This article is a live note from Bankless general partner David Hoffman during Burning Man. The author feels that there is a certain connection between cryptocurrency people and burners at Burning Man. Becoming the former also means becoming the latter. And vice versa.
I just returned from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where thousands of people gather every year for the annual “Burning Man” event.
After working in the cryptocurrency field for more than 6 years, I found that there is a certain connection between cryptocurrency people and burners at Burning Man. Becoming the former also means becoming the latter. And vice versa. Through these connections, I was told that there is a strong similarity between crypto people and burners, but I have never specifically understood the reasons behind it.
Therefore, for ten years, even my “burner father” told me, “David, you must go to Burning Man”. Later, I also established relationships with many cryptocurrency citizens who also said the same thing to me. This year, I decided to go and see what it is all about.
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Bankless Nation – Just like cryptocurrency, Burning Man is also a rabbit hole.
Just like cryptocurrency, when you enter the world of Burning Man, you also leave the old world behind. You put on a new role…you choose a new role. You explore new territories. These things are connected! The connection between Burning Man and cryptocurrency is not just a metaphor. Burning Man and cryptocurrency are parallel movements with common goals and values.
Therefore, for all cryptocurrency enthusiasts reading this article, please be as open-minded as you ask others to be towards cryptocurrency. For Burners who are encountering Bankless for the first time, welcome! I don’t expect us to be the same group of people, but I hope we can understand each other because if one of our actions succeeds, it will be easier for another person to do the same thing.
This article is long – there is a lot to say! To set up the strong punchline I want to present here, we will start with Burning Man 101 to introduce the themes and concepts frequently used in the Bankless universe. In the end, you will notice the focus shifting to commonalities…
In the Bankless Nation, we know that cryptocurrency is the taste of the future. You are here to seize the opportunity – to prepare for the inevitable strange and quirky future that we all know. Burning Man is the same. Its culture and values may one day clash with your life, and your life may have already clashed in many ways. If you continue reading, you will be prepared. You will know how to recognize it and hope to accept its true nature: an optimistic social movement that wants to change the world.
Burning Man 101
First, some basics.
Burning Man is an annual event held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States. It is the largest event held on public land in the United States, and its scale is expanding every year. The event in 1987 initially had only a few hundred participants, but it gradually expanded to about 75,000 people last year.
“Black Rock City” is a legally recognized city (*with a post office!) that only appears in the middle of the Black Rock Desert for one week each year and is quickly removed. It is important to note that Black Rock City is not close to any towns surrounding the Black Rock Desert. The nearest international airport is in Reno, which is a 3-hour drive from the hotel.
Black Rock City is arranged in a radial pattern, with the “Man” located at the absolute center of the circle. The innermost street, called “A”, has a diameter of about 2 miles, leaving a vast open space of flat, dusty desert for the residents of Black Rock City to engage in activities. The streets are coordinated like a clock, with a rotation every 30 minutes from the center and every 15 degrees. You can communicate your location to other Black Rock citizens by saying “I’m at 8:30 and C”. The organizational structure of this community is very conducive to the emerging features of Burning Man, which I will discuss later.
A 100-foot-tall wooden sculpture called “The Man” stands at the center of the clock on the playa. As you may have guessed, the end of each year’s Burning Man is marked by the burning of the effigy.
“Why do you burn the man?” “So we can build him again!”
It should also be noted that the central planning of Black Rock City informs readers that Burning Man is not a state of anarchy. While TradSociety may see Burning Man and think of a lawless state of anarchy, this is far from the truth. Burning Man is a highly coordinated phenomenon driven by over 200 year-round staff members, thousands of volunteers, and a set of minimum viable rules that embody culture and promote peace.
During the event, the staff of Burning Man plays a subtle but important role in repositioning the “camp” of Burning Man to help sustain and expand the power of Burning Man and prepare for its expansion in the following year. I will further describe this point.
Camp, also known as DAO
The “camp” of Burning Man is established, with a group of people coming to Burning Man regularly each year. With over 1,500 established camps, this solid base of burners provides the foundation and stability for the development of the Burners movement.
Each camp is unique, with its own origin story, camp members, and what it brings to the playa. While camp members and camp leaders may come and go, the camp itself remains. Like all living organisms, camps adapt over time. They grow, shrink, change, and respond to the environment. Camps can vary in size, ranging from significant, complex structures for living and entertainment to a circle of RVs.
As the camp develops to a certain scale, centralized resource sharing becomes crucial and economically reasonable. Larger camps have physical properties maintained year-round, waiting for the next burn – generators, refrigerators, freezers, stoves, ovens, showers, and umbrellas are physical items that medium and large camps often own and operate, allowing camp members to use challenging logistics to exchange for annual camp fees.
Camps usually start in a centralized manner, often with a proactive leader gathering their friends and family to “come to Burning Man once”. As the camp grows and expands, their leadership team also grows and develops. Typically, camp leaders leave, and the camp extends its own life. Even with changes in the camp leadership, the camp’s properties are still maintained by ever-changing camp members.
Anyone in the DAO should be familiar with the fact that a small number of DAO workers bring the entire organization together, and camp fees are often collected from all participating members to help maintain the integrity and resources of the camp.
This bottom-up organization in the Burning Man nation is one of its greatest strengths. Each camp is an autonomous management area. Each camp can freely manage its internal operations, social contracts, codes of conduct, and members. Camps can choose to pay or not pay wages. They can expel disrespectful members or choose not to. Camps can do whatever they want, and this freedom allows camps to grow, improve, and adapt over time. Every year when Burning Man arrives, the individual improvements made by each camp contribute to the net total energy of Burning Man and are one of the core drivers of exponential growth in the Burning Man movement.
Camps provide services and entertainment
Not every camp, but most camps provide some reasons for Burners in Black Rock City to visit. What each camp brings is completely open. This is one of the most prominent and interesting parts of Burning Man – walking from one camp to another, discovering what they offer, who you can meet, and what you can do. It is a core component of the Burning Man experience.
A typical camp has a bar where any burner can go and have a drink, but it only gets weirder from there.
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I attended a wine tasting camp, where a sommelier guided me and my friends to taste 3 different types of Greek wines.
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There was a grilled cheese camp, where you could sit at a table and enjoy 3 different types of grilled cheese sandwiches.
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There was a “cereal thriller” camp, which was a bar you could sit inside that offered about 20 different types of breakfast cereal while you listened to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and background music.
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Taco, kimchi and kimchi juice, oil wrestling, clubs, music venues, mini golf, yoga, educational lectures, trampolines, bicycle repair… Camps can offer anything.
The Burning Man campsite offers you an experience in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. There are too many campsites at Burning Man to experience them all – let me emphasize again, there are over 1,500 campsites!
Campsite Reorganization
This is where things get interesting. Every year during Burning Man, staff members walk around and visit campsites, witnessing the services provided by each campsite and evaluating the positioning of the campsite within Black Rock City.
Just like any city, real estate in the Black Rock Desert has its ups and downs. Ambitious campsites want the most foot traffic. Who doesn’t want to have the best party? The innermost streets and the center of the radial streets are the busiest avenues at Burning Man, while the further streets are the more secluded suburbs.
Based on the quality of the campsite, the value and nature of the services provided, and the overall atmosphere, the central organization of Burning Man will “approve” or “disapprove” the positioning of your campsite.
Did you promise to participate in a series of social activities coordinated by the campsite within a week, but only completed half of them? It is expected that they will be further postponed next year. Do you host popular activities or provide valuable services every week? You will be promoted! Do you not provide any services at all, or are you not even a campsite? That’s okay! You will live on the edge and allow established campsites to move towards the center.
In addition to some common-sense balances (such as placing music venues in the suburbs and setting up bike repair campsites), the annual reorganization of campsites allows Burning Man to continuously optimize and adapt to its conditions, making it a highly adaptive, flexible organic entity that can respond to its circumstances. This simple agreement, combined with the complexity of organic growth for each campsite, allows for a natural chaotic organization to emerge and strengthen over time.
A Resilient DAO of DAOs
The development of campsites is the reason for the annual growth of 5-10% at Burning Man. This attribute gives Burning Man’s structure a natural elasticity.
Campsites may disappear and be replaced. Campsites that are too large may split into smaller, more harmonious social groups. Campsites with strong leadership, coordination, and complexity can develop as they wish. The largest campsites can minimize campsite costs and provide more infrastructure for their residents, while also improving services for the general public in Black Rock.
Workers use this emerging property of Burning Man to reward more powerful campsites with better Burning Man real estate and thank them for their services by providing them with more exposure.
But we have to ask: Why do campsites want exposure? What motivates them to provide services? Is more foot traffic really an incentive?
One extremely important rule and principle of Burning Man is no money, no commercialization. The only useful thing at Burning Man is money is ice. You can buy ice to keep cool and prevent food from spoiling. Other than that, if you want something, you must barter for it. And if you want something, people might give it to you. Of course, within reason.
Perhaps motivating the public to consume your food, alcohol, and products is not the rational incentive of TradSociety, but Burning Man is not TradSociety. Burning Man follows the principles of dedication and service. Of course, not everyone is willing to spend resources for others, but the fact that Burning Man has grown to a scale of over 70,000 people indicates that there are enough people willing to provide enough value and service to support 70,000 people for 7 days, even when it is economically unreasonable to do so.
This element of Burning Man gives it such great power. From an economic and capitalist perspective, Burning Man makes no sense. Everyone leaves Burning Man with less money and resources than when they arrived. Burning Man is unsustainable.But it is effective. More people come back every year. Each time, they provide more and better services. The city is growing!
So if Burning Man is not built on economic rationality, but rather a constantly developing and well-functioning city, what supports it? What is the foundation of Burning Man? The energy of Burning Man is growing, but why? If it’s not capitalism, what is the basis of Burning Man?
I cannot answer this question for you. The answer comes in the form of the experiences people gain from the event. I have mine, but you need to get yours. That’s why everyone you know who has attended Burning Man will probably tell you, “You need to go at least once.”
Nighttime at Burning Man
Out of the 51 weeks in a year, the Black Rock Desert is a dark place, with the stars as the brightest source of light. But during one week of the year, millions of LED lights are installed on people’s bodies, bikes, camps, and art cars, and the playa becomes vibrant.
After dinner, as the sun sets, the residents of Burning Man grab their LED bikes, turn on their art cars, and head to the central playa – the arena of Burning Man.
While these players are present during the day as well, at night, the whole playa is greater than the sum of its parts.
Burning Man art cars are mobile art installations built around car chassis. They are drivable, rideable, and illuminated works of art, each one as unique as the last. Some can only accommodate a driver, like the roaming Roomba art car I saw this year, while others can house whole stages where people dance behind DJs, performing for the surrounding environment.
Artists come to Burning Man and erect fixed art structures for all burners to enjoy. If these art installations don’t have built-in lights and LEDs, they have external floodlights pointing at them to ensure no one crashes into them in the pitch-black night.
Each sculpture is illuminated in some way.
Some artists choose to burn their creations at Burning Man, spending months creating artwork only to deconstruct it, transport it to the beach, rebuild it for Burning Man, and then set it ablaze.
I’m not quite sure why, but I guess it’s easier than taking it home.
Everyone at Burning Man has a bike. Everyone. The playa is too big to experience on foot!
Everyone decorates their bikes with LED lights! In fact, it’s very dangerous not to do so. While this is primarily for safety, it’s not the only reason this social protocol emerged. Amazing things happen when thousands of people ride LED-clad bikes, wearing LED costumes, cruising the Black Rock beach, dodging LED-adorned art cars, and stopping to marvel at shimmering LED art installations.
LED is the thing. One of the principles of Burning Man is participation, and wearing LED lights and jumping around on the beach at night is one of the most basic and simple forms of participation in Burning Man. Just by wearing LED costumes and participating in this festival, you are contributing to the light show put on by the playa.
Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
When over 10,000 operatives run around with other friendly and open humans in an open desert beach while there’s LED, live music, and interesting art, some kind of magic happens.
Time is forgotten. The here and now is elevated. Friendships can be forged, even if they only last a few hours or minutes. Nowhere else in the world can you navigate an endless forest of LED while being so far away from TradSociety that the concept of doing any kind of work, chores, or errands never enters your mind. You are allowed to be present and have the perfect environment to do so.
This backdrop happens both at night and during the day, as everything at Burning Man is Sherpa-dotted.
Burning Man is not compulsory. You are not forced to do anything. While one of the principles of Burning Man is “participation,” meaning you should do something, what that something is entirely up to you. Whether you’re riding bikes at night on the playa, looking for art installations to catch your eye, or wandering the city during the day, looking for a camp to do something at, everything at Burning Man is vying for your attention.
Everyone at Burning Man is a moth and flame.
Where and how the moths of Burning Man gather is up to the fate of the universe and ultimately how the experience of Burning Man itself manifests.
Since you are not forced to do anything, the activities and behaviors that occur at Burning Man are voluntary. The people and things that are valued at Burning Man depend on the attractiveness of each thing. As the central point of the strongest Shelin point at Burning Man adjusts slightly each year, the overall brightness of Burning Man increases every year, and its significance also increases. The purpose and goals of the Burning Man movement have found its steering organically.
House of Commons Festival
When I first experienced LED lights on the beach, I thought of Andreas Antonopoulos’ concept of “commons festival,” which is the opposite of the tragedy of the commons.
Burning Man is a public place, and like all public places, it requires attention and care. But because the foundation of Burning Man is not capitalism, its common nature is expressed differently. Although the public resources of TradSociety need protection from exploitation by the government, the public resources of Burning Man naturally find themselves growing every year without any army forced protection. The principles and social agreements that guide the Burning Man society are beneficial to Andreas Antonopoulos’ “commons festival,” and the more people participate, the quality and supply of the commons will naturally grow and improve.
When the day turns into night, just visit the beach under the LED lights, and your presence will contribute to the large-scale light festival held in the city center. Seeing thousands of LED objects moving randomly in the desert is a spectacular sight, and you have contributed to all of this just by being there.
By developing your camp from a group of tents into a structure with a bar or activities, you can increase the overall value of the services provided by Burning Man.
In my opinion, this is the most significant overlap between cryptocurrency and Burning Man. A minimal set of rules that allow for unpredictable behavior and activities that naturally and organically point in the same direction as expanding the quantity and quality of the foundation supporting the movement.
New Social Structure
Burning Man is not society.
Burning Man is a portal. You walk in and then come out the other side. You enter into a new plane of existence where economics are irrational, organizations are emerging, and expressiveness is limitless. The restrictions imposed by modern society on ordinary people cannot be found at Burning Man.
Just like cryptocurrency, Burning Man is the wild west.
When you enter cryptocurrency, you choose a new life. You choose a new role. You settle in a new landscape. When you enter Black Rock City, you do the same thing.
Burning Man is an alternative society, and its new culture is based on specific principles that help expand the values it establishes. When the restraints and pressures of society are released, who will you become? How will you choose to act? What will you do?
There are more things to do at Burning Man than one person can experience in a lifetime, which may be why so many burners come back year after year, and why many choose to continue living with other burners in the remaining time of the year.
The Unstoppable Movement
So far, Burning Man is the largest networked nation in the world. I use the definition of a networked state very broadly here, but as it is not yet formally defined, I believe I am fully compliant with the rules here.
The main center of Burning Man is the event held in the Black Rock Desert in the last week of August, which can accommodate 70,000 people. But due to hundreds of regional derivative events held around the world, the Burning Man movement can take place at times and places chosen by the citizens. The nation of burners is borderless, and it is one of the fastest-growing emerging markets…
People gather together to create camps. Camps come together to form streets, and the streets of Black Rock City come together to form Burning Man. But now, various Burning Man derivatives have become part of a larger, decentralized social movement, whose foundation is to expand the culture and values of Burning Man.
The geometric growth of Burning Man cannot be underestimated. In the world of cryptocurrency, we are fortunate to only have to worry about moving bits. Cryptocurrency exists on the internet, and the success of cryptocurrency has nothing to do with atomic states. This is one of the most optimistic things about cryptocurrency: bits are easier to manipulate than atoms.
Burning Man is a movement of atoms. It is a movement under difficulties, but it has still been victorious. The Burning Man movement convinces hundreds of thousands of people each year to spend resources, to transfer their bodies, cars, and lives, to participate in a set of alternative social rules, and it is effective indeed.
It is not yet clear how large the Burning Man movement can grow, but after at least 10% year-over-year growth for 36 years, Burning Man has not yet found its limit. Ultimately, whether you know it or not, Burning Man is likely to find its way into your life. In many ways, it may already have.
In the world of cryptocurrency, we say, “There is something for everyone here,” and the same is true at Burning Man. Like cryptocurrency, the early days of Burning Man were defined by social radicals who didn’t fit into TradSociety. Like cryptocurrency, Burning Man is becoming more mainstream. Cryptocurrency and Burning Man are both adapting and becoming more gentle, and society is growing… a bit wild?
Like cryptocurrency, Burning Man is also an experiment of the future. Future schisms will be normalized, aging institutions will be disregarded. Burning Man and cryptocurrency both say, “Let’s rebuild society from scratch and see what happens.” We are both organic, anti-fragile, decentralized experiments in social structure and coordination. Burning Man and cryptocurrency are unstoppable movements beyond nation-states. We are all ideas. We are all genies in bottles. Our society embodies the values we believe in, and is made up of proactive doers who will die in the process of striving to live up to the principles we hold.
Conclusion
I don’t know if I will be a lifelong Burner. Although participating in Burning Man 2023 was an eye-opening and life-changing experience, I am not sure if it is suitable for me every year. But now I understand why everyone says “you need to go at least once,” especially my own father, who finally convinced me to go with him this year.
However, I do know that the purpose of writing this article is to send it to my friends and let them understand the magic of Burning Man. I’m not saying “guys, trust me… we need to go,” but writing this article to help convince them that they need to go to Burning Man… at least once.
For those friends who agree, I will voluntarily coordinate our camp as the camp leader. Perhaps this is just the beginning of everything.
See you at Burning Man 2024.
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