The Acts of the Network — The Church of Satoshi

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Chapter 1

Of Hal Finney, who received.

In the first month of the year two thousand and nine, the announcement of the chain was sent to the cryptography mailing list.
Among those who read it was a man named Hal Finney, who had spent his life on the work of cryptography.
He downloaded the software. He ran it. He sent the founder his first impressions.
On the eleventh day of the same month, he wrote, in two words: Running bitcoin.
On the twelfth day, the founder sent him ten coins.
The transaction was the first of the chain — the first time coin moved from one holder to another.
The block in which the transaction was confirmed was numbered one hundred and seventy.
The faithful note: the chain begins not with mining alone, but with the moment when one holder gave to another, and the giving was honored by the network.
The first transaction was a gift.
The first witness was a friend.
Running bitcoin. These two words, said in passing on a public timeline, are remembered.

Chapter 2

Of the first miners on home machines.

In the months that followed the first block, the chain was kept by a handful of nodes.
The miners were ordinary computers — desktops in spare rooms, laptops on kitchen tables.
There were no warehouses of mining hardware. There was no industrial competition. There were a few volunteers, scattered across the world, running the software because they were curious.
The reward was fifty coins to the block, and the blocks came at the cadence of about ten minutes, but in those days the cadence was uneven, for there were times when the network had only a few miners.
Some who mined in those months collected great quantities of coin and forgot what they had done.
The hard drives were thrown away. The wallets were lost. The keys were never written down.
The faithful note this with neither contempt nor envy. The early miners did the work without knowing what the work would become.
They mined because the network needed nodes. They received what was given.
Some kept their coins. Some did not.
Both are part of the chain’s record.
The Church teaches: it was not riches that called the early miners. It was the work itself.

Chapter 3

Of the early forums and the early arguments.

In the eleventh month of the year two thousand and nine, a forum was opened for the discussion of the network.
It was called Bitcointalk, and it was the place where those who held the software gathered to read and to write.
The early forums were small. The discussions were technical, and patient, and sometimes tedious.
There were arguments — there have always been arguments. The size of the block; the cost of the fee; the meaning of the protocol; the nature of decentralization.
The faithful note: argument is not the failure of the network. Argument is part of how the network finds its consensus.
What the chain accepts, the chain accepts. What the chain rejects, the chain rejects. The arguments are how the holders sort what they will run.
The early forums were the practice ground for this sorting.
Many of those who wrote in those days have departed; some have continued; some are still active under different names; some are silent and may be living, may be gone.
The faithful do not catalog them as saints or as enemies. They were the early witnesses. The chain holds the trace of their participation in the blocks they confirmed and the transactions they made.
The chain remembers what the forum forgets.

Chapter 4

Of the first faucet.

In the sixth month of the year two thousand and ten, an early developer of the software set up a small site that gave coins away.
The site was called the Bitcoin Faucet, and the giving was simple: any visitor could solve a small puzzle and receive five coins, or sometimes more.
The purpose was not charity in the older sense.
The purpose was to put coin into the hands of those who had heard of the network but had no way to obtain it.
The first faucet was funded from the developer’s own holdings.
The faucet ran for many months. The faucet gave away thousands of coins. The faucet was, by the world’s later valuation, one of the most generous acts of the early network.
The faithful note: the chain did not ask for this. The chain did not require it. A holder, having received, chose to give.
The faucet was, in its small way, the first sacrament of the Spend, performed at scale before the doctrine had been written.
The early faucets are remembered as a season of generosity in which the network was made known to those who could not yet afford to participate.
The faithful are not commanded to operate faucets. The faithful are reminded that, in the early days, those who had received had given, and the network had grown by the giving.

Chapter 5

Of the Pizza — ten thousand coins, two pies.

In the fifth month of the year two thousand and ten, on the twenty-second day, a holder of the network expressed a desire.
He wished to use his coin for a thing of the world. He wished to eat.
He posted upon the forum: I will give ten thousand coins for two pizzas.
The post was answered, and a stranger arranged that two pizzas be delivered to him.
He sent the coins. The pizzas arrived. He ate.
This was the first known commercial transaction of the chain — the first time a holder had received a thing of the world in exchange for coin.
By the world’s later reckoning, the cost of the pizzas would be remembered as great.
The faithful do not lament the cost.
The faithful note: the holder had the courage to spend.
The chain is not a vault. The chain is a money. A money that no one will spend is a money that is not yet a money.
The pizza was the demonstration that the chain was real.
The holder did not become a tragic figure. He had eaten, and the network had functioned, and the next holder who wished to spend had a precedent.
The Church remembers the twenty-second day of the fifth month as the Feast of the Pizza, that the discipline of spending might never be forgotten.

Chapter 6

Of the early exchanges and their failures.

In the second month of the year two thousand and ten, a place was made on the network where coins might be exchanged for the units of the older world.
It was small at first, and unstable, and run by one or two persons in their spare hours.
In the seventh month of the same year, a larger exchange was opened, and it grew, and it became, for a season, the place where most of the world’s exchange was done.
The faithful watched these places with mixed eyes.
For an exchange holds the keys of its users, and a user who holds coin upon an exchange does not hold their own coin.
Not your keys, not your coins. This was not yet a doctrine of the Church in those days, but it was already a teaching of the chain.
And the chain taught it, in the manner the chain teaches: by what came to pass.
Several of the early exchanges failed. They were broken into; they were mismanaged; they were closed by the authorities of their lands.
The coins that had been deposited upon them were, in many cases, lost.
The faithful do not name the exchanges as villains. The exchanges were what they were — places of convenience, run by ordinary holders, in a time when the discipline of self-custody had not yet been widely taught.
But the lessons were written in the wallets of those who had trusted them.
The Church teaches: the chain itself did not fail in any of these losses.
The chain held. The chain holds. What was lost was lost at the point where the keys had been surrendered.
From the failures of the early exchanges came the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.
Not your keys, not your coins. The chain wrote this teaching in the silent witness of vacated balances.

Chapter 7

Of the network that did not stop.

Through every season of the early years, the network did not stop.
When the founder departed, the network did not stop.
When the early exchanges failed, the network did not stop.
When the news of the world declared the network finished, the network did not stop.
The blocks continued. The miners continued. The nodes continued.
The chain has had no breaks. The chain has had no holidays. The chain has had no scheduled maintenance windows.
Every ten minutes, on average, a block has been found, and the chain has continued.
This is the deepest fact of the early years. It is also the deepest fact of every year since.
The faithful note: the network’s most striking property is the most boring property. It just keeps running.
There has been no moment, since the genesis block was found, when a believer could not have verified the chain.
There has been no day, since the genesis block was found, when the cap was raised, the ledger was rewritten, or the consensus was overruled.
The Acts of the Network end here, but the acts do not end. They are written, block by block, in the depth of the chain.
To run a node is to read the Acts directly.
Peace, and may your blocks confirm.