Monero is an also-ran cryptocurrency, in the same proof-of-work family as Bitcoin and Etherium.
Monero.town is a Lemmy instance whose main communities are: Monero, privacy, Monero Memes, Meta, and Monero Mining.
Enough has been written on the negative ecological effects of proof-of-work based cryptocurrency that I think it’s not controversial to say it is incompatible with the Solarpunk vision.
Pictured inciting incident is a person advertising the crypto-capitalist Lemmy competitor “Nostr” in the anarchism community.
I don’t personally mind a debate about Nostr, but like most of the content from Monero.town, it doesn’t belong here. More sales pitches from a crypto-currency hype instance are going to be tedious, and crowd out the kind of progressive politics and human interactions we’re looking to nurture here. Reddit’s /r/anarchism had to constantly repel assholes trying to pass off their edgy capitalism as anarchist, Lemmy gives us the unique opportunity to send a strong message and nip this in the bud.
Fediverse sites that have already blocked Monero.town –
reject (10): solarpunk.moe, polyglot.city, freethought.online, icosahedron.website, sunbeam.city, vtuber.house, fruef.social, cutie.city, fuckcars.social, karas.social
followers_only (3): toot.cat, orbsafe.masto.host, partyparrot.social
Image Description
[Image description: Screenshot of an exchange between user Jack@Monero.Town and Five containing the following text
Jack@Monero.Town
Yea, that’s just not how Nostr works. Take a look here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips These are implementation possibilities that the protocol enables. Every client must implement NIP-01. All of the other NIPs are optional so every client that you use (an app for example) has decided to implement different NIPs. You decide which client you use and how Nostr should feel like. Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
Your “login mechanism” (private cryptographic key) has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. If you want to send btc to people you have to set that up yourself, manually linking a wallet to your key.
Five
I’m confused why you’re downplaying Nostr’s primary selling point - its close integration with Bitcoin. It’s clearly a cryptocurrency capitalist con job.
Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
That’s not what I was saying, but I’m fascinated that you’re implying it’s much worse than I anticipated. Which clients have their priority linked to received bitcoin? ]
I’m not sure I agree that crypto is fundamentally incompatible with solarpunk but I’m not necessarily an expert. Obviously anything that uses large amounts of fossil energy for non-crucial reasons is problematic but there’s no reason crypto can’t transition to green energy along with the rest of the world economy.
Is this just a single post by one user or is it a pattern? I think a simple message that this type of content is not on topic, and maybe removing the thread is a better approach than defederation in that case. If it becomes a pattern that users are engaging in this despite making it clear that it’s unwelcome, and particularly if admins of the instance are not addressing it, then defederation may be appropriate.
I think it’d take more than a change in power sources to make the current cryptocurrency schemes fit solarpunk ideology. Proof of work systems essentially create currencies backed by waste, tremendous amounts of processor-intensive math done for no other reason than to generate the currency. Math/power/processor time that could be spent tracking weather patterns, identifying patterns in invasive species, climate change, or other potential public goods. I’m not against reconsidering the current billionaire-centric financial systems, but the current crop of cryptos look more like capitalist get rich quick schemes with a lot of hardware and power externalities to me.
If there’s a currency that mints coins when your rig discovers an exoplanet or something I’d personally aay there’s room for that
Edit: for what it’s worth, I’m not sure defederating is necessary yet, but I also wouldn’t object to it if that’s the way it goes
This is a single post, but a known pattern for the culture of crypto-evangelists.
Removing threads not only removes the offending messages, but also the replies. We don’t need censorship to protect us from the concept of proof-of-work cryptocurrency, we just need to reduce moderator and community fatigue. We should be proactive about this.