Reflections on Yonatan Sompolinsky’sAddress at the Oxford Union
By chad Ballantyne
When Yonatan Sompolinsky addressed the Oxford Union, he began at the level of the system itself. He described the internet as a democracy in scale and participation, then grounded that idea in a way that immediately resonates.
“We have one democracy in the world that is by a large gap the worst one.”
He continues by describing its behavior, its reach, and its instability before naming it directly.
“It is the internet.”
This framing draws attention to something foundational. The internet has become a shared environment where people communicate, exchange value, and participate in public life at a global scale. It carries openness, reach, and constant participation. What it has not yet developed is the structure required to organize that participation into coordinated outcomes.
“We treat the internet as a finished project. But it is too young to earn this title.”
That statement reframes how the system is understood. The internet reached global scale before it developed the institutional layer that allows large groups of people to act together with confidence. It enables interaction, expression, and even transaction. It does not yet provide a native way to form commitments that others can rely on and act upon within the system itself.
“You can freely interact with fellow members of the internet. You can even transact over the internet. But these transactions are still relying on external institutions to enforce them.”
This distinction matters. Interaction lives inside the system. Enforcement and commitment still sit outside of it. The gap between those two layers shapes much of what people experience online today.
Connection Without Weight
To describe how this plays out in practice, Sompolinsky draws on Alexis de Tocqueville.
“In democratic ages the extent of human bonds of human affection is larger but these bonds are relaxed.”
The internet reflects this dynamic at full scale. It has expanded human connection across geography, culture, and context. It has made interaction immediate and continuous. It has allowed people to participate in conversations and communities far beyond their immediate environment.
“Humans individuals care about more people but each of those connections carries less weight.”
The reach is undeniable. The weight of those connections is more difficult to sustain.
“There’s no really large commitment around or behind these social connections.”
This points to a structural gap. The system supports alignment at the level of ideas. It does not yet provide a reliable way to carry that alignment into coordinated action. People can see the same opportunity, agree on its value, and still remain unable to move toward it together.
How the Problem Has Been Framed
Many explanations for this pattern rely on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It describes a situation where individuals acting in their own interest arrive at an outcome that leaves everyone worse off.
Sompolinsky references this model directly and acknowledges its place in understanding certain types of behavior.
“The prisoner’s dilemma is where two sides, two humans play. They both have a very good outcome that they can cooperate on but instead of that they defect they betray one another and the end result is they are both worse off.”
He then offers a more precise framing of its role.
“This is obviously true in many cases in many scenarios but I argue that this is a wrong or an overexaggerated framework.”
This observation opens up a different way of looking at coordination failures. Many situations do not revolve around betrayal or defection. They revolve around timing, certainty, and the ability to rely on others at the moment when action needs to take place.
The Stag Hunt
This is where the Stag Hunt becomes central, a classic game theory model, commonly attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and where the idea moves into something people can picture.
Two hunters stand before a choice. Each can go out alone and secure a small prey, enough to get through the day. The outcome is limited, yet dependable. It carries a level of certainty that allows each individual to move forward on their own. In front of them stands a stag. It can provide far more than the smaller hunt, sustaining both hunters for longer and extending beyond the immediate moment into something that supports the broader group.
The stag requires something different. It requires both hunters to move together, at the same time, with a shared commitment to the outcome. If either hesitates or turns away, the opportunity disappears and both are left to start over. Sompolinsky captures the core of this situation.
“If someone was able to communicate between the players and commit and bind their actions, then the equilibrium would be self-enforcing.”
This is where the decision becomes meaningful. Each hunter remains focused on their own survival. Each is thinking about risk, timing, and outcome from their own perspective. Self-interest is still present in full. The structure around that decision determines what becomes possible. When there is no way to ensure that the other will act, the smaller hunt becomes the natural choice. It secures something. It allows the individual to move forward with certainty, even if the result is limited.
When there is a way to commit together, the larger opportunity becomes attainable in a way that aligns with each individual’s interest. Coordination channels self-interest toward a shared outcome. The benefit extends beyond the two individuals. A successful hunt provides more than immediate sustenance. It supports the wider group and creates stability that others can build on.
Seen through this lens, coordination becomes a form of shared strength. It allows individuals to pursue their own needs while participating in outcomes that carry value at a larger scale. The stag stands in the clearing. The opportunity is visible. The system determines whether people can move toward it together with enough certainty to make that decision natural.
From Intention to Coordination
Sompolinsky brings this idea into practical terms through the concept of an assurance contract. It introduces a structure where individuals can commit to action under shared conditions, with the outcome carried through by the system once those conditions are met.
“It is a commitment not just a promise but a an enforcable commitment that we act together. Either both of us act or both of us refrain from acting. There’s no risk of moving alone.”
This shifts how coordination can take shape. It brings clarity to situations where timing and alignment determine the outcome. People are able to move forward knowing that others are bound to the same conditions and that the action will take place in a unified way.
This becomes easier to see in familiar scenarios. A large group of people may arrive at the same conclusion about what should happen next. That shared understanding often remains at the level of intention. Each individual evaluates when to act and how others might respond. The lack of coordination keeps the group in place, even when the direction is clear. When participation can be expressed conditionally and aggregated across a group, a different pattern emerges. Individuals signal their intent in a structured way. As participation builds, confidence grows. When the agreed conditions are satisfied, the action takes place together. Sompolinsky describes this as a sequence. An opportunity is identified. A group gathers around it. Commitments accumulate under shared conditions. When those conditions are met, the group moves as one.
Why This Layer Has Taken Time
Sompolinsky offers a grounded explanation for why this capability has not developed alongside the rest of the internet.
“People tend to create systems in their own image.”
He reflects on the mindset of early builders.
“They built systems that are permissionless that are trustless. They had a mental set of suspicion against institutions and paranoia.”
These systems established the foundation for open participation and independence. They created an environment where individuals could act freely and without reliance on centralized authority. That foundation remains essential. He adds a line that captures the human side of this.
“They were not exactly the kind of people who were organized the neighbourhood barbecue.”
The systems that emerged reflect that orientation. They support independence with remarkable strength. The next phase builds on that foundation by introducing the ability to coordinate. It focuses on how people align, how commitments form, and how shared action can take place with clarity and confidence.
Kaspa and the Coordination Layer
Kaspa is not referenced directly within the body of the talk. It appears only in the host’s introduction. That absence reflects a focus on defining problems at a fundamental level before anchoring them to any one system. The requirements described throughout the talk point toward a certain kind of infrastructure. Coordination at scale depends on continuous interaction. It requires a system that can handle large volumes of commitments, updates, and execution without introducing friction that disrupts alignment.
Kaspa’s blockDAG architecture supports this kind of behavior. Parallel block creation and graph-based consensus allow the network to process activity in a continuous flow. Participants interact with the system in real time, in a way that reflects actual conditions.
This creates a foundation where coordination mechanisms can be built and used in practice. Developers can design systems where commitment is structured and enforceable. Entrepreneurs can organize communities around shared action. Markets can align participation with greater precision. Individuals can remain autonomous while participating in coordinated outcomes.
A Coordinated Future
The internet has already transformed how people connect. Its next phase will be defined by how it enables coordination, allowing people to act together with shared timing, shared commitment, and shared execution.
When that layer becomes part of everyday systems, the impact reaches into areas that shape daily life. Communities can organize around shared economic goals with clarity and confidence. Individuals can align their effort, capital, and participation while maintaining independence. Groups can move together on decisions that influence their livelihoods, their networks, and their future.
This begins to form a system where sovereignty is expressed through participation as much as independence. People retain their identity, creativity, and freedom of choice, while gaining the ability to unite around ideas and act on them in meaningful ways.
The opportunity extends into the common good. Coordinated action becomes part of how societies operate. Shared goals can be pursued through voluntary alignment, supported by systems that make execution reliable.
The stag stands in the clearing.
The system determines whether people can move toward it together.
Some Final Thoughts…
As these ideas move from theory into implementation, the next phase begins to take shape within the network itself. With the developments introduced through Toccata, particularly around covenant-based programmability and more expressive transaction conditions, there is now a path for coordination to be defined and carried out directly on the ledger. Participants are able to express intent in ways that are conditional, time-aware, and dependent on the actions of others, with outcomes that reflect that shared alignment once those conditions are met.
This opens the door to forms of coordination that have been difficult to achieve in practice. Groups can organize around a shared objective and act together once participation reaches a defined threshold. Capital can be committed in a way that only deploys when enough participants are aligned. Communities can form around initiatives where execution follows collective agreement rather than individual timing. These are patterns that can now be designed, observed, and refined by those building within the ecosystem.
For developers, this introduces a new layer of primitives to work with, where coordination becomes part of the system design itself. For entrepreneurs, it provides a way to structure participation around clear conditions that others can rely on. For communities, it offers a more grounded sense of alignment, where action can follow shared intent with greater confidence.
What begins to emerge is a network where coordination is not assumed or hoped for, but built into how interactions take place. Individuals remain free to choose their participation, while the system provides a way for those choices to come together in meaningful ways.
In that sense, the clearing begins to change. The stag is still there, and now, so are the means to move toward it together.
Bonus: This short re-stated parable was inspired by a recent address from Yonatan at the Oxford Union Society. He referenced a classic game theory model, commonly attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, known as the Stag Hunt, as a way to understand coordination in human systems.