Primavera De Filippi is a research fellow at the CERSA / CNRS / Paris II University, faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the "alchemist" of DAOstack. and a co-author of " Blockchain and the Law ."

Many discussions are currently underway regarding the nature and specifics of blockchain governance, but when we say "governance blockchain" we are really talking about many things .

While people often use the term to describe the mechanism by which the underlying protocol of a blockchain-based network can be modified or updated – in terms of [ and Out of the Chain Governance – We focus here on a much broader issue:

What are the different elements or forces that influence the governance of blockchain-based networks or applications?

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor, identifies four different forces that influence behavior: law, social norms, markets, and architecture (ie, L & # 39; technical infrastructure or code). In doing so, it emphasizes the fact that we can not focus solely on the rules specifically designed to govern or regulate a particular person.

Instead, we need to take a broader ecosystem approach, looking at the various forces that influence that individual. Consequently, when it is a question of promoting or excluding certain behaviors, we can choose to directly regulate individuals via the legal system or indirectly regulate them through one of the other three. forces (markets, social standards and architecture).

We propose such an ecosystem approach to identify the different levers that could influence the operations of a blockchain-based system and the extent to which these levers contribute to the broader notion of "blockchain governance".

Blockchain-based applications do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in a larger ecosystem of Internet applications, each operating according to its own protocols and rules.

The Internet layer

In particular, the operations of a blockchain-based system – that it is a network, a platform or a application in blockchain mode – are defined by the rules that govern these systems but also respond to different layers of the system. the Internet infrastructure, which contributes to a different extent to shaping the global governance of systems.

Specifically, blockchain-based networks such as bitcoin and ethereum operate on the Internet and ultimately rely on protocols such as TCP / IP, which is responsible for packet routing and transfer of information between different nodes of the network. These blockchain networks can not work without an Internet connection.

More importantly, because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) control the Internet transport layer, they can discriminate packets originating from or directed to a network based on the chain, thus effectively altering its operations.

Internet governance can therefore have a significant impact on the operations of a blockchain-based network. The debate on "internet neutrality" is particularly relevant in this context. The practice of packet discrimination allows ISPs to favor some blockchain-based networks, to the detriment of others.

More radically, if a government banned a particular blockchain network, it could require that all ISPs operating within its national borders block or filter traffic originating or directed to that network – for example by such mechanisms as thorough packet inspection (DPI) or other traffic detection techniques.

Therefore, although Internet governance is external to the blockchain ecosystem (in that its scope is much broader), regulation of the Internet infrastructure could indirectly affect the operations of a blockchain-based system

The blockchain layer

Similar problems emerge within a network based on a singular blockchain.

While ISPs are responsible for routing packets over the Internet, according to specific protocols (eg TCP / IP and BGP), minors on a blockchain network are responsible for validating and recording the transactions in the underlying blockchain, (for example, the bitcoin protocol), the consensus algorithm and the choice of the fork (for example, the bitcoin work proof protocol states that minors must always add to the "longest string" defined by the hash power required to compute the string).

Today, this transaction processing task is primarily motivated by an economic incentive system, whereby the higher transaction fees paid to the network, the greater the chances of a transaction. include these transactions in the next block are large.

But transaction fees and mining rewards – although a fundamental incentive for miners – are not the only factors that can influence the behavior of minors. Other levers could come into play, coming from outside the blockchain infrastructure.

For example:

Markets : What would prevent a large mining reservoir from entering into an agreement (off-channel) with third parties, in order to Accelerate the inclusion of certain transactions to the detriment of others.

Social Norms : Could minors collectively agree that specific transactions originating or directed against a criminal [decentralized application] will not be turned into blocks?

Laws : Could regulators stipulate that all minors in particular jurisdictions are prohibited from validating transactions relating to an account or a specific account?

Architecture : Could China's Great Firewall be built to limit the ability of miners in China to handle larger blocks?

These external forces, which are beyond the control of an application based on a given blockchain, could have drastic consequences on the operations of this particular dapp.

The application layer

It becomes clear that the governance of a particular blockchain network could directly or indirectly affect the operations of a particular blockchain application operating over that network.

Although dapps may be designed to be completely self-contained – in that no party has the power to control or influence their operations – [19459005theyremainaffectedbytheoperationsoftheunderlyingblockchainnetwork and the specific set of protocols that establish its modus operandi .

The governance of a blockchain-based network could be used to censor some of the transactions directed to these dapps, or even to modify their operations by modifying their code via a rigid code.

This is precisely what happened after the DAO hack, when 3.6 million aether were drained from the DAO account because of a vulnerability of code. The ethereum community responded by intervening through coordinated action to modify the protocol of the ethereum blockchain. By transferring CAD funds to another smart contract, a mechanism has been provided to return the siphoned funds back to the original owners.

This extreme remedy has been heavily criticized. Some saw it as a betrayal of the "immutability" and "incorruptibility" of the ether blockchain (ie, the paradigm of "code is law")

Further down the pile, there are the various platforms based on the blockchain. people can deploy their own dapps.

Some dapps are located directly on a blockchain-based network. For example, Gnosis is implemented as smart contracts on the blockchain ethereum Others are deployed over a framework of app such as DAOstack who implements his own protocol s to create and maintain dapps.

W Most of the decentralized applications based on block chains have their own sets of rules, they also depend and therefore must follow the rules of the platform. form on which they rest. function. This can give rise to two different types of problems.

First of all, if there is a flaw in any of these smart contract platforms, the flaw will affect all the blockchain-based applications that depend on the platform. Remember the bug in Parity's multi-signature smart contracts, which led to the theft of more than $ 30 million of ether, followed by a subsequent attack on Parity's revised multisignature intelligent contract code, which was brought to selfdestruct, "thus freezing the funds in all the multi-gigs that depended on this shared code.

Another problem emerges by construction When the platforms implement "proxy" contracts that delegate calls to other contracts smart, which can be updated by the developers of the platform. Although such practices are still rare, some platforms (eg Zeppelin Solutions ) begin to experiment with proxy libraries so that whenever one of the underlying functions is changed, all dapps pressing these libraries will automatically inherit these changes.

Although this offers many advantages in terms of flexibility and scalability, such a design can be problematic in that it relies on a trusted authority (the operator of the plate contract-smart approach) that could influence these so-called decentralized applications.

(Note that the DAOstack framework does not provide such functionality. The set of intelligent contracts provided by the framework, once deployed, can not be changed arbitrarily by platform operators a series of upgrades to some of the platform's intelligent contracts, these upgrades can not be implemented automatically without the consent of platform users.)

With this in mind, we could reframe our understanding of "governance blockchain" to include not only rules specifically intended to regulate the operations of a specific network or blockchain application, but also the rules that contribute to the regulation of the underlying infrastructure on which operate these blockchain-based systems – which themselves operate over another infrastructure, and so on.

As the saying goes, turtles come down completely.

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