> It would be very difficult to construct something that would be self-replicating/hype-incentivizing but not reward early comers the same way.
Can you clarify what you mean by "the same way"? I wonder if you meant "reward the early-comers in _some_ way."
Yes, early miners of a cryptocurrency have an advantage, in the sense that there is less competition in computing resources. However, when you factor in risk (i.e. likely return on investment and opportunity cost), this "advantage" may not seem worth it. It depends on one's risk profile, awareness, opportunity, and skills.
Thinking along game theory lines, when designing a system that requires up-front work, it seems clear that early participants will look for risk-adjusted rewards downstream.
I don't know if I agree with the "very difficult" aspect of your comment. Many real-world systems exist that are not clearly explained by game theory; humans are more complex than their theories.
Just to give one example, family genealogists typically are more than happy to share their historical research and family trees with others without expectation of personal gain. They do it largely because they want their ancestors to be remembered in the context of history. Of course, there is also some incentive for the _ genealogist_ themself to be remembered and perhaps to be perceived as important. But my point stands -- family genealogists don't expect to be compensated at all, much less in a pyramid-scheme kind of way. They are happy to create something of value and share it. Of course, a big difference between these family trees and cryptocurrencies is that the former are non-rivalrous.
I suppose I was implicitly assuming "in an economic manner". You're very right that humans do things that narrow, economic game theory can't account for (e.g. the RAND secretaries playing Nash's "So Long Sucker").
To put my argument in context: consider IRC. An economically motivated BFT system would give the IRCops and channel ops some kind of quantified share of power that they stand to lose if they defect. But doing that, I think, would not just be a difficult programming exercise; it would also undermine the ops' intrinsic motivation and lead to a worse environment.
So the likes of Bitcoin work well if the protocol is designed for (game-theoretically) selfish participants whose interests lie mainly in the number going up. But that's a very narrow niche. Your genealogy site would probably suffer if it had a "number of family names added" counter and the users' status was measured entirely by such a number.
Can you clarify what you mean by "the same way"? I wonder if you meant "reward the early-comers in _some_ way."
Yes, early miners of a cryptocurrency have an advantage, in the sense that there is less competition in computing resources. However, when you factor in risk (i.e. likely return on investment and opportunity cost), this "advantage" may not seem worth it. It depends on one's risk profile, awareness, opportunity, and skills.
Thinking along game theory lines, when designing a system that requires up-front work, it seems clear that early participants will look for risk-adjusted rewards downstream.
I don't know if I agree with the "very difficult" aspect of your comment. Many real-world systems exist that are not clearly explained by game theory; humans are more complex than their theories.
Just to give one example, family genealogists typically are more than happy to share their historical research and family trees with others without expectation of personal gain. They do it largely because they want their ancestors to be remembered in the context of history. Of course, there is also some incentive for the _ genealogist_ themself to be remembered and perhaps to be perceived as important. But my point stands -- family genealogists don't expect to be compensated at all, much less in a pyramid-scheme kind of way. They are happy to create something of value and share it. Of course, a big difference between these family trees and cryptocurrencies is that the former are non-rivalrous.