# The Dark Forestry Department ***If this document is being read on a screen, it's still a draft. The final form is intended to be a respectable LaTeX output printed to heavy, perhaps unbleached paper— so as to impart a certain credible gravity to the reader, and so as to create a canonical artifact for future department lore.*** ## Abstract This is a proposal for a new team named *the Department of Dark Forestry*, *the Dark Forestry Department*, or simply *the Department*. The central orienting goal of this team is **to map, measure, and understand evil in the world from the perspective of the Ethereum protocol**, and to (eventually), use that understanding to design small, clever, and courageous interventions that mitigate its effects or (if possible) destroy it outright.  ## Introduction > "As an untended forest is to a long-managed scientific forest, so untended nature is to the garden. The garden is one of man's attempts to impose his own principles of order, utility, and beauty on nature. What grows in the garden is always a small, consciously selected sample of what *might* be grown there. " > —James Scott, *Seeing Like a State* *The Infinite Garden* may be a legible touchstone for broad organizational alignment and public vision, but it does not represent a comprehensive description of where the Ethereum Foundation finds itself in space and time. *The Dark Forest* (陰森林, ☵), adapted from the [hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis) outlined in the epic trilogy by Liu Cixin, might complete (or at least give depth to) the worldview implied by *The Infinite Garden* (陽園林, ☱), coined by the Foundation's executive director Aya Miyaguchi. The most consequential [object](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/timothy-mortons-hyper-pandemic) instantiated by the Ethereum protocol is the *state*, which is encoded presently as a *Merkle trie* (in future, a *Verkle trie*). It's not much of a stretch to characterize the many consecutively hashed roots of each Merkle trie in the Ethereum state as constituting a single object called a *forest*, and it only takes a bit more imagination to see how a forest is a decent metaphor for the collection of people, robots, and trust relationships we commonly refer to as *the Ethereum ecosystem*. Within that ecosystem— within *the Forest*, is an environment that cannot be owned or controlled, but which can be mapped, understood, and maybe *managed* to prevent outcomes that are detrimental to the forest and to the humans interdependent with it in the long run. The forest is a growing *cast* ([in Josh Stark's coinage](https://stark.mirror.xyz/n2UpRqwdf7yjuiPKVICPpGoUNeDhlWxGqjulrlpyYi0)) that extends through a territory in spacetime largely imagined by humans, and it might bump up against harder casts and objects herenow and therethen— nation-states, legal structures, multi-national corporations, diaspora remittance patterns, et cetera. In any case, the territory is decidedly **not empty**. A forest that is dense, large, and filled with life will contain *all aspects of life, including good and evil*. This is what makes it *dark* (陰, shadowy) in places, *light* (陽, bright) in others, but never *void* (黑暗), as the phrase 'the dark forest' is written when it concerns deep space and existential threats from other worlds. There are plenty of existential threats right here in our world, but no matter how dark it can seem in the wilderness, one can always find evidence of sunshine. ### Seeing like a Forest >“What happens to the school?” > >“We’ll regroup. Find another place to meet. Come back to the forest when it’s safe.” > >“But there won’t be a forest.” > >“Oh, you know better than that.” Dad turned to me with an indulgent teacher’s smile. “How do spruce forests work? Fire renews them. Every few centuries — or sooner, okay. But it will be back.” > >“Not like it was. Not in our lifetimes.” > >“Doesn’t matter to the spruces. Forests know time differently. Some wounds don’t heal in a human lifetime, but why should that be all that matters?” > > — *The Hidden Forests of Earth and Mars*, by Anna Zumbro The duty of the Foundation is toward the well-being of the Forest. In order to act in the best interest of an object so distributed in time and space, the Foundation must first *see the world from its perspective*. This entails the accumulation of knowledge not just about life within the forest, but about the forest's boundaries, about adjacent ecosystems, the objects that comprise them, and how all objects and all ecosystems interact with each other. Working for the best interest of a forest may sometimes include protecting and nurturing specific plants, territories, or ecosystems. Helping a rare but important piece of an ecosystem make it through the winter strengthens the whole forest. But there are other important things to do in the work of stewardship: Forestry requires careful observation, understanding, and learning from complex processes long in-progress, in order to identify big, looming problems. When such threats are identified, it involves taking action to *mitigate the worst effects for everyone*, or at least *to guide away from danger*. The forest contains some things we'd rather it didn't. Scams. Hackers. Charlatans and carpetbaggers. There are many people and organizations who claim to be acting in people's best interest, but in a dark forest one can never be sure if they are *genuinely* doing so. There is room for a type of deliberate action that makes small but meaningful changes to the Forest— Encouraging some paths and cordoning off others, tracking and measuring certain areas, creating thresholds and plans for interventions in the event of natural disasters— The art and science of this kind of work could be called *Dark Forestry*. The imagery and naming of a forestry department is chosen to emphasize that humans at the direction of the Foundation are small, insignificant agents in a large and complex environment filled with forces and entities many orders of magnitude larger than themselves. Furthermore, forestry requires *a local and contextual* wisdom gained through experience instead of a generalized, abstract knowledge conveyed through study— *mētis*, rather than *techne* or *episteme* (h/t and RIP to James C. Scott). ### Beyond Subtraction > Brave daring leads to death. > Brave caution leads to life. > The choice can be the right one > or the wrong one. > > Who will interpret > the judgement of heaven? > Even the wise soul > finds it hard. > — Lao Tzu There is a word in Singlish, "kiasu", which will be eagerly and enthusiastically described to you by any Singaporean as 'fear of losing out'— the most readily leaned upon example being of lines in the hawker center: On an early Sunday morning, one can arrive at Bukit Timah food court and observe three kaya toast stalls, one with a serpentine line of 15 customers waiting while the other two uncles watch, unbothered from their un-patronized stalls. *Kiasu* is an emotional (and questionably rational) response to situations in which one could (and maybe should) *take advantage*. Subtraction is a good name for a posture that counter-balances the quality of being *kiasu*. It's a good posture to take in matters of the Ethereum Foundation strategic thinking. Subtraction directs Foundation members to *give up the possibility of 'winning'* in traditional terms (i.e. capturing and accumulating power, opportunity, or market share)— and in so doing, to give up the fear of losing out. To follow subtraction is to resist the impulse to be *kiasu*, and it works quite well to clearly illustrate an important plane of alignment in short to medium timeframes of organizational awareness. Subtraction has also demonstrated the power of *defying expectations*— through adopting subtraction as a broad strategy, the Foundation has traded one type of material will-to-power for another more subtle (moral) one: only the Foundation has the 'neutral' high ground and historically privileged position to resolve disputes, to establish best-practices, and otherwise act as a steward of values for the ecosystem. A lesser known, or at least lesser used Singlish companion to *kiasu* is the word "kiasi", which might be described less enthusiastically, by the same Singaporean as above.The word is often conveyed more as a metaphor, as it directly translates to *fear of dying or death*— a subject matter that most people, including and especially younger Singaporeans, are not so comfortable speaking about literally. Nevertheless, the word does indeed originate as a descriptor of soldiers who are afraid to die on the battlefield; the *kiasi* flavor of cowardice is being too unwilling to die for a selfless cause. In the present day it might express someone too reticent to take a risk of mortal embarrassment in a social or professional situation (go die already). There is currently no counterbalancing force to "kiasi" in EF strategic thinking. That is to say, fear of death is not an explicitly rejected impulse in our organizational culture. It should be. Many at the EF are paralyzed by the fear of losing their jobs or funding, the fear of being regarded as *not value-aligned*, or even just fear of mediocrity. Overcoming this fear of pseudo-death enables the Foundation to take courageous and/or strategically dramatic actions both for good and against evil. We lack a good name for a posture that counter-balances the (very natural) impulse to stay alive no matter what. Inversion might be appropriate. It clearly moves in a similar direction as subtraction, but *inversion* is its own kind of mathematical operation, perhaps with a more dramatic style. At the organizational level, to follow *inversion* is to resist the impulse to be "kiasi", to allow for the performance of courageous acts, and in so doing, to give up the fear of death. The introduction of *subtraction* as an organizational strategy was itself an act of *inversion*. Vitalik's quick donation of SHIBA token to Indian covid relief is another good example. *Inversion* is not just courageous, not always performative, and certainly not ever fully grave or serious. It must be always playful, and even weird sometimes. As Andy Tudhope puts it: *weird is the way back home*. ### The Perfect Cast > Max: "Dad, I don't even know how to fish..." > >Goofy: "Aw, c'mon now, that never stopped me! Let me show you a little family secret, handed down through 'bout twelve or thirteen Goof generations: *The perfect cast.*" > > —[Goofy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVVrn0Lfz-c), *A Goofy Movie* It seems outlandish and at the same time entirely reasonable that some persistent patterns living today in the Merkle forest may still exist in some form twelve or thirteen generations hence, in the same way that patterns that began inside [Lloyd's Coffee House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_Coffee_House) still reside within [the square mile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London). Just like those old-but-still-thriving colonial structures, it also seems both outlandish and at the same time entirely reasonable that in hindsight, some of what was built on top of the core protocol will seem morally reprehensible with twelve generations of hindsight. But it wasn't unheard of to be an abolitionist in the 17th century; it was just more difficult act as one. The Ethereum Foundation may (or may not) be the only organization with the right starting point to *cast forward* in parallel with the protocol, acting in its best interest— or rather in the interest of the humans who use it. Long-term thinking is challenging enough, but it might be that survival will require long-term and deliberate action. The heart and soul of retroactive public goods funding is a shift in perspective: Look at a public thing from the opposite way in time, and analysis on a moral dimension (what's good enough to justify supporting?) becomes much easier. Imagine the same shift applied to the orthogonal axis: If we try looking at public things from the opposite moral direction (what's evil and therefore worth fighting against?), it does seem to intuitively make analysis (and coordination) about distant things along the time dimension seem more straightforward. The nuance of censorship matters less under the crushing grip of a despot; regenerative finance doesn't help people at war. Cypherpunks are more coherently motivated and unified by defense against evils ("censorship", "capture") than by any particular good ("abundance", "UX", "free|OS software", "private", "public", "fair", "regenerative")-- it's the fight against evil that brings out our best qualities. Instead of *building goods*, the Dark Forestry Department orients its mission and high-level lore around **breaking evils.** By inverting the typical strategies of "impact" through effective virtue signalling, the Department can sidestep entirely the challenges of distinguishing virtue signal from virtue noise. Evil, insofar as it's just inverted good, should be easier to talk about, point to, and to evaluate action against simply because there's more money to be made selling utopia, and it's scary to think about how high the stakes of inaction really are. ## Brass Tacks and Broad Strokes To be an effective team, the Department doesn't necessarily need much. It needs a first pilot mission, members, and the blessing of supporters. Budget is an important question, but not the most important— Dark Forestry is avoiding catastrophe; its value is precisely what would be lost if the worst comes to pass. The biggest challenge is developing the right means and timelines for evaluating effectiveness, and establishing a baseline of what *right action* (if any) can be intrinsically justified. In more creative forestry terms, if we want long-term shade, how do we distinguish the dead seeds from the slow ones? ### First Mission: Research The first project of the DFD is a research piece that examines and maps the territory of ***evil in the golden triangle*** region of western China, Laos, and Shan (NW Myanmar)— This is notably the place where lots of [scam operations](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/business/scammers-trafficking-cybercrime.html) base, but it is also where an ongoing revolution has catalyzed some unique and important new political understandings of nations, governments, and international institutions like the UN. We propose to examine the moral implications of 50 million people adopting public protocols for currency and identity systems ([if the good guys win the war](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/20/world/asia/myanmar-civil-war.html)). Right now is a critical time for Myanmar, and the democratically elected government-in-exile is experimenting with crypto, but they're [doing it without a lot of expertise or wisdom to guide them](https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/banking-on-victory-myanmars-resistance-tentatively-embraces-fintech/). The potential for damage of an entire country turning to crypto and then f\*cking up the execution is *tragic* -- and there have been no shortage of carpetbaggers ready to feed bad advice to politically powerful people involved in Myanmar's revolution. This is a dire situation that can be improved by knowledge alone. It's a specific situation where *credibility matters*, and where **the EF may have special credibility** to lend to knowledge that is public already. Providing this kind of advice rooted in expertise is a sort of altruistic defense: There is ample-yet-ambiguous benefit in the future for Ethereum in fledgling nations and digital democracies, but **not if they die**. But discussing any action, the first step should be to map the territory, and to **produce a report** to orient strategic decision-makers on what significance the situation in Myanmar has to the Ethereum ecosystem, and how many different potential outcomes might influence the protocol on long timescales. *(Note that Griffin worked on a paper on this subject as a side-project for The Asia Foundation in 2023; it is geared toward donors and policy experts with familiarity on Myanmar but very little context or understanding of blockchains. The pilot proposed above would be more-or-less the complimentary paper written for EF leadership and web3 OGs who know what's possible from a technology standpoint, but who lack context/understanding of the region and conflict).* #### EF learning journey If there is interest and time from anyone at the EF to visit Mae Sot; a field mission for curious minds could be arranged, hosted by a handful of (mostly anthropologist) academics who live, research, and work there. ### Measuring Effectiveness >You can tell it's an aspen tree because of the way it is. > >— Lenny Pepperbottom, [Neature Walk, episode 1](https://youtu.be/Hm3JodBR-vs?si=q-3A5BgUo20eUhD8) While we would not like to exclude the possibility of undertaking rigorous double-blind intervention studies, sometimes the science of dark forestry is more art than science. There are no counterfactuals for the breaking of public evils, and only narrowly averted disasters generate good press. Many activities on 'the light side' are content to rely on intuition and general approval (nobody tabulates how much money has been wasted in grant funding disbursements, for example), so although this department intends to hold itself to stricter standards of review than the rest of the Foundation, the bar is, with all due respect, not very high in this regard. In the same way that public goods funding seems to be successful if it makes 'value aligned' people feel like 'impact' has been achieved, the interventions of the Department could be considered a success if they are able to convincingly improve general understanding of the shape of evil in our world. Legible and focused intelligence about real-world risks, threats, and opportunities for Ethereum can help all of us coordinate around common needs for ecosystem defense. Call it *value alignment calibration*. The challenge faced by the Department is one of information asymmetry: While public goods are generally well-publicized and championed, and therefore easy to justify, the actions and interventions of the Department might need to remain unknown to the general public, or at least unrecognized and unattributed to the Foundation. Feature and bug in equal measure, given the Foundation's historical reticence to seek credit or recognition. ## Inclusive Gates  The Dark Forestry Department should have a higher-than-average bar for operational security and day-to-day practices. It should not exist to be a public team, nor should it ever have a public-facing interface or comms. It also should not be the kind of team that expands or contracts according to ambition or market forces. It's a Department for a reason: the work is slow, methodical, and bureaucratically straightforward. Members of the department must pass through **inclusive gates** in order to access materials and operational channels. An inclusive gate is a mechanism that invites the candidate to respond to a challenge, provide a proof, or reveal a commitment. **Discovery.** Reading this paper is the simplest inclusive gate; the idea of the Dark Forestry Department has found its way to you, dear reader, and that means you've passed through the first gate. **Aptitude**. There is no absolute requirement of technical skill to qualify for a role within the department. Nevertheless, to be considered as a candidate, one must demonstrate a *willingness to learn*. On the other side of the same coin, there is no shame in being unable to do something, and this job is specifically for those willing to teach others who can't (yet) do the technical things. Teaching and learning are part of the core competencies of Department members; on a periodic basis, one must teach a skill to others, and learn a new one. **Alignment**. Insofar as the job entails fighting *evils*, some measure of alignment is self-reinforcing. Still, the challenge/proof of the work is in the doing. Talk about value alignment is not just cheap, it suffers from inflation. `\\\I don't yet have a convincing or compelling gate for value alignment yet; will come back to this one`. ### Mystery, Privacy, Secrecy >Secrets are pieces of information that get told to people one-at-a-time. > —Cobordism There is no need for **strict** security, because on a long enough timeline, everything becomes public domain. The department follows the maxim '*privacy, not secrecy*'. The policy of the department is to never officially deny its own existence, and to only give a wry smile whenever speculation lands accurately. This will, over time, and with very little effort, creates a certain authentic gravity which will in turn give weight to the Department's decisions and activities fed back through the strange attractor of reputation that the Foundation has. The 'strange attractor' is the unique relationship the Foundation has with the Ethereum protocol and community. The authority to engage with evils caused and exacerbated by the protocol will therefore always be a unique burden to the Foundation, and one that cannot be ignored for much longer. In this regard, Dark Forestry really only works if loosely coupled to the EF as an effective body, because it *meets expectations/hopes* that already exist in the community, and leverages mystery to effectively communicate and coordinate. It need not be explicitly connected to the Foundation. ## Team Composition > "*Major, l've been meaning to ask you. Why'd you ask for a guy like me to be transferred in from the police?" > > "Because you're a guy like you. An honest cop with a clean record. And you've got a regular family. With the exception of your cyber-net implants, your brain's real. > > "No matter how powerful we may be fighting-wise, a system where all the parts react the same way is a system with a fatal flaw. Like individual, like organization. Overspecialization leads to death. That's all.*" > > —Ghost in the Shell, 1995 Diversity is the root of resilience. Dark forestry requires the accumulation of wisdom, which means accumulating perspectives that are multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-lingual. Maybe the most crucial aspect of this diversity is: *real decisions need to be made by people other than white men from rich countries*. Given that EF leadership, with the exception of Aya, is exclusively white men from rich countries, this is a hard pattern to escape. It would be foolish to create anything like a quota for team members and diversity within the department. Nevertheless, at least once a year, we have the responsibility to ask ourselves 'does our team reflect the world in its diversity?' If the answer seems any bit uncomfortable or beyond an obvious 'sufficiently, yes', then we go into RECOVERY MODE to figure out what needs to change in order to find balance again. We should strive to have both foxes and hedgehogs. Chaotic and Lawful alignments. We need, at the very least: ***a bard and acting department chair until a less white-and-privlidged department leader can be appointed (Griffin)***, to rally the team and perform such actions as give pep talks, kick off meetings, write lore documents, and to be willing to dive under the bus for any grave mistakes made by the Department, if they happen. ***a wizard, mage, and/or druid*** , one or more damage-dealers to spin code, organize solutions, and perform those technical actions that distinguish programmers from power-users. ***a ranger***, to keep up-to-date and fully aware of the current state-of-affairs for different Ethereum community clusters, and to keep relationships with many people in various communities toward that goal. ***a healer***, to keep members sane and seen, to take the pulse, temperature, and/or humidity of the team at all times, and to keep a pace without pushing or pulling anyone. ***a rabbi***, to be someone in a leadership position who supports the Department and its goals. ****** ## Aphorisms and Quotes An object is anything that can be *built* or *broken*. Hyperobjects are objects are sticky, non-local objects massively distributed in space and time. We are all trapped inside them. The *how* **is** the *what*. The only way *out* is *through*. The whole is actually *less than* the sum of its parts. Cypherpunks write code. Solarpunks build goods. Lunarpunks break evils. The culture of Ethereum is one of optimism. Ethereum is courageous computing. The Ethereum Foundation must keep an element of courage, and act against public evils enabled by the Ethereum protocol. ## Topics/Territory for Future Investigation ### Ukraine and the Digital Ministry ### Karenni State / NUG tools for emergent governance ### East African Democracy (Kenya) ### Venezuela (NGOs and activism) ### Rohingya Identity (Bangladesh and Malaysia) ### Nigeria v. Binance ### Borneo, Indonesia, and the Carbon Cowboys ### AI and catostrophic unemployment in India, Indonesia, and the Phillipines. ## Shalls and Shall nots Members SHALL NOT use telegram as a primary form of communication, and must take precautionary measures to isolate sensitive work from insecure platforms. Members SHALL utilize 2fa and/or physical security keys for authentication, and SHALL NOT have SMS as an authentication route for any platform, including personal ones (unless absolutely unavoidable, as is the case with some terrible credit cards, local banks, etc). Members SHALL be willing to engage with new skills, both technical and non-technical, and to be willing (at least in principle) to become *proficient* in those skills in the long term. Members SHALL be open and astute to intercultural differences, and be adept at navigating contexts and situations outside the bounds of normal comfort and/or risk, though not outside the bounds of reasonable safety. Members SHALL acknowledge the humor and irony in conflict, and must be willing and able to deal with both triumph and defeat, whatever turns out to be the case. Members are not obligated to engage with observed evil, but SHALL NOT avert their gaze from it, nor from the souls that it pains.