Backstory
I started a bitcoin multisig with a couple of new friends. We each put the same amount of bitcoin in a 2-of-3 and agreed that we would each stack equally as much as we could, with the goal of pooling some funds for testing and maybe to go towards a new bitcoin project. It wasn’t that serious.
The next week we were talking about starting a business and adding 10 times as much bitcoin to the wallet. A month later we had meetings started working on things. Later websites and a community are brewing. This MultiSig linked us together in a subtle subconscious way, we would lose honour if we were to neglect or misuse it. When trust is not broken it grows.
Dramas of life and all types of issues that build up when working together are put into perspective by the multisig. Commitment is anchored to something that is well defined. Members can and must trust each other not to rug pull, but also can trust each other not to back out in less tangible ways. The MultiSig helped us to understand the scale of the group’s plan and to weigh each individuals perspective towards our goals effectively. Unseen things come to light faster.
We 10x the size of the wallet again, plans are growing and now we have investors copying the same model with funds into different multisig wallets with us. Bitcoin is stacked, we have brands, concepts and a new simple way of doing things. The multisigs add a self organising layer of measured human relationships and allow a new futuristic type of organisation.
It turns out we don’t need any legacy systems involved in the organisation. Individuals don’t even need to be Cyberpunks. We can scale by allowing multisigs to appear and overlap wherever people want them, giving us global scaling without fiat complexity. Many small groups with their own multisigs, much like ours, that work together openly and separately. Organisation is easy.
What?
It is just a collaborative multisig wallet, you can get it for free, but we call it a Trust Machine. It combines multiple humans in control over bitcoin. This is a new form of ownership that has not been well defined in the fiat or legal system and which in a way supersedes it. “Code is law” is combined with the natural law between people. This allows us to coordinate with each other in an economic way without any other contractual connection.
Cyberpunk Hardware is open-source and formed anonymously in the style of bitcoin. Cyberpunks can operate the old ways but only interact with Cyberpunk Hardware using bitcoin. The more multisig relationships a cyberpunk has the more we can trust them.
Why?
It is easy to think of things in business the way people always have, but we see all these bitcoin businesses getting rugged by fiat systems. We want to build a resilient bitcoin organisation. The first step is building strong relationships. This makes the foundation of the organisation we can measure the value of this in bitcoin, but on top of that we also build intangible strengths like trust, commitment and coordination.
By only trading with bitcoin, we keep the organisations focus on bitcoin so we can do truly productive things. We think this will pay off long term.
How it works?
It’s simple really you just set up a collaborative multisig, but through our experience the magic comes through three main functions:
1. Collaborative Bitcoin Fund
The bitcoin mulitisig wallet allows people to easily pool resources for a common purpose. You could call this a trust minimised de-intermediated investment club or an autonomous cooperative fundraising system.
Communication channels in the multisig are important, they mean that everyone is kept in the know and relevant info for each multisig is silo easily. Clear information about spending is kept in one place and all participants are included in each decision to the degree defined by the rules of the multisig.
Investments are measured against the value of bitcoin and only spend if a threshold of signers agree. I expect the grounding in bitcoin makes investments wiser. In this story 2 of the 3 members of the MultiSig can leave with their initial contributions or more if the other members agree. You can create your own plan or none at all, but it seems that less rules end up being more fair. The longer this social and financial trust lasts the stronger it becomes.
2. Insurance Bond
The multisig is also a “bond” which enables members to contribute to projects in intangible ways. The insurance between the members means that if at any point in time one member should not live up to the natural law of the group in any way, the other two parties have the ability to enforce whatever they feel is financially just. This means some members can work hard and not contribute as much financially whilst others can work less but provide insurance of their commitment.
3. Enduring Volatility
The more volatility in the bitcoin price the multisig endures, the stronger it becomes. It helps you HODL! More often than not the group is more emotionally stable. If the group doesn’t handle the volatility, from free market perspective this is probably for a good reason. The groups collaboration is necessarily lower time preference than a single person and this is a good HODL tech.
How it Grows
Cyberpunk Hardware ideally would see multisigs of different types being started. These could be with people from anywhere that you are interested in collaborating with. Start with a comfortable amount. The main thing is finding people who are curious enough.
The multisig can be simply set up with idea of putting the funds towards your goals. We can then link up privately or in this chat to keep track of our progress. We each start other multisigs and expand to create a shared passion for Cyberpunk Hardware around the world.
Spec
– Nunchuk app runs on most operating systems and provides us our multisig tech on bitcoin mainchain. (We are also interested in smaller lightning multisigs with groups like bitpac)
– Groups should not have more than 8 people in them. (studies say that more than that is to hard to organise) and probably best to start with 3 or 4 until things get moving.
– The signer threshold depends upon the amount of trust in your group, I recommend starting with a simple 2 of 3, lower threshold imply more trust.
– Consider fault tolerance, a large group means more chance of people wanting to leave the multisig and having to reform it with different members requiring transaction fees. Higher signer thresholds are slower to approve and are more susceptible to inactive members or lost keys.
– Tapsigners and hardware wallets like the SeedSigner are great multisig tools as you can easily back them up and keep your keys cold whilst still being able to quickly use them alongside Nunchuck on your phone.
The Kicker
Collaborative multisigs are a new magical human layer on top of magical internet money but we think they are very logical. Multisigs combine psychology, modern organisation theory and sound money to create something we the world has never seen before and likely will be a core part of the bitcoin economy. So hurry up, it can be your story too.
