SCRF has been invited to host an independent research track as part of the 2021 Smart Contract Summit. We’ve chosen to present five panel discussions that touch on some of the most timely issues facing the blockchain space: “Identity and Reputation”, “Governance Theory”, “Governance Implementation”, “Privacy and SNARKS”, and “CBDCs and Blockchain”.
In this series of threads, we will be providing some deeper insight into the panel topics, the participants, and where interested viewers can find their most relevant works.
What is SCRF
The Smart Contract Research Forum (SCRF) is where academics, researchers, and industry leaders from all over the world come together to discuss research, solicit thoughtful peer review, and find new projects on which to collaborate. You can find additional information about our programs, grants, and initiatives in our repo; or feel free to join us in our chat.
About the Governance Implementation Panel
What kind of challenges have been faced in communities that have exited to DAO’s recently? Governance is a topic that is relevant to every decentralized protocol, especially for organizations looking to engage the community to run with certain decision making. This panel explores some of the experiences of practitioners who have started using DAOs in some capacity and gets into the question of governance as a whole.
Full Video
Transcript for the video.
Panelist Bios and Relevant Works
Connor Spelliscy
Connor is the founder of the DAO Research Cooperative, which leverages group buying power to accelerate DAO functionality by procuring and open-sourcing research foundational to effective DAO operation, and a co-founder of the Blockchain Association.
Relevant links for Connor:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/c_spelliscy
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorspelliscy/
- Personal website: https://www.connorspelliscy.com/about
Leighton Cusack
Leighton is co-founder of PoolTogether Inc., a protocol for no-loss prize games on Ethereum.
Relevant links for Leighton:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lay2000lbs
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lay2000lbs/
- Company Website: https://pooltogether.com/
Seth Frey
Seth is a cognitive scientist and computational social scientist, specializing in the study of self-governance, mainly by leveraging the unique amenability of online communities to large-scale quantitative approaches.
He is a professor in Communication at the University of California Davis and an affiliate of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. Seth was a behavioral economist at Disney Research Zurich in Walt Disney Imagineering, a Neukom Fellow at Dartmouth College’s Neukom Institute, and a student at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He earned a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Informatics at Indiana University in 2013, and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley.
Some of Seth’s work:
- Trajectories through game space yield fairness. Seth Frey and Curtis Atkisson. (2020)
- Scaling of effective online institutions. Emergence of integrated institutions in a large population of self-governing communities. (2019)
- Designing Digital Institutions for Participatory Change. Seth Frey, P. M. Krafft, and Brian C. Keegan. (2020)
Relevant links for Seth:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/enfascination?lang=en
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enfascination/
- Personal Website: Seth Frey – enfascination
- UC Davis Website: Seth Frey — People in the Social Science Departments at UC Davis
Scott Moore
Scott is a co-founder and community lead for Gitcoin, a platform and protocol for building and sustaining web3 public goods. He’s also previously played a supporting role in a variety of other organizations focused on this mission including the Digital Public Goods Alliance, Ethereum Foundation Grants, and SustainOSS. To date, Gitcoin has distributed over $25M to open source developers around the world.
Relevant links for Scott:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/notscottmoore
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/notscottmoore
- Project website(s): http://gitcoin.co + http://kernel.community
Kelsie Nabben - Moderator
Kelsie Nabben is a researcher in the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub and a Ph.D. candidate in the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University. Her interests are in resilience in decentralised technologies.
Some of Kelsie’s work:
- Experiments in algorithmic governance continue. (2021)
- Blockchain Security as “People Security”: Applying Sociotechnical Security to Blockchain Technology (2021)
- S4: Simple, Secure, Survivable Systems Human-first crisis technology design principles (2020)
- The Four Internets of COVID-19: the digital-political responses to COVID-19 and what this means for the post-crisis Internet. Kelsie Nabben, Marta Poblet, and Paul Gardner-Stephen. (2020)
Relevant links for Kelsie:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelsiemvn
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelsien/
- Personal blog: Kelsie Nabben | Substack
Key Questions for our Panelists
Some of the questions we’ll explore during the panel include:
- What experiences have you had on community governance more broadly? What are the challenges in decentralizing to collective ownership?
- Aaron Wright says there are two types of DAOs: “participatory and algorithmic”. What are the differences in ontology, design, and practice? What do we think of the attractiveness of each of these?
- In what ways are blockchain projects transitioning to DAOs.
- What tools, frameworks, or examples are there for decentralized governance?
- DAOs often focus on voting mechanisms, when this is a last mile expression of preference in a much broader political process. While mechanisms are emerging for specific processes (e.g. voting), there is less emphasis on design parameters for the broader, political institution or organisation. What tools, resources, or advice do you have for those working on DAOs?
- How do you quantitatively measure the success of a DAO? I.e. through churn, gini coefficient, engagement, agency? How do DAOs determine, clarify, and align objectives?
- How expensive is personal agency? How much do your stakeholders want?
- What are the key challenges or pitfalls for DAOs to work on solving?
Watching the Panel
The Summit is taking place virtually from August 5-7. You can find the most up-to-date schedule and get your free tickets here.