Inventing New Nature

The Protocol Institute's new Director of Research, the author of this editorial, argues that the task of the times is to invent "New Nature," which he defines as regimes of reality governed by technologically mediated laws nearly as inviolable and persistent as those of nature. The piece is the first of a working-in-public series on the institute's research mission, which was formed from the former Summer of Protocols program and is funded by a small launch budget from the Ethereum Foundation. It describes a 2×2 framework in which the institute aims to be a "context tank" between basic research and startups or products, with four Special Interest Groups currently running.