Things you can build on top of layer-1 algorithms

You must remember the Krebs cycle from your biology classes. It is key in the metabolic pathway that convertes food into energy in organisms that respirates.

Krebs cycle is unique: it is efficient, reliable, powerful and… beautiful!

It was not the first way of extracting energy from chemical compounds to be created (or selected), but surely it was the last.

All known alternatives to Krebs cycle produces less units of energy (ATP molecules) per unit of fuel (glicose) and only some very primitive unicelular organisms use them. And only in very specific spatial. temporal or biological context.

That is why there is only one Krebs cycle (even though it is called different names, like the citric acid cycle) and from the smallest bacteria to the gigantic blue whales, they all use the same.

Krebs cycle is also very old and its been around for billions of years. Like many reactions and pathways in biochemistry, it could be older than life, with parts that existed outside cells being assembled inside an organism because of need.

That doesn’t mean it is primitive. It’s optimized for its purpose. It’s Primary! It has become one of the cornerstones of life. The sequences of its enzymes are encoded in the DNA of organisms and it has been transmitted from cell to cell, from generation to generation, from species to species, since the beginning of life.

Its simplicity lies in the fact that any of its parts needs any further instruction to take part in the pathway other than just do what they were programed to do: take substrate Y and turn into X. The proteins are expressed and once they are all available in the cytoplasm, the cycle assembles and starts to work

Krebs cycle is a layer-1 mechanism. In a complex, chaotic systems, like living organisms, layer-1 mechanisms allows you to find some order. To explain some of the viability, regardless of attention, belief or interest. And whether you know what Krebs cycle is or not, whether you believe in it or not; it is there, it is true, it will keep running and it will keep benefiting you. I like layer 1 mechanisms. They cannot be violated without serious consequences and because of that they establish limits. And doing so, they unleash creativity.

If the rules of a system can be broken, or if limits are not clearly established, creativity is spent trying to break the rules and to surpass the limits, with low success rates. But with clear rules, limits and accountability, creativity results in functional and useful things. And THOSE THINGS expand the limits of what can be done!

I decided to write this article because I believe layer-1 examples in our areas of expertise (I’m a biologist) can helps us understand the power of layer-1 algorithms in other areas of expertise. More specifically, Krebs cycle can help us understand Bitcoin!

Most people don’t understand enough of computers, physics, money and finance to understand the power and potential of bitcoin. I didn’t. And because of that they find it boring. But most people have, in their field of knowledge, good examples of layer-1 mechanisms and how powerful they are. Because I’m a biologist, I can make the Krebs cycle metaphor. A car mechanic could find another. A cook, another.

Bitcoin is a layer-1 algorithm. We need to find more layer-1 mechanism metaphors to educate people about bitcoin.

To finish mine, where we find ourselves today in bitcoin blockchain is where Krebs cycle was when it was first created: a ‘biochemical algorithm living outside a cell’. I’d say we are not even in the ‘first microorganism to use it’ stage. It’s hard to imagine what it would be for bitcoin, what is the correspondent of a ‘complex sophisticated organism like a human’ stage for bitcoin. Because that is the kind of things that we can create on top of reliable layer-1 mechanism. And if you think that humans are not even the limit of evolution…