<aside> 💡 TL;DR: How can decentralized blockchain technology be utilized to protect, archive and support the translations and teachings from wisdom traditions so current and future generations can freely access this knowledge as a public good, while also providing support for scholars and source communities through the monetary and governance mechanisms inherent in blockchain technology?

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Protecting Wisdom Traditions Through Decentralization

I am seeking funding to support an academic project for my thesis being conducted at Naropa University exploring the following:

• How can decentralized blockchain technology be utilized to protect, archive and support the translations and teachings from humanity’s most valuable wisdom traditions so current and future generations can freely access this knowledge as a public good?
• Can decentralization, self-governance and alternative economic systems also provide support to scholars and source communities through the equitable deployment of tokenization, NFTs and virtual community building?

While exploring these answers, I also plan to create a working prototype of the mechanisms necessary to create a “decentralized turnkey archival process” to serve as a scalable archival system for archivists, academics, librarians, etc. to preserve and democratize the collective wisdom that shapes our human experience.

The Research

For the first phase of my project, I will be conducting the following research:

• Create a “decentralized turnkey archival process” as a public good so universities, librarians, archivists and scholars can deploy the basic infrastructure of decentralized storage to protect the wealth of information they harbor so future generations can benefit from humanity’s most valuable wisdom.
• Build a prototype of a user-friendly, decentralized administrative protocol for scholars and archivists to prepare source materials for storage on Arweave. This will be done in part, by forking existing protocols, such as BuidlGuidl’s building protocol and Speedrun Ethereum, and retooling it for academics and archivists. This structure will be a public good and open to all who wish to deploy it or fork it for similar purposes.
• Field research to gather insights as to the best means to educate scholars on the mechanics of web3 in the context of protecting and archiving source materials and their translations.
• Research on governance structures so academics, source communities and patrons can collectively govern the archival process and create alternative economic modalities using NFTs or equitable tokenization to support scholars and source communities.

Why Naropa?

This project began in the Spring of 2022 and is being supervised by several professors at Naropa University, where I am completing my undergraduate degree as a non-traditional student and pursuing my Masters in Divinity in the Fall of 2023 (acceptance pending).

My intention is to present my thesis and working database prototypes by May 2023 for my capstone thesis and transition into a working project after graduation in conjunction with leading developers in the web3 ecosystem along with scholars and Naropa University. Our school has a vast archive of Beat Generation artwork, writings and footage that needs to be preserved in this manner. Our founder, Chogyam Trungpa, also brought volumes of historic Tibetan Buddhist texts into our school in the 1970s as he sought to preserve these ancient texts that were smuggled out of China during the invasion of Tibet in the 1950s.

I believe this project is vital and time sensitive as we are seeing the destruction of data due to centralized control of servers by corporations and billionaires and unpredictable political actors seeking to control access to certain types of information. I also believe that much of the source data from ancient wisdom traditions is at risk due to unforeseen climate impacts in physical locations where this information is stored.

Long Term Vision

My long term vision is to create a working model for a streamlined decentralized archival process and continue to preserve wisdom traditions and similar data at scale. I would like this initial phase to serve as the proof of concept and then, in Phase Two, expand this concept to a working model for decentralized archival projects and begin digitizing and preserving wisdom tradition texts, translations and source materials.

My goal is to be able hand this working model over to academic and archival institutions and have them protect the vital information that served as a guide and framework for the evolution of society while also democratizing this wisdom and making it accessible to all as a public good.

Deliverables

• A working prototype of the decentralized administrative protocol that lays a foundation for Phase 2 which entails building, testing and deploying the “decentralized turnkey archival process”.
• A 15 minute presentation of this paper to be delivered in academic settings that succinctly explains the project to those who are new to decentralization and web3 technologies, with an emphasis on the decentralized storage infrastructure supported by Arweave and decentralized governance.