At the same time, that makes me wonder how many more things we can make visible if we explore more than just economic incentives. I’m excited to see what that can look like as there’s more experimentation. I know there are a variety of projects looking at adding reputation in one form or another and I’m excited to see what ideas people come up whether through research or experimentation.
Exactly! I appreciate the way you talk about effective voice in that paper and the specific suggestions that you make. To outline for others, that paper touches on a variety of options communities can consider. This is quoting from the paper:
Mechanisms for authority and accountability
- Make a community’s rules binding on administrators.
- Provide participatory processes for the selection and removal of those in authority.
Mechanisms for collective action
- Provide binding mechanisms for aggregating user demands.
- Let communities self-organize internal blocs.
- Layer multiple mechanisms that allow for diverse forms of input.
Mechanisms for community change
- Design for participation in structural change.
Effective Voice: Beyond Exit and Affect in Online Communities by Seth Frey and Nathan Schneider
It would be interesting to see an exploration of different protocols/ecosystems to see how many actually use options like these. I want to personally reach out to a bunch of DAOs so will keep this in mind when I do. It would also be interesting to think about the incentive mechanisms used in/around those options and which of these options can start in the community vs if all of these need to be intentional policies and part of culture from the get go.
In terms of energy, I agree that the fact that the energy consumption is an externality is separate from the other dynamics. I wouldn’t personally go so far as to say it’s a net gain energy wise. I am, however, interested in the research and innovation that arises around that to try and minimize the impact, but it seems some level of externality there is inevitable. We’ll see with time if it seems like a justified one or not. It’s interesting to think why people are reacting the way they are there, maybe it’s a bit of a sore spot given how much criticism it gets and the fact that not everyone doing that criticizing is being thorough in their thinking/approach (not saying that’s the case in your paper, I more mean in the media).
I personally don’t think so. I think culture and community play a critical role. Truly realizing decentralized futures will take a lot of personal change and if we can find ways to support each other in learning and growing, I am hopeful that we can create the environments where we can figure out what does work. Which reminds of the quote from Confucius that was mentioned in the podcast that Michael Zargham was on,
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
Not sure how much cryptoecon alone will help us with that part.
Citation
- Frey, Seth, and Schneider, Nathan. “Effective Voice: Beyond Exit and Affect in Online Communities.” arXiv.org, February 20, 2021. [2009.12470] Effective Voice: Beyond Exit and Affect in Online Communities.
- definitely not the primary source for the quote from Confucius citation, but here’s where I’m pulling the quote from, “A Quote by Confucius.” Goodreads, n.d. Quote by Confucius: “To put the world in order, we must first put th...”.