Dark Forest Theory

Black Forest pictured in darkness, the concept from which the theory took it's name

Dark forest theory is the idea that in a hostile environment, actors survive by staying hidden, because anyone who reveals themselves becomes a target. It comes from the Chinese science-fiction writer Liu Cixin's novel The Dark Forest (2008; English translation by Joel Martinsen, 2015), the second book of his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The idea has since been applied to the internet and to Ethereum.

In Liu Cixin's novel

In the novel, the dark forest is an answer to the Fermi paradox, the question of why no alien civilizations have been detected. Because civilizations cannot trust each other's intentions and any of them could become a threat, the safest course is to stay silent and to destroy any other civilization that reveals itself. Liu has summarized the image: "Each civilization is like a hunter with a gun in a dark forest".

The internet

In 2019, the Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler applied the idea to the internet in "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet". He argued that as public social media grew hostile, people were retreating to private spaces such as newsletters, podcasts and group chats: "Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of activity."

Ethereum

In August 2020, Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos of the investment firm Paradigm published "Ethereum is a Dark Forest", describing Ethereum's pool of pending transactions as a place where bots "monitor pending transactions and attempt to exploit profitable opportunities created by them". Any transaction that could be profitably copied or front-run would be. The essay helped popularize public awareness of what became known as maximal extractable value (MEV).

See also

• Ethereum
• Cypherpunk
• Zero-Knowledge Proof
• Singleton