Blockchain Governance

This working group investigates the ways in which blockchain technologies can enable new organizational structures and distributed governance models, and how these could be used to “regulate” or “govern” the deployment of blockchain-based applications. This working group focuses on exploring and developing sense-making and decision-making tools, to building new paradigms of organizational structures and social system design.

We have identified three distinct areas to address:

Governance of the infrastructure

We investigate the mechanisms used to “regulate” or “govern” the deployment and operations of existing blockchain-based applications. We explore current implementations of blockchain-based governance systems, and investigate the pros and cons of on-chain vs off-chain governance systems. In particular, this group focuses on issues of recentralization and the invisible “soft power” inherent in structures where stakeholders and hierarchies are opaque.

Governance by the Infrastructure

We investigate governance systems developed thus far to support the operations of DAOs: from plutarchy, to futarchy, to the new types of meritocratic organizations that operate via a distributed reputation system and analyse their advantages and drawbacks, especially with regard to the risk of power concentration and re-intermediation. This group also analyzes how governance systems optimize for particular outcomes in terms of decentralization, inclusive participation, speed of decision-making, efficiency, and scalability.

Hybrid Systems of On-Chain & Off-Chain Governance

Much of today’s discourse around governance of blockchain-based systems focuses inordinately on “decision-making” or “on-chain” governance, ignoring other critical facets of decentralized governance, e.g., sense-making, building common knowledge and legitimacy, and identifying the relevant pool of stakeholders. This working group analyzes the pros and cons of on-chain and off-chain governance mechanisms, and aims to elaborate hybrid systems that leverages automation for certain atomic governance functions, and enables human intervention where judgment is required. The goal is to build governance systems that allow for more democratic and participatory decision-making and coordination.