, CCC = 50 Citizens
  • AAA wins the Population Game.
• Exchange Rates: AAA/BBB = 0.1, AAA/CCC = 0.5, CCC/BBB = 0.2
  • BBB is the Reference Currency.
    • 10 AAA = 1 BBB, 5 CCC = 1 BBB
• Highest Top Wealth: Citizen #1 in BBB, BBB1, holds 100AAA, 200BBB, and 20 CCC, which converts to 214 BBB, the highest Net Wealth in the Game.
  • BBB1 wins the Richest Game.
• Highest Base Wealth: The poorest Citizen of AAA has 50AAA (5BBB), the poorest Citizen of BBB has 0 BBB, the poorest Citizen of CCC has 10CCC (2BBB).
  • AAA wins the Equality Game.
• Total Wealth: Citizens of AAA own currency worth 10M BBB, citizens of BBB own currency worth 8M BBB, and Citizens of CCC own currency worth 12M CCC.
  • CCC wins the Wealth Game.

Strategies: Players can copy existing political and economic systems or create their own.

• Democracy:
  • Share power equally among citizens and vote daily on new political and economic policies.
    • This adds coordination and leadership risks and increases flexibility and creativity.
    • This strategy should increase chances of winning the Population and Equality Games and decrease chances of winning the Wealth and Richest Games.
• Dictatorship:
  • All Country policies are controlled by one or more Founders.
    • This strategy should increase the chance of winning the Richest Game while decreasing chances of winning the first Three Games.
    • If executed dominantly, this strategy should be the most likely path to winning the Dominance Game.
• Modern Monetary Policy (MMT):
  • A Country implementing MMT would continuously mint new currency and distribute it progressively via UBI or other redistributive methods.
    • This strategy should increase chances of winning the Population and Equality Games and decrease chances of winning the Wealth and Richest Games.
• Atlas Shrugged:
  • A Country following an Altas Shrugged strategy would enact libertarian monetary policies and require high admissions criteria (e.g. wealth/talent requirements and/or initiation fees) to join.
    • This strategy should increase chances of winning the Wealth and Richest Games and decrease chances of winning the Population and Equality Games.

Rules and Definitions:

• Monetary Policies: Countries can set their own monetary policies, including setting a tax rate and schedule and implementing the creation and/or destruction of its own currency.
• Exchange Rates: Measures the relative value of two different currencies based on Currency Pairs in trades between different Players and Countries.
  • Countries can set their own Exchange Rates when accepting Currency from their Citizens.
  • Countries can set effective Exchange Rates via foreign exchange trading with other Countries.
• Reference Currency: Converts value of all currencies into the single currency with the highest value per coin.
• Net Wealth: Calculates the total value of each Citizen’s Currency holdings based on Exchange Rates to the Reference Currency.
• Total Wealth: Sums the Net Worth of all Citizens in each Country.

References:

• The Evolution of Cooperation – Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton (1981)