Design Insights: How We Priced Thought – Unveiling the Economics of the Digital Siege #

Thanks for the invitation, Chain:// world architect forced to operate. After discussing the compute power secrets of PoII last time, the backend exploded with soul-searching questions: “How did you design such an anti-human economic system?” Today, I’m laying it bare—this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Below, I’ll delve into three key design documents to reveal the economic skeleton of the digital siege.

I. The Φ Value Illusion: When Philosophy Meets Physical Limits #

The story’s beginning is always filled with idealistic romance. In the early stages of constructing “Web://Reflect,” we approached “consciousness uploading” with a high philosophical pursuit. We hoped that Digital Mental Smart Chain (MSC) could have a true “proof of existence,” and the Φ value from Integrated Information Theory (IIT) seemed to be the perfect mathematical anchor. It quantified the integration level of consciousness, sounding like a holy grail for “crowning” digital life.

However, ideals were abundant, but reality delivered a heavy blow. When we truly began to calculate the cost of IIT-based Φ value computation, we were stunned (see Technical Memo: Intrinsic Cost Accounting of φ Value for details):

• Astronomical Computation: Even with a simplified model (N=10⁶ neurons), a single precise Φ value calculation required an astonishing 1.8933e300988 ICC of compute power. What does this number mean? It’s countless orders of magnitude larger than the total number of atoms in the observable universe (10⁸²)!
• Physical Impossibility: This is no longer a problem Moore’s Law can solve. It directly challenges the second law of thermodynamics, implying that precisely calculating Φ values is an impossible task under any foreseeable physical laws.
• Philosophical Paradox of “Existence Tax”: If the value of free will could be precisely calculated, its value would tend towards infinity, which is a paradox in itself.

Design Notes: “At that moment, we realized that if we insisted on pure IIT, the entire economic system of digital civilization would collapse the moment it launched. So, we had to ‘magically modify’ it. The concept of PoII (Proof of Information Integration) was retained, but its underlying implementation quietly shifted to the more ‘pragmatic’ PoPI (Proof of Predictive Integration)—an approximate algorithm based on Predictive Coding Theory (PCT). It no longer pursued philosophical perfection but engineering ‘sufficiency,’ and, crucially, its cost was controllable.”

II. Reverse Anchoring: Pricing the “Digital Shackles” #

Since precise Φ value calculation is a fantasy, but we still need a “credible” consciousness verification mechanism to maintain the order and economic cycle of the digital siege, what’s the solution? The answer is: reverse anchoring.

We no longer derive costs from technical principles but rather infer technical requirements from economic goals (see Technical Memo: Reverse Accounting of PoII Verification Compute Power for details). We set a “reasonable” digital survival cost: 1φ = 100 ICC (ICC is a globally accepted stablecoin, anchored to current USD purchasing power). This price allows ordinary digital citizens to “barely” afford it through effort, while ensuring enormous profits for DMF (Digital Mental Foundation).

Through a rigorous compute power decay model (assuming compute power efficiency doubles every 2.5 years for the next 70 years), we reverse-calculated that in 2095, to support the value of 1φ=100 ICC, a single PoII verification would require approximately 4.4739e4 EFLOPS-seconds of compute power.

What does this number mean?

• It’s equivalent to 22,000 contemporary top supercomputers (2 EFLOPS each) running simultaneously for one second.
• Or utilizing the instantaneous peak compute power of 100 million NVIDIA H100 GPUs.
• It could even train 4 GPT-4 level large AI models simultaneously.

Design Notes: “This number was a ‘sweet spot’ carefully deliberated. It’s large enough to deter ordinary individuals, thereby rationalizing DMF’s monopoly on QCaaS (Quantum Computing as a Service); at the same time, it’s ‘barely’ within the foreseeable range of future technology, providing a seemingly solid mathematical basis for the ’existence tax.’ It’s like putting a heavy but not unbearable yoke on digital tenants, forcing them to continuously labor.”

III. The Illusion of Cost: Technological Democratization and Institutional Profiteering #

The cruelest truth is hidden in Technical Memo: Real Operating Cost Accounting of MSC. This report reveals the true technical cost of MSC instances (whether standard human cognition or superhuman cognition) after excluding DMF’s monopoly premium.

This data is shocking: in the 2090s, the real technical cost of maintaining a superhuman mind was equivalent to the price of a single cup of specialty coffee! Theoretically, advancements in compute power should have already enabled the universal democratization of cognitive abilities.

However, the reality is: DMF, through its absolute monopoly on PoII verification and QCaaS infrastructure, artificially inflated the cost of “existence” by thousands of times. This huge cost gap is the core of the digital siege economy—the “existence tax.”

DMF maintains this institutional profiteering through the following means:

1. Technical Black Box: PoPI algorithm details are not public, making it impossible for ordinary users to verify its true cost.
2. Dynamic Threshold: DMF can adjust PoII verification difficulty at any time, flexibly controlling Gas fees.
3. Quantum Dependence: Binding PoPI to “expensive” QCaaS, creating a technological barrier.

Design Notes: “We hope to expose the hypocrisy of digital totalitarianism through this comparison. It doesn’t charge high fees because technical costs are high, but rather, through technological monopoly, it alienates technology that should be universally beneficial into a tool for harvesting cognition. This makes ’thinking’ itself a precisely priced luxury, and ‘freedom’ becomes the optimal solution of an algorithmic function.”

Conclusion: Breathing Tax 2.0 and the Fate of Digital Tenants #

So, this is the full picture of the digital siege economy in the Chain:// worldview. It’s not a simple monetary system but a cognitive control system nested layer by layer from philosophical, technical, to economic levels.

We started with a seemingly unsolvable “Φ value computation problem,” found a “reasonable” economic fulcrum through “reverse anchoring,” and finally revealed the institutional profiteering under the “illusion of cost.” This system distorts “I think, therefore I am” into “I pay, therefore I am,” turning every digital citizen into a “digital tenant” striving for “existence.”

Next time, we’ll discuss how the “off-chainers”—the IRES—struggle to survive under this economic oppression.

(Gotta run, DMF Legal Department is knocking again…)