# Character Archetypes: A Discussion The world is vast and in reality many worlds: Each of us lives in a unique environment of people, places, ideas, and things. People that share the same (or very similar) worldviews often have an easy time communicating. It's easy to express a feeling or idea to a friend that shares many reference points; there's no need to explain anything from scratch. But we are a group of people with very different worlds, each unique and with fewer shared points of reference. The aim of this exercise is to aid in mutual understanding of eachother's worlds. ## Alignment chart I want to base this activity on a component of the tabletop adventure role-playing game *Dungeons & Dragons*. The world of D&D is full of characters. In that world, to help with storytelling, each character has an *alignment*, based on 2 axes: ### Law vs chaos Law and Chaos represent the opposing principles of order vs entropy, control vs chaos, society vs the individual, and stability vs change. Law and chaos are neither good nor evil; they simply _are_. ### Good vs evil Good and Evil represent the familiar moral divide of altruism vs harm, kindness vs hatred, and mercy vs malevolence. The alignment chart looks like this:  ## What's *your* world like? As I said before, we all live in our own 'world' to some extend, and I'd like to know what characters or archetypes exist in yours. I don't expect everyone to come up with an example for all 9 alignments, but I would like everyone to come up with 2 or 3 examples of a major **character or archetype** in your world. By "character" I mean something close to an actual person. Examples include * A specific or general person (Elon Musk or 'billionaires') * A profession or class of people (Schoolchildren, farmers) By "archetype", I mean a more general concept or type that isn't necessarily a person or type of person, but nevertheless makes up a significant role in your world. Examples are harder, but might be things like * The informal money-lending industry * Fake News Whatever the example, I would like you to think about 2-3 examples that show something important about your world. Who or what you spend a lot of time thinking about, and how it affects or might impact your respective projects. Here's my list: | | Chaotic | Neutral | Lawful | | ----------- | ------------ | ------------- | ------------------------- | | **Good** | Eth1x | Eth2 | Ethereum core development | | **Neutral** | \#Defi | Twitter | Binance | | **Evil** | Crypto Scams | Proof-of-work | anti-crypto laws | ## Along the 'good' axis of Ethereum Development ### Lawful Good: Ethereum core development I don't know that I could do a better job explaining who the core devs are or what they do than Hudson Jameson, so I'll just leave this here: * https://hudsonjameson.com/2020-06-22-what-is-an-ethereum-core-developer/ The TL;DR -- Being an Ethereum core developer is a difficult, often thankless job with a big time commitment and a *lot* of pressure, especially if you're on the geth team (ask me why later). There is no 'official' way to become a core dev other than regularly and consistently contributing to the Ethereum protocol in a meaningful way. I consider the core devs to be 'lawful good' because fortnight after fortnight, they carry out their duties reviewing, discussing, and implementing all the proposals and changes that go into Ethereum's hard forks. Often there are technical disagreements, or intense pressure from the community to implement or make certain changes, but the core devs are steadfast in their commitment to stability and careful, incrimental changes that do not jeapordize the safety and security of the Ethereum network. ### Neutral Good: Eth 2.0 I put this into 'neutral' good mostly because Eth1X clearly fits in 'chaotic' (more on that later). But I think there is also good reason that Eth2 be thought of as Neutral. Eth2 is a 'greenfield' system that was designed more or less from scratch. This means that Eth2 researchers had total freedom to create a blockchain unburdened by the problems and burdens of the Ethereum 1.0 chain. They were able to learn from the design decisions (which could now be called 'mistakes') in Eth1, and have been designing version 2.0 with those lessons in mind. What has resulted is a system far more complex, but far more powerful, and ready to scale. As Vitalik put it, (I'm paraphrasing here) "Ethereum was the result of a bunch of cypherpunks coming together to try and build the decentralized world computer. Eth2 actually *is* that computer". ### Chaotic Good: Eth1.x Research Ethereum 1.0 is the current running version of Ethereum. Eth2 is the next-generation re-design of Ethereum. Anything in-between is dubbed 'Eth1.x'. I left this one for last because it's probably the aspect of Ethereum I'm best-qualified to answer questions on, having covered eth1.x research all of last year for the Ethereum blog. Eth1.x is about as chaotic as it gets, and is one of the most challenging places for research and development. The goal of Eth1.x is to make a set of upgrades to Ethereum that enable it to overcome design choices that, for better or worse, are now kind of **stuck** in the current chain. This is a *huge* technical challenge, akin to re-building a train engine *while it's still running on the tracks* (has anyone seen the movie 'snowpiercer'?). Because Ethereum is a running blockchain, and billions of dollars are staked on its continued functioning. And it's a little bit alarming, but Ethereum cannot afford to do nothing: without continous development and upgrading, mainnet Ethereum will die a painful death 💀. The ethos of Ethereum development is decentralized, so there is also a bit of a coordination problem with eth1x. There is no 'executive' who can dictate what directions or solutions will make up a 'roadmap'. There are just a lot of really complex ideas that are all interrelated and need further investigation, with a handful of very opinionated developers and researchers to discuss them. To add to the chaos, researchers change their minds all the time. Last year, in January I came up with a 'ethereum 1.x tech tree' as a way of organizing some of these upgrades on the way to the Eth2 merge, and I believe that almost all of them have been abandoned for alternative solutions at this point. Nevertheless, some of these upgrades, particularly a modification of Ethereum's [state trie](https://blog.ethereum.org/2019/12/30/eth1x-files-state-of-stateless-ethereum/) need to go through before the Eth1 chain docks with Eth2. Others are more 'optional' improvements that are not strictly necessary, but which would make things a lot easier further down the road to Serenity (Eth2's older name).